When I woke up the next morning I had almost forgotten everything that had happened.
The feeling of the hot summer sun filtering through the blinds, casting light and shadow on my sleeping form was enough to make me forget my own name. I clenched my eyelids closer together before quickly prying them apart to look at the alarm clock sitting on my bedside table.

12:00 in flashing red lights. I must have forgotten to set it up last night, who knows what time it was? The intensity of the sun outside made me believe that it was closer to midday than the early hours of the morning, which meant that I had slept for about sixteen hours.

Is this what being a teenager is like? If my research on my brother is correct, then yes.

I swear, when Leon was round fifteen, all he could do was sleep. And if you tried to wake him up for whatever reason he would pelt the objects close to him at you. Which were mostly empty Diet Coke cans or the odd ash tray.
Thankfully, only the most skilled could have an aim so good they could hit someone when they weren't looking and when they were half-asleep.

I groaned, not wanting to get up, but knowing that I had to. I tossed back my navy blue bedspread and got up quickly. The hardwood floor was cold against my bare feet, and I walked to my newly set up closet to find a pair of socks.

I cursed at myself for forgetting where the bathroom was, and I spent a good ten minutes wandering around the halls of my new home in my sky blue flannel pajamas looking for it. Finding a towel and gathering up my clothes for the day I sighed deeply and closed the bathroom door behind me.

I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Did this look like the face of a girl almost fifteen? To my Aunt I still looked like a child, complete with big, wide eyes and a naivete that was reserved only for babies and puppies. But my friends in Maine all told me that I'd gotten grown up the fastest. That I'd gotten pretty. Worse, that I'd gotten sexy. Disgusting stuff-right?

I poked and prodded at the acne on my chin and around my nose. Whenever I pointed it out Evelyn would be quick to say "Don't worry about it!" or "Everybody gets it at your age, it will fade in time!"

I wasn't as worried as she thought I was. What I was more scared of was the unruly-ness of my eyebrows, and the braces that seemed to take all of the attention on my face. They were obnoxiously shiny, with pink and yellow elastic bands in them. But, on the brightside I got them off in six months.

As I turned to twist the taps of the shower, out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn I saw a flash of a person. Just for a split-second someone was looking at me through the reflection of my bathroom mirror. I jumped and goosebumps raised on my arms. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

It was most likely nothing. People have experiences like this all the time right? They see things that aren't really there, and they make themselves crazy because of it. Well, I'm not crazy and there was no one in my mirror.

I turned the taps in the shower and felt the hot steam start to billow around my face. I took that as my cue to step in and start lathering anti-dandruff shampoo into my thick brown hair.

I hopped down the stairs to hopefully meet someone in the lounge. I hadn't seen anyone this morning, if you didn't count the strange apparition in the mirror.

I was usually woken up in the mornings by a loud bashing on my door. Maybe a broom handle or a bucket or something else hard enough to wake a sleeping teenager. It was weird, I caught a glimpse of the time on a clock on the wall as I walked past and I saw that it was nearly ten AM. I was never permitted to sleep in that late. Maybe it was a perk of losing nearly everyone important to you in your life. People aren't so hard on you.

My outfit was simple, a green tank-top and jean shorts, my hair was out and wild, as curly as I could make it. My feet were bare as I nearly almost ran down the steps. But I was stopped abruptly when I saw a woman I didn't know talking to my Aunt at the kitchen table.

"Vallie!" She called out. Lifting up an arm in a friendly wave. She never called me Vallie.

I walked over to the two women and eyed the blonde nervously. Her hair was piled on her head and impeccably styled. Her old hands were folded politely in her lap with the fingernails painted a dusty rose colour. Everything about her was so lovely, so why was she glaring?

"This is Constance, she lives next door." Evelyn went on "She just came over to drop off some cupcakes and welcome us to the neighbourhood!" She gestured to a plate of four vanilla cupcakes with baby pink frosting, decorated with heart shaped sprinkles.

"Constance, this is my daughter Valentina." She said, her plastic smile not faltering. I felt my stomach lurch. Why would she say something like that?

I swallowed my feelings and managed to utter out a simple "Hi." Towards the woman who seemed to be taking her attention away from my hair, and focusing it on the heart shaped locket around my neck. I stood there for a few seconds, and the conversation picked back up, about where I was being sent to school and when, and where on earth Leon was, why couldn't that boy stick around at least sometimes? At least to clean up.

I left, turning on my heels and walking back up the creaking steps to my room, where sat down on my bed and searched through my messenger bag for my diary.

I flipped through my old entries. Reading over the parts near the beginning, from before Fran died. I hated myself back then, even more than I do now. My entries used to be full of calorie counting, messy handwriting and self loathing paragraphs talking about how much I despised my thighs, hated my stomach and reviled my upper arms.

After Fran, that all went away. All of the anger at myself left and made me angry at the world. I wouldn't sit in my room and cry and write messy pages in my journal anymore, I would just sit.

I hadn't been the same in so long. And I knew everybody could tell.

Of course they could tell. They just didn't care.

I let tears sting my cheeks for the first time in forever without trying like hell to hold them back. But Leon was gone, and Evelyn was downstairs with Constance, so nobody would be able to see my one allowed moment of weakness.

My silent tears turned into big, loud sobs and were I wearing makeup it would no doubt be smeared beyond all recognition.
My arms were wrapped around my torso tight, not to comfort, but to somehow hold myself together.

Hard, fat raindrops fell from my eyes and onto the notebook paper in my lap, smearing the ink from my fountain pen.

I looked up from my diary, reading the words scrawled so ugly across the page, to my doorway.

I was shocked to see someone standing there. The person from the mirror.

He looked shocked. Maybe not shocked, more like a mixture of scared and concerned. I didn't say anything, but my face flushed a deep red at seeing somebody see me like this. Let alone a stranger.

His mouth was open, but only to quickly say "Sorry."

After that he left so quick it was almost like he disappeared and I was left by myself, confused and crying all alone in a house with a lying aunt, a suspicious neighbour and a boy who came and left so quick he could have been a ghost.