Young Writers Society

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. - Unknown

“The pink car drove down the road. Say it slowly: the pink car drove down the road.”

The sentence seems pointless. An adjective describing a noun in which a verb follows it. My teacher, who was my mother, would repeat this sentence to me every day for the past year or two, to begin our daily lessons. I never really paid attention to it, I mean, I was only ten at the time, when she first began to homeschool me. My mother was fairly pretty at a ripe age of thirty but that was changing depending on how she felt or how the weather was. I had thought she was a princess of some sort and she would play with that. Anyway, it seemed like our lessons were getting longer by the day, starting with how to identify the nouns in a sentence to what were the different types of POVs. I was a fast learner, I guessed. She had wanted the best for me, only sending me to bed when I could recite the different tenses at least ten times.

My father wasn’t around much because he worked the night shift at the local mall and during the day, stayed in his bedroom, watching romcoms and the only time I would actually get to see him would be shortly during dinner and then later, if I was lucky while getting a glass of water at night. There were sometimes where my parents would fight, my mother usually starting them and my dad ending them. It was over simple things such as seeing me or when my dad going to pay the bills for our small, cramped apartment. In some corners of our apartment, there were potted plants that needed water, ladybugs that were discolored due to a large amount of sunlight, and old photo albums that showed our family’s history in black and grey photos.

My grandma was a loving spirit who helped me through some of the biggest problems in my family. Usually taking me out to get ice cream or to buy new school clothes. She only lived a town over. I’ve been there once; she lived inside of a red house with white edging and a garden of flowers that were in the front. There was also a small old brown barn behind her house that contained my grandpa’s old farmer supplies, such as a green mower and some gardening tools. My grandma also has an old dog named Bailey that would lick my face whenever I arrived. I miss Bailey. I miss my grandma.

Early mornings in my household consist of waking up and being the first to get breakfast. My mom usually makes enough eggs, bacon, and toast for three but it is best to get it warm. I was the first to get there, greeted by my mother’s emotionless smile. It was like a foggy drawing of one on a bathroom mirror. I sat down on one end while my mom sat at the other end, quietly scrapping her eggs onto her fork with a butter knife. My dad had yet to wake up, which was normal, considering he was never shown. My mom looked at me, chewing solemnly.

“What’s wrong, bunny?” She had asked. She called me that because of my fuzzy hair looking like a bunny tail. Nothing felt wrong. I become aware of my face, touching it slightly as I felt the soft outline of my frown and then frowned a bit more.

“I think I frown too much, mama.”

She laughed and then shook her head. “If you frown too much, then you’ll never be happy. Now, eat up. It’s going to be a busy day.”

My first day at public school started out with not knowing anyone or where to go. I felt kind of small for someone of fifteen. I held onto my mother’s hand as the principle, a nice old lady by the name of Mrs. Shaddon, lead us around the school.

“It’s a fairly nice school with only thousand students. The teachers here are quite nice and enjoy a good laugh too. We have an award-winning lunch system too in this state,” she joked. My mom didn’t look pleased. There were colorful posters on the wall that stated stuff against bullying and whatnot. One caught my eye of a little girl, I’m guessing around five, with a purple eye. The words, in bright green and circled, stated: “even parents can do it.” I didn’t care much about it as my mother tugged on my arm. I was wearing a blue dress with white shoes that dug deep into my ankles. My mother insisted I wear something fancy and attempted to tie down my wild hair (of course, it didn’t work well because it bounced back; a wild beast).

When we were done looking around the school, my mother took me to McDonald’s and we ate in the parking lot. I got some chicken nuggets and apple slices while my mom simply ate a small salad. I noticed how thin she was, how her jawline seemed to cut through the skin slightly, and how sunken her eyes looked with black bags under her eyes. I overheard from when my parents were talking about how my mom was attempting to find a job online because my dad got fired for being late to work so many times (or at least, that’s what I like to think).

“Bunny, do you think we should move?” My mother asked, poking at her salad. Being only fifteen and asked such a question was awful. It was like expecting the President being asked to replace all the stuffed animals in all the stores with bombs.

I took another bite of a nugget before speaking. “Why do you want to move, mama?”

This was the first night I had seen my mother cry. It lapped over, like water over a basin and sounded deep inside of her chest. At the age of fifteen, I didn’t know what to do. After a couple of minutes of just crying and leaning against the steering wheel, my mother sat up and looked at the distant lights of the late night traffic.

“Your father isn’t good for me, Bunny. We’ve drifted apart. He doesn’t love me anymore,” she said, sniffling a few times. I blinked, the chicken nuggets no longer appealing to me. “Your dad doesn’t provide for the family like he used to. Before you were born and such.” She sighed, looking down at her salad. “If we move, I think it’d be best if we leave because of your father. Just the two of us, Bunny. How does that sound?”

Silence and the sound of my beating heart were the only things I could hear. I honestly didn’t know what to say. I think it would’ve been easier if we did move but I began to think. Where would we live? Will I still go to school? Questions like that began to plague my mind.

“Bunny, we aren’t going to move right away. I still need to find a third job to support us and to find money. Until then, could you think about it, please?” She looked through the rearview mirror at me, her foggy smile showing again. I began to feel sorry for my mother and worried the worst wasn’t over yet. We drove home that night, throwing away the McDonald’s because my mother didn’t want my dad to know of it. I snuck off to bed while my mother went into the bedroom, quietly closing the door.