Whatever Remains, T. Richardosn [brene brown rising strong TXT] 📗

thorns scratched against my arms again drawing more blood then a needle but it looked like it was stray cloth in the dress so no one seemed to notice. I felt a soft hand on my shoulder. I turned around hastily.
She was there with sad and depressed eyes. “I’m sorry.” She said. I never was

angry at her, why was she apologizing?
“It’s fine.” I answered still startled by my own voice. Her eyes widened.
“Did you just talk to me?” she asked. She dropped her book bag on the ground now. “Oh my goodness! You’re so pretty today! And you’ve just talked to me!” She had her arms on my shoulders jumping up and down. “How’d you get that fixed? Now we can talk on the phone, we can help you out with murder thing; maybe you can ever convince Glytherin to be my partner!” She was ecstatic now. Glytherin and I were supposed to help each other though. I didn’t know what he was but I would never be able to get him not to be my partner. I guess I just couldn’t tell her about it then.
“I gotta get home and get dressed Amanda, I’ll see you at school later.”
“Where have you been?” she asked now. I hesitated and began walking in the other direction.
“I was sick while going off somewhere for a few days.” That was my answer, and that was it. I had nothing else to say now.

I rang the doorbell of the large apartment my step-mother, my dad, me and my step-brother lived in. To most kids, they hated their step-family, but I loved them as much as I loved my real ones. Someone peeked through the looking glass but couldn’t catch sight of me.
“Who is it?” Shane asked. “If it’s one of the cheerleaders from school, my step-dad is a cop! You can’t bully me anymore!” I looked awkwardly through. I don’t resemble any of the cheerleaders at all, not even my ensemble was the look that a cheerleader might wear in public. He looked as if he were just leaving for school.
“It’s me.” I said. He stepped back from the door. I forgot he couldn’t recognize my voice as much as I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Shane. It’s me, Orphelia.” I heard a stumble next to the door.
“That is not the face of my stepsister, and plus, she can’t talk, whoever is pulling this prank is an idiot.”
“Open the door Shane!” I yelled. He slowly opened it looking at my face closer. Through the looking glass, things must’ve looked different. He opened it wider and stared directly at me.
“You look different.” He said. I looked different? I felt the same. I ran to the mirror in the bathroom as Shane followed me. “How the heck are you talking?!” he asked. I shook my head. I looked at my facial features in the mirror. Dark brown color, my skin was now a darker shade of brown, showing my features that I wasn’t Hispanic, but mixed. I gasped. I now saw that my eyes were light brown instead of dull. I could’ve been less ghostly if it weren’t for that princess stealing things from me; as my face. My back shot out a large pain. I ached backwards and fell to the floor.
“Orphelia, are you ok?” Shane asked. I felt my back and the pressure that went into it like a knife digging in. I hissed through my teeth. I ignored Shane. “Are you still going to school?” he asked. I ignored again but stood up and heaved my back into the wall and the sudden pain stopped. I breathed heavily putting my hands into my recklessly curly hair.
“Yes.”

I ran into my room and rushed inside stealing a pair of pants and a shirt with a tie over it. I put in a pair of my mother’s earrings and opened a book of hers that I made sure was always on my dresser. It was a book of her poems. I noticed that so far, I memorized two. Orphelia’s Almighty Prince

and Liar Liar Pants on Fire.

I admired all of her poems that she read to me out of her book. I looked at another one. I had my mind set up to memorize each and every one of them until I reached July when summer would approach. I turned a page to a random one in the book folding it in and immediately with a dog ear to show that I had already come across it.

Sometimes we are missed,
It is destined to be.
We put are lives at risk,
This seems appropriate to me.
I love you now,
When I’d loathed you then,
That’s why I write this, right here in pen.

This particular poem didn’t have a name, only this one hadn’t and I knew this because I already remember it. My mother wrote this for my father deliberately before the day she died. I think she knew.
I placed the book down as I headed out with Shane holding on to his arm to make him come with me instead of stuttering. While walking in the street, he looked at me fully. Even though Shane was younger than me, he was taller. He was nearly six feet and it was unbelievable but I was five eight. I was tall too.
“What’s going on Orphelia? You’ve been gone for nearly five days; you can talk and hear, you look different, what did you do over the nights? Get yourself done? Did you freaking die your hair? That’s unbelievable. How could you do this to yourself, let’s hope you didn’t get plastic surgery, and then let me talk about the contacts, what up with those? And how about the face? It’s the middle of winter! There’s no way someone gets a tan like that in the winter! Unless, you spent some time at the tanning booth, your dad will be so angry!” I shut him up.
“I don’t know what’s going on!” I yelled. “Please just calm down now.” He didn’t talk another word on the way there but kept uncomfortably staring at me as if we weren’t brother or sister. As we reached school though, I parted from him as I saw the gates locking. “NO!” I yelled. I ran for my life as a teacher stopped and stared surprised from the wavering voice coming out of me.
“Orphelia?” she asked. I went through the gate at once beckoning for Shane to come in after. “Orphelia, I thought you’d gone mute and deaf.” I nodded and smiled running to my first class. I marched up the stairs and the thundering sounds startled some people walking through the stair well. I went into my first class and saw my guidance counselor looking at me. She waved.
“Hi.” I said. Her eyes widened as I opened the door to my classroom. I took a seat next to Cory: Rudolph. He sat a little farther from me. The teacher wrote on the board. As soon as she was finished writing, I read it as the class turned to look at me. They looked at everything that had brightened on me and then back at the board. It had said, "At twelve, the principal would like to talk to you about the murder investigation."
I nodded. What were they going to do if I didn’t find any proof that I hadn’t done it? Where they going to let those snobby rich jerks sue me? This I could not let happen. There was always silence between me and my teachers. Rudolph raised his hand now.
“How is she going to do anything if she can’t hear?” he asked. I shook my head.
“I can hear, Cory.” I said to him.
“Orphelia?” the teacher asked. “Is that really you?” I nodded at her feeling kind of lonely here. It was me.

It was always me. I was the same person I was before but I could talk and hear. What was the problem? The class still stared at me murmuring. “It’s good news,” she said. “That you can hear and talk and all. You must be very elated.”
I nodded. It was true, I was happier than anything---anyone else in the world, more than anything else ever

in the world.
The teacher nodded.
When twelve o’clock came around, it was already the beginning of lunch; I guess those teachers just didn’t like me to be healthy. What more could I expect? I went over to the principal’s office again. I was prepared to blurt out everything. I came into the room as Matthew’s parents were staring at me wonderingly.
“This is the wrong child, do you perhaps have a sister?” his mother asked. I shook my head.
“This is me, Orphelia.” I said.
The principal looked at me and smiled. “Good thing you have some of your things back, everyone’s been telling me about it. If you couldn’t hear or talk, I’d probably die of frustration.” I didn’t smile at him at all, not even curve my lips, it was a perfect straight line, nearly the opposite of what he looked like. The slight smile crept away from his face. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“Anyway,” he began. “Matthew’s having a funeral, tonight actually, at six thirty and you must attend because people believe the people who commit the crime, have to pay the time, but since we don’t know that you did it, you have to show up and pay some other way.”
“I didn’t do it though, I object.”
“Listen,” he said calmly. “We received a tape for the few days you weren’t home, and it was a recording from the cameras outside of the school, let’s look at it.” He took a short remote from his desk and pushed a flat red button, which I indicate was the ON one. The TV first flashed a couple of times trying to rotate the recording inside, and suddenly, the appearance and sound was efficiently clearer.
I saw Matthew running after me while I wore my rag tag dress and I was holding a liquid in my hand. I heard little mutters from him that weren’t clear enough to point out. “The apology,” the principal said. The next moment in the video, I threw the drink in my hand in his face and threw the cup on the floor. The principal stopped the tape for a moment and looked at me.
Matthew hadn’t been apologizing. He pressed play again, what was the dramatic pause for