February 11, 2011

God, nothing is getting better. James keeps coming home drunk. I hate having to live with him every other week. It is absolute hell. He just leaves his crap around for me to pick up, and he doesn't even drive me to school, so I have to walk the thirteen frickin' blocks. I'm so sick of school, I missed one freaking day and I have three tests to make up. My grades are in the dumpster cuz I have work. I found another job, and I hate it just as much, but its better pay. I work everyday right after school until 9 at the earliest. Then I have to get up at 3 to do my homework cuz I am too tired by the time I get home, and I'm usually still tired and fall right back asleep. Marissa is trying to act all innocent, like she didn't start telling everyone I am a slut and supposedly she has "proof" and most of my friends have sided with her and those that haven't are too wrapped up in their own troubles, it's like I have no one to turn to. I can't go to mom because she is stressed enough. I feel like I am drowning, and I can't get to the surface for air. At this point it might just be easier to just let everything pull me down and…crap, James is back. Gotta go.

Brenna threw the cover closed and shoved it under her mattress just as her door slammed open.

"Whatcha doin', babe?" James' speech was slurred, and he smelled like cigarette smoke. His normally tidy clothes were dirty and wrinkled. He had been at the bars.

"Nothing, and I told you not to call me that." Brenna snapped.

James stepped farther into the room, his hands shaking slightly and his feet dragging on the carpet. "Whadif I wantoo?" The harsh stench of alcohol was on his breath.

"I don't care what you want. Leave me alone." Brenna backed up from her father, rolled over the bed and stood on the other side.

"Fine, brat. Stay in this hellhole for all I care." James' face lit with anger, and he clumsily left the room, knocked over her rocking chair. A delusional snicker echoed through Brenna's room as he shut her door. Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she angrily wiped them away and stumbled to her drawing desk. She sat down in the hard chair, but shot back up when a flare of pain shot up her back. Growling and grumbling, she grabbed her sketchbook and padded to the window seat, knocking down a few pillows to make room. She sat down, but something hard poked her leg from beneath a particularly large pillow. She balanced her sketchbook on her lap, and tugged the object out from under her.

A wave of relief and confusion washed over her. Her old leather journal sat in her hand, slightly wrinkly from water damage around the edges, but nearly the same as she had last seen it. A rumpled white corner of paper poked out from the cover page, and she delicately slid it out. Gentle, flowing handwriting covered the small, torn paper.

I hope you didn't throw this away on purpose. I only saw the first page, but just that one page was worth returning. You are very talented.

There was no signature. Brenna looked at the note skeptically, reading over it again. What the hell? She thought. She had purposefully thrown the book that now sat in her hands away nearly a week ago, frustrated with her art and just wanting to hurt something. She had regretted it that night, when she had realized she had thrown away her only outlet. But she had quickly found another notebook and started filling its pages with her anger and hurt.

She wondered who could have found it. She had thrown it down a sewer drain she had passed on the walk home from school. Could it have gotten out to the river and someone found it there? But the water damage to it was only minimal, not like it would have been if it had been in the river. Hmmmm, she pondered as she flipped open the cover and flitted through the pages. Immature poems, blurred paintings, and rough sketches filled the yellowed pages. It had taken her barely a month to fill half of the notebook with artistic depictions of her own raging feelings. The last half had been reserved for an actual journal, though she had barely written anything, finding it easier to release her feelings with artwork.

That has to change, she barked to herself. No one appreciated her art. Any time she would come home with a new sketch in her journal, she was ignored by her mother, and she didn't dare show James. But she was starving for attention, and she wasn't getting it. No one understood; No one cared.

Until now, she thought. A small thrill of pride clutched her heart when she read over the note again.

I only saw the first page, but just that one was worth returning. She hastily flipped to the first page.

A crying sprite sat on an imaginary river bank, her knees tucked under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs. It was just a sketch she had done in pen one night after James had yelled at her. It was nothing she was particularly proud of, but obviously someone found it beautiful. She unconsciously smiled, rubbing a thumb over the note. She shifted slightly and winced. She had been sitting too long. She hopped up, and scrambled around for some tape. Finally finding some, she delicately taped the note at the top of her mirror on the back of the door. She stared at it proudly. A sudden thought came to her, and she found a paper and pencil and quickly scribbled a note of her own.

Taking a deep breath, she silently opened her door and let her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. She heard snoring coming from the master bedroom, the door was thankfully closed. Now more confident that she wouldn't run into her father, she padded to the back door and opened it, then stepped out onto the balcony.

The only way someone could have gotten her book to her would have been by the rooftops. There was no way that a stranger could have gotten into her apartment through the front door, and she usually left her window open, providing a way for someone to set something on her windowsill. She glanced at her window from outside. There was a six foot gap from the railing of the deck and the edge of her window. Whoever it had been was acrobatic and very strong. She shook her head, still only half believing that a human had returned her book. She grabbed a loose stone from the small, wimpy patch of dirt in the box they called a garden. She pulled out the note she had written and placed it on the edge of the railing, where no one would see it unless they were trying to get to her window again. Satisfied that the note was secure, she rubbed her arms and walked back inside.