Advice from a Sunflower Page 2

  I think Emma is about as boring as a Barbie doll, especially since I stopped playing with dolls when I was eight. I just turned nine, and Marnie’s ten now. I’m not sure why she bothers with them anymore, either.

  “That’s dumb,” Eli grumbles, picking his characters for the game. “I would play with Barbies if they asked me to.”

  “Why? They’re for babies.”

  “Marnie isn’t a baby, and she still likes playing with them. I think you’re just weird.”

  “No, I’m not!” I protest, glaring up at him with heated, reddened cheeks. I can’t feel anything past the hurt that his words send burning through my chest.

  I thought Eli was my friend.

  “Everyone in school said you were weird when I first started,” he pokes, hitting his start button to begin the race.

  I shake my head and set my controller down on the floor, abandoning the game. Eli doesn’t notice until I’ve gotten up and started down the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” he yells.

  I see his mom look up from the TV as I pass her chair to head out the front door.

  The kids at school were meaner this past year, mocking me for being so quiet and reading my books instead of taking part in their silly games. They started excluding me at recess and gym, then poking fun when they would see me reading instead. Sometimes Marnie even joined in on their mocking, especially when Denise had a bad day and took it out on her. Eli is the only person who isn’t mean but now that seems to be changing, too.

  When I make it to my house and up the stairs into my room, Emma and Marnie are sitting on the floor with the house phone wedged between their heads as they laugh hysterically at whatever’s on the other side of the line.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, falling down onto my bed.

  “Get out, Mouse,” Marnie demands once she hangs up the phone, jabbing her finger toward the door I just entered from.

  Emma giggles even more, her nose scrunching up like a crow’s beak.

  “No, it’s my room too.”

  “Well, we don’t want you here,” Emma says, all traces of a smile gone from her sour face.

  I look to Marnie to defend me, but she reinforces Emma’s words with a tight grimace on her lips. I want to argue with them. I want to kick them both out for being so rude, and then I want to run to Denise and tell on Marnie for being such a snake in front of her ugly friends. Instead, I push out a dramatic sigh and grab a random book from my shelf, stomping down the stairs. It’s cooler in the living room, anyway.

  Hours later, I’m shaken awake on the couch as my name is whispered into my ear. When I manage to pry my eyes open, I see Eli on his knees before me, his face only inches from mine. I sit up, my book sliding down to the floor.

  “What do you want?” I try to spit; the way Marnie always does to me. Only, my tone comes out sweeter than I had intended. I can’t even be mean the right way.

  “I’m sorry I called you weird,” Eli whispers, leaning back onto his feet.

  I look around him at the clock, noting that it’s been four hours since I left his house. The room has darkened and cooled off as the sun begins to set.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I don’t like when other kids say you’re weird, either. I tell them to stop so you don’t hear them. I shouldn’t have told you about it in the first place.”

  “Okay.”

  He hesitates, comfortable silence falling between us before he admits, “I saw Marnie and Emma. You were right, they don’t want to play with me.” He looks down at his hands, embarrassed.

  “Who needs them, anyway? They’re boring. Besides, they’ll be in another fight next week and Marnie will come crawling back to us.”

  That’s usually how it happens with her.

  Eli’s face lifts in a smile. He reaches over and grabs the book that fell off my lap, reading the cover with a look of approval.

  “I don’t want to fight again. Let’s agree to not let anyone get in the way of our friendship ever again. From now on, it’s just you and me—Eli and Mouse.”

  He holds his pinky up between us, and I hook mine with it in agreement.

  “Okay. Eli and Mouse forever,” I whisper.

  Chapter 3

  Lyla

  14 years old

  “What are you looking at, freak?” Marnie’s voice rasps from the other side of the room as she swings her left leg into the window before soundlessly closing it.

  “Where were you?”

  I don’t like how squeaky my voice sounds. I wish it was low like hers. I wish everything about me was more like her.

  “None of your business. Go to sleep, Mouse,” she commands as she lies back onto her pillow and pulls out a cell phone.

  I wonder where she got it but think better of asking. It’s not like she’ll tell me anyway, and I already know it was probably from one of the boys I’ve seen her prancing around with after school or one of her pathetically desperate friends trying to please her.

  Denise doesn’t know about the guys, and if she found out she’d end up taking her anger about it out on one of us. We aren’t allowed to see boys. It’s sinful and inappropriate. We aren’t allowed to be seen, which is the problem between her and Marnie: people see her despite our mother’s attempts to snuff her out, and she defiantly basks in their attention.

  No one in The Hollow cares about the scars or bruises that litter Marnie’s arms and legs. Not when she has a personality that pulls them in and a cunningness that makes them stay. At least, until she’s through with them. Then, she tosses them to the side, and they come to me to vent about it. The quiet little mouse who no one ever really hears.

  I inherited most of my appearance from my father, whose features are very handsome on a man, but alarming on a woman. A large, sharp nose, round seafoam eyes, and a top lip that juts out too far over a thinner bottom one. Marnie says I’ll grow into them once puberty fully hits, but I think she just feels bad for me. We’re just over a year apart, and she grew out of her awkward features years ago, replacing them with soft, feminine lines.

  So, Denise has nothing to worry about when it comes to me stealing her attention and sinning; it’s Marnie she has her issues with. Because Marnie has everything Denise wants, and they battle over the power their beauty generates on a daily basis. They also battle over the strict set of rules that Denise has slowly put into place since her parents passed and she found refuge in the church.

  The light from her new phone illuminates our room for the next two hours, her fingers tapping away at the keypad. In combination with the noise coming from outside our bedroom window from the neighbors fighting and the nervous anticipation about Denise busting in her at any moment for a random sweep, sleep is hard to come by. I cover my head with my blanket and shine my flashlight on The Great Gatsby, re-reading it for the hundredth time as I wait for sleep to come.

  Marnie slept through all three of her alarms the next morning, resulting in a miserable start to the day for all three of us. When she finally woke, she ran around the house screaming profanities until Denise was forced awake and the arguing began. We walked out the door ten minutes late; her, with a rare new welt on her cheek, and me, with a ringing in my ears from the shrieks that followed the confrontation.

  Denise had been pushed beyond her usual limits, striking Marnie in a spot that others could easily see this time. I watched the regret creep on her face the moment it happened. There would be no denying it anymore, no more lying on her behalf. The truth would be out: Denise Scott hits her girls.

  She laid her hands on Marnie, the most precious gem this town has. I knew she wouldn’t care in the end. That she would probably argue with the gossiping hens downtown to half-heartedly save her reputation and then go back to hiding behind her close-knit circle at the church. But the moment her hand hit Marnie’s face; we felt the shift happen. The rules to the game had changed, neither me nor Marnie aware of what would come next. We walked out of the house with our heads held high, desp
ite the feeling of being ground further into the dirt than we already were. Our predator was now unraveled, her rules gone, and we were stuck waiting for the next move.

  “Hey Marnie, hey Mouse,” Eli greets, a large smile painted across his face.

  Marnie shoots him a scowl and I watch his face immediately fall. When his eyes land on mine, I send a weak smile and shrug, falling into step beside him while Marnie leads the way in a huff.

  “What are you still doing here? You’re going to miss the bus,” I mumble, careful not to let Marnie hear.

  His eyes find her backside and then shoot straight down to the ground. “I was running behind.”

  He’s lying. Eli is never running behind, not with a drill sergeant for a father. He’s most likely been up for a few hours by now, starting his day long before the sun. He’ll never admit that. He’ll never come out and say that he stayed behind to make sure Marnie was okay, and she repaid him by barely managing to look in his direction.

  I don’t call him out on it. I never do. People don’t want their lies to be exposed, regardless of how transparent they may seem, and I never want to deal with the emotions that follow.

  We quickly fall into our routine conversation, discussing homework and our class schedule as Marnie stews ahead of us, speed-walking so that we don’t miss our bus and are forced to walk to school. The three of us have been in the same grade since he moved here, despite Marnie being slightly older than us. She’s spent the past few years at the top of our class, followed directly by me and Eli. That is, until we entered high school and she realized she cared more about making out behind the bleachers than studying in the library.

  That was right around the time I realized Eli was falling for her and she couldn’t have cared less. Our seemingly unbreakable friendship was shattered, and I was stuck watching Eli pine after my sister while she ignored both of our existences.

  “What happened to her this morning?” he asks when we’re finally alone inside the school.

  Marnie always separates ways with us before we step foot through those front doors. I pretend to fumble with my locker combination for a few seconds before answering.

  “Same as usual.”

  He stacks his books into the bottom of my locker as I grab the ones I need for the next two hours from the top. He insisted on sharing when he realized his own locker was on the opposite side of the school from the rest of his classes and I had been too afraid to argue.

  “I can’t wait for her to get out of there,” he grumbles, a crease now formed between his brows.

  Her. He couldn’t wait for her to get out of there, but he didn’t care whether I got stuck. That was always the case. People felt bad for Marnie because the marks Denise left on her were physical—right there in their faces, despite her vain attempts to hide them. No one bothers to think about what kind of damage my mother is doing to me by ignoring my existence. By treating me more like an outsider than her own daughter, even though most of my life has been dedicated to pleasing her.

  No boys. No revealing clothes. No late nights. I’ve followed every ridiculous rule she’s created to a T. Attended church every Sunday to listen to the archaic sermons preaching about living perfectly and avoiding sin to worship a man who has supposedly sacrificed himself so we wouldn’t have to worry about that exact thing. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in religion and higher power, I just don’t believe her version of it.

  I don’t bother responding to Eli and he doesn’t seem to notice. My chest aches with a familiar disappointment that I hide with a small smile as I slam the locker door shut, turning away from him to get to my first hour class. I realized very early on in life that academics are my golden ticket. If I can do well enough in school, I have the potential to earn scholarships and get myself out of The Hollow before it eats me alive like it has everyone else that I know. I’ve tried to explain to Marnie that the same was true for her, but she always just rolls her eyes and puffs on her cigarette dismissively, mumbling something about me being a nerd with no friends.

  She’s right. I don’t have friends. Not beyond her or Eli, and in the past few years my relationships with them have become somewhat strained. It started when she began treating me more like an annoying little sister than her equal. Then, Eli started making his feelings for her known to me, and I was forced to shove my own deep down into my soul where no one would ever find them. Because while he had been falling madly in love with my detached, aloof sister, I had started to fall for him.

  Eli is all of my favorite things wrapped in a beautiful package, tied with a string and a fancy note that says, Do Not, Under Any Uncertain Circumstances, Touch. Because while I was falling for every word he muttered and memorizing every curve and movement of his body, he was always looking the other way—a reality my fragile young heart wasn’t ready to accept yet. Eventually, the pain of rejection outweighed every moment of temporary bliss that came with being near him. We were no longer Eli and Mouse, friends until the end. We were Eli and Mouse, Greek god and pathetic mortal.

  How long could one person pine for another who barely recognized they existed? How strong does one’s confidence have to be to withstand the constant backlash of rejection? How long would I be cloaked in the darkness of Marnie’s shadow before the sun shifted and others started seeing me as an individual?

  With a deep breath—inhaling toxic Hollow air, exhaling relief that this will all be over soon—I distance myself from the one thing that seems to attract me like a moth to a flame.

  Him.

  But he isn’t mine.

  Even if he isn’t hers, he can’t ever be mine.

  He doesn’t want to be.

  And that’s enough to knock those cleansing breaths out of me and kick me back into gear for reaching my lifelong goal of escaping this small town, holding my breath from the poisonous air and running as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

  They say love doesn’t have to hurt. Not if you don’t let it. But experience has told me if it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t real.

  Besides, it’s just puppy love that I’m feeling. That’s what I tell myself. Simply because he’s the only male I’ve ever interacted with and my teenage hormones have taken over. I’ll realize how stupid it all is when I get out of The Hollow and experience something real. I’m sure of it. Without those two, my social life is nonexistent, and I’m content with that. I’ve seen what petty friendships do to people from witnessing Marnie and her fake group and I want no part in it.

  There’s beauty in solitude, though. Most people can hardly stand being alone with themselves. They seek out others who are just as lonely as they are, and they make a silent, unspoken promise to never allow each other to be alone for too long. It’s sad, really. They pity me because of my solitariness; I pity them because of their co-dependence.

  What’s it like to rely so heavily on someone else for your happiness? What happens when they realize that no one can be trusted; that no one can be relied upon for any period of time. Society is an ugly thing, so I do my best to stay as far away from it as possible.

  So, during the day I study, and at night I write. Everything and anything. I write freelance articles about current events to earn extra cash for college applications, journal every menial detail from my boring life, and I’ve even finished a few fiction books throughout the years. No one will ever read them, but it’s an outlet for me. A passion that takes me outside of my miserable existence to the alternate reality I’ve created; the one that’s bearable to be in.

  Denise thinks they’re stupid. Once, she invited her church group over after a charity event and they took one of my spiral notebooks out of my room to throw into a bonfire she was hosting for her friends. They all laughed as their beers sloshed around in their cups and shreds of my imagination floated in the air around them. Denise said it was a waste of my time and a poor reflection of character to be writing sinful romances. That I could have been doing something that mattered, like mopping her floors. The comment earned anothe
r cackle from her audience and I ran into my room and cried into my pillow until Marnie came sneaking through the window and found me.

  “They’re a giant waste of oxygen, Mouse. Don’t listen to any of it. They wish they could come up with something half as good as you have. One day, when you’re a bestselling author and your stories are being made into movies, they’ll be standing with their hands out wishing they hadn’t treated you so badly.”

  She had her own doubts about my writing, though. She thought it disconnected me from the world too much and that I was setting my expectations too high for whatever lies beyond these town limits.

  “I’m just afraid you’ll get out of here and experience nothing but disappointment. Don’t you think you’re better off setting expectations low so you’ll be amazed at how wonderful it all might be compared to this?”

  She was painting her nails on her bed across from me, glancing over periodically as she spoke her cruel, well-intentioned words.

  The truth is, I don’t think I’m setting myself up for failure or disappointment or anything else that they might say. I have a strong feeling no place in the world is like The Hollow, and I revel in the fact that no matter what, I can point my finger anywhere on the map and land somewhere better than here.

  Outside of our dysfunctional house, the only other person who knows about my writing is Eli. He’s always been fully supportive, even proofreading my articles before I send them over to be published. He always gets this proud glint in his eyes when he finishes whatever it is he’s been reading, handing it over with a toothy smile.

  “I can’t wait to see what an amazing writer you become one day,” he always says, and I have to turn away before he sees the blush creeping up onto my cheeks.

  I haven’t been around to see the glint or the smile for a long time, but he still proofreads my articles and emails them back to me almost immediately. I try to tell myself our distance is normal, that all friendships end up on this path as they reach the teenage years. That still doesn’t stop the aching in my chest every time I think about him.