Michele woke up grinning ear to ear. It was an hour earlier than her usual waking up point but she had energy. The noise of her family hustling downstairs was a sign. It was a sign that her plan ran its course over night. There was a problem though, she didn't hear scolding or complaining; these sounds were of labored grunts. Michele moused down the stairs to fully gain in the contexts of the situation.
Her dad was barefoot on a ladder as he pins on a banner. A huge pink banner saying "Michele's 12th birthday", with "birthday" having a lowercased first letter. It did not take amazing deduction skills for her to recognize it as the same one from yesterday in an insight. This made Michele wiggle her brow. He does not share a glance with her and focuses on his task. He does, however, take time to talk.
"Good! You're up early. Help your mother put together the goodie bags."
An ersatz of the day before so it seems, Michele lowly chortles at the joke. "Oh I get it. So how's that clock holding up?"
The father pauses with a hammer in mid-swing. At last he looks her way with a big frown. It took Michele no time to rush him on his way to the precious, expensive grandfather clock. And at a good time too, at 8:57. In three minutes the broken mechanical bird will reveal itself to Mr. Webster. He knew his wife would find it unacceptable to manually peel back the doors by hand to see it ahead of the stroke of 9:00. Michele counted back the dying seconds until the next hour while her dad stood impatient. When the bell tolled, he flies out flapping his wings at full vitality. The head pointed forward with his beak opening and closing at them. Her mom must have fixed it, Michele thought. Her will to not be afraid dangles by a weak thread.
Like a teenage boy, Michele relaxes in her room shirtless. Her body was more like a little boy, and just as short. The ribcage was sunken in above her small belly. She was stringy like Tommy but he had an excuse as a child his age. Her body was still underdeveloped even at her twelfth birthday, her second twelfth birthday, it felt. Michele folds her pants down to her ankles with her body at the window. She yanks the string and the blinds fall over the pane to cover it. The horizontal slits in between the white folds would only display extremely small portions of her naked flesh. Boswell houses were not that far apart, at least not in this neck of the neighborhood.
Footsteps beat the stairs and wavered the floor of her bedroom. Michele flapped her arms around, then made a still stop in motion until the sound dies out. She took the opportunity to try on her costume, the princess garment with the comment "mishel has a big but" on the heart. The bold stripe of black her mom canceled it out with remained. There must have been a way for her to wash it out, especially if it was in washable marker. To further ruin it, Michele accidentally rips it at the armpits.
"No!" She crows. Quickly she pulls it off to study the tear, panting in silent terror. Small white hairs fringed it, any more pulling can stretch it down to the hip area. Michele once again was standing in her underwear. Her thin legs were unevenly bending out of them and out of her cloudy socks. They straighten and almost unhinge when the door growls.
Boswell! France! Do a dance! Look at Michele in her underpants!
Tommy chanted the song he created in a few seconds prior. The people he brought upstairs shadowed behind him, all her friends. A couple of them joined in the song with their eyes lightened up. These eyes followed her skin with every roll. Michele pounced upon her bed and planted her entire body under the blanket. She croaked a shaky scream at Tommy as she turns red under the freckles of her shoulders. What hurt her the most was hearing Mohammad sighing, if he had laughed instead it would have indicated something more positive. He sounded disappointed as if he expected more from Michele. She jumped to the conclusion that he thought she was stupid, mostly for not locking her door. It was insane to think Tommy would give time away to invite all her friends over at her junior high school to their house for such a dirty joke.
Even though the last thing she wanted to do was face her friends today, her being goes against those wishes. Michele dressed herself up in overalls, something that will take effort to remove in case she has to again. In the process, the consequences should come to mind. She was lucky that she had clothes on before being dragged downstairs by an invisible force. One by one her legs move to the rhythm of a choppy song, on their way to the kitchen. There she ran into her mother who was holding the cake.
She places it into Michele's unwillingly open hands and says, "take this out now, be careful with it."
Why was her daughter trembling?, the parent thought. Like a robot Michele found herself trapped in more unwanted movement. The cake was held at a distance and her feet shuffled to the living room. She had the thought she was blessed with a second chance to fix her abysmal previous birthday. When Tommy pulls out his hands, she will hop over it. That's all, just hop over it.
Her ankle was lightly tugged and her face crashed down on the cake. It wasn't that her mind didn't react fast enough, something weighted her down. There is some ultra force trapping her in a cycle on one of the worst days of her life. Any other twelve year old would love reliving their birthday over again.
#
Later, the ultra force marionettes her again. It turns her body into a contemporary dancer with a bent back and wild limbs. A few minutes playing with the computer turned into a psychotic trip to the bathroom. Even the minor moments of the day recycled; Michele was made to brush her teeth. Her fingers became spidery over the faucet wheels to trigger the running water. A rush of strength made her shoot out a beam of toothpaste onto to the mirror. It sticks to it like a slug and landed on the reflection of one of her eyes. The ghost manipulated his play like a controlling director but he does not let her wipe the mirror down. The paste falls and her eye was shown again, this time with horror sparkling in the ring of hazel.
She finds herself sitting on the edge of her bed. Paste water dribbling at the corner of her mouth, on her pajamas, on the bed. The toothbrush remained sticking out of her fist in one hand, a plastic cup in the other. Michele's hair stood on end and her eyes never stopped bulging. If this wasn't all out of her control she would never sleep. The ghost put her to bed at midnight, the same exact time she got sleep after vandalizing the cuckoo clock. Before that realization can hit her like a brick, she blacks out.
The morning she got up was a frustrating one. Her mom went insane with the decorating this time around. Michele's bedroom was dressed with frilly curtains and silly wall decor. This had to stop, she thinks. When her mom came in she welcomed her with a pout.
"Happy birthday," she all but sang.
Michele's head spun in light of those words. She stands up from her bed with great ease, like her body had a lot of weight trimmed off. Her mother looked beautiful today, it could have been the bright smile. The apples of her cheeks were touched up nicely with youthful makeup. It was just a birthday, Michele thinks, why was she dolled up?
"Ma! Stop! I don't want another birthday party, I don't want to turn twelve again!" Michele hollers; her voice screechy.
Her mother furrows her brow, puzzling. Her teeth were bare in the broad smile. She says through chuckles, "you don't have to worry about turning twelve in a long time, honey."
Without any wait, Michele jumps around for a mirror. It took her a while to discover one nailed to the back of her door like a wall scroll. The mirror had stickers ruining it, ones of babies' television shows from the eighties. None of the shows Tommy watched.