Your Friend by @((Y^!@ Allyvia (ebook reader for surface pro txt) 📕

My mother nitpicked my hair like I was going to prom, even though we were just lounging around the house, watching reruns of whatever show was on MTV. Her long, silky dark hair was pulled up into an elegantly messy ponytail that made me forget she had spent all day in her pajamas. Her silken red kimono hung from her tiny wiry frame, reminding me where I got my frail-looking, bird frame.

“- is such a dork. He sent me roses today, even though he knows I like tulips more,” she drawled, rolling her eyes playfully even though she was blushing, and painted her toenails a rosy pink color. It seemed as though she was complaining about something new, everyday, even if she was secretly smitten by it. Like today, when my father had taken half the day off just to take her to lunch and do some shopping.

I nodded along, like I understood, even though a guy had never gotten me flowers, or blown off work to take me shopping. As she began another animated story- waving her arms about, her brows knit so tight the wrinkles in her forehead were more occurring than cracks in a sidewalk, her cheeks flushed- I wondered what it was like to be in love.

Heather called it bittersweet. Sweet, because she had conquered another boy, another toy for her collection; bitter, because suddenly her new toy felt as though it was actually subjected to pampering her like a princess when they weren’t having some weird, major hump-fest in the backseat of his car. No, unlike a normal person, Heather insisted the worse they treat her, the better they are in bed. I swore she had some Daddy complex, since her dad was, quote unquote, ‘a lying, cheating, bastard of a scumbag who doesn’t have the balls to file for a divorce’.

My mother’s version of love was a lot sweeter. Back in the eighties, when she wore neon skirts and ratted her hair and smoked in the girl’s bathroom, my mother was queen of the school. She was perfection in every way, or so my dad said every night for the first ten years of bedtime stories. Their’s was always my favorite.

They always changed something in it, spatting about it playfully while telling the story, and earned giggles from me. A couple of times, my father would say she had the prettiest brown eyes he had ever seen, even though hers were green. They would then go on about her eye color after bed, when they thought I was asleep, giggling and laughing.

Anyways, my father had caught her attention writing poetry. Irony was obviously not in my favor, once I realized how polar opposite our poetry was. Mine was a creepy stalker letter; hers was a creepy stalker letter of confessional love, that later turned into some ‘one night of passion’. And voila, seventeen years later here I am, the result of their silly poetry. I prayed I wouldn’t have some night of passion with Your Friend.

Thinking back to it, the note I had stuffed into my book bag after eighth hour, I sighed loudly, my mother hardly glancing my way. She simply continued painting her nails, a pink that matched the color of the roses my father had brought her earlier. Sometimes, I felt as though she thought she was still Prom Queen or something.The slam of the front door made us both look up though.

“Hello,” my sister’s voice cried out, breaking my mother out of her train of thought, barreling into the room like a torpedo. Her luscious blond locks were wound tightly into an eccentric, messy French braid, and her tan skin was glistening gold from a sheer layer of sweat. Her tennis bag was slung over her shoulder.

My mother swiveled around in expensive office chair and beamed when she saw Mindy. “Hey, sweetie. How was practice?”

“Fine. Bjorn taught me this…,” she began, blathering about her new European tennis coach who I honestly did not care about. She swung her bag onto the soft, black couch by the fireplace, and let her muscles give out beneath her, collapsing onto the couch with a ‘humph’. My sister had always been a fierce player, which we learned from a scarring experience I now call ‘the Tennis Ball Torture Fest of 2003’, and I felt bad for the sorry sucker who had to play her.

“-and then he made me run stairs for ten minutes straight! It’s like he thinks I’m going to the Olympics or something,” Mindy cried, throwing her tired, sore arms in the air. I sighed; I already knew what was going to happen next.

“Mindy, sweetie, you are going to play in the Olympics! You are better than the Williams sisters put together! You’re always putting yourself down,” my mother insisted, swatting at my sister lightly. I attempted to roll my eyes, but felt my mother’s gaze on my back and stifled it. My mother hated when I showed the slightest annoyance in Mindy’s constant approval.

I got straight A’s; Mindy got straight A-pluses. I got school vice-president; she got president. And yet here I was, totally messed up but bottling it up inside, listening to my mother coo over yet another one of Mindy’s many accomplishments. Whether it was with Heather, or in the confines of my own home, I was being outshone.

I still loved my sister- I went to every one of her tennis tournaments, taught her how to hide the alcohol on her breath and how to use a tampon, always stayed home with her when she was sick- and yet I felt as though everything was a competition to her. She strived to be first- it seemed as though since I was first being born, she would be first at everything else.

I sighed, and climbed from my spot on the couch. “Well, I’m going to go finish some AP homework.”

“But Auden, we were going to have spaghetti for dinner, to celebrate your sister’s-”

“Just call me down when dinner’s ready,” I insisted, before climbing the stairs. I could still hear their muffled laughter and chatting at the second story landing, something about how Mindy’s boyfriend Tad was already planning to buy their prom tickets. This time I did roll my eyes.

As I trudged into my bedroom, the weight of my book bag digging into my shoulder, I grabbed my laptop from my desk and flopped down onto the polka dot, down comforter of my bed. My fingers flying on the keyboard, I logged into Jackson High’s chat room. It was some stupid thing they had before Twitter and Facebook, but it was a place to talk to other students while remaining confidential.

My username was W.H.girl. Like W.H. Auden, the author. I thought it was a nice play on irony, and had kept that username for almost everything else. As I scrolled through my inbox and messages, a friend request made me stop dead in my tracks.

‘YourFriend836 wants to be your friend!,’ it read in bright blue writing.

***

I went to bed with a sick feeling in my stomach. YourFriend836, Your Friend- it could not be a coincidence. My stomach hurt just thinking about it. It had to be a sick joke. There was no ‘pain in your eyes/ Hidden behind that sun-like smile’... at least, I hadn't let it show that much. Your Friend made me sound like some tortured soul. What I really did not want to admit was that Your Friend was not too far off.

I fell asleep that night curled up in ball, a familiar position from years of family Christmas’s and Thanksgivings. No one knew; I had not told Heather, or Mindy, or my parents. I had never breathed a word of it, just as I promised him.

I remember, once, I had been number one, in his heart at least. In his heart, I was perfection; Mindy was just a tiny whiny toddler who was too sticky and smelly. I was so pure, still smelling of soap and baby powder even at the ripe age of eight.

I fell asleep that night, only to wake up in a nightmare.

Clutching the pink fabric of my underwear, he slid them down my legs, as though he couldn’t stand them between us. I closed my eyes. His mouth attacked at mine again, and I felt his hand slide up the inside of my thigh. I let out a faltering, labored breath as he began to touch me where no man had before.

I felt sick. I felt like, at any moment, I would get ill. My knees twitched and locked with every movement of his hand, and I dug my fingers deeper into his skin, clenching my teeth and crying so hard my chest shook. After a few moments of grunting, I felt him between my thighs.

“Auden, open your eyes,” he insisted, panting. “Look at me.”

I looked up at him, from beneath my lashes, and did not see my uncle. I saw the guy who made me shiver with each touch. I saw the guy who made it hurt to kiss a boy.

When he kissed me, I felt as though my body was shriveling. I felt as though he was sucking everything out of my body like a vacuum. Then his body tensed, pushing himself inside me with a small, slow movement that made my insides curdle.

‘I hate you,’ I thought. ‘Burn in hell.’

When he pulled back, I clenched my eyes shut with discomfort; when he rocked into me again, I bit my lip in pain. It hurt. It hurt, and I was crying, and this was my uncle. I wanted to die.

“Auden,” he whispered again, only this time not in his voice. This time, it was my mother, shaking me awake for school. “Auden, open your eyes. You’re going to be late for school.”

"Jesus, who drowned your kitten," Heather asked when she saw me walking to my locker that morning. My hair- in a messy, frizzy, fly-away filled braid that Heather said made Katniss's hair look like a Garnier perfection- and clothes- baggy sweats, an old cheerleading t-shirt, and Nike tennis shoes- made me feel less than beautiful in comparison to Heather's Cucuy Coture pink floral dress and hot pink heels. 

My skin was pasty and pale, and my hands were chalky and dry. My stomach had been unsettled ever since I awoke that morning, although I swallowed the gut ache and choked down my mom's French toast, despite my stomach. The saliva in the back of my throat was like swallowing glue. 

"Thanks, Heather," I said dryly, angrily letting my head hit the metal shell of my locker in frustration when I couldn't open it. 

Heather rolled her eyes and pushed me aside as she effortlessly dialed through my combination, which she had been doing since the first day of freshman year. "No problem, bestie. Now, where, oh where, has my precious Beck gone," she sang, craning her long neck to look through the throng of peers and teachers and cheerleaders and geeks. 

Even though Heather was set on finding Beck, I was looking for Robbie. Robbie Arkwright was the one person who made Heather question herself. The two were always trying to tear each others'