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

like that.” She put her hand on top of my head. “You’re a good girl.” I hated it when she did this. I hated when my family acted as if I were someone a lot different than how they I was. I let out a huge breath that felt like I’ve been trying to get out forever. “Are you still going to ballet practice tomorrow?” she asked. I nodded. What were we even going to do in ballet practice anyway? She was apparently obsessed with it.
“It’s going to be great,” she said. “We are going to stay till ten and it will be all night, and since its Saturday, your dad should be able to let you go right?” I nodded. I gave her a questioned look hoping that she could read it. “I know, I know,” she began, “I’m going crazy about this, I just want my partner to be Mac Dale so badly. There actually three guys from each school. I know Mac Dale will be there, so will Bradley and the third person will be someone else but they are only going to have nine guys, they need the exact same amount of girls.
“Maybe, when we get there, I hope there’ll be the girls choosing partners. Maybe the guys will pick partners, which would stink because we know Mac Dale would not pick me. He absolutely hates me but that’s the only thing I love about him. He’s only playing hard to get. Don’t you wish girls could pick partners?”
I shook my head. What if I picked a guy who absolutely despised me? I picked up a paper from my bag and a pencil in my pocket. I wrote down on it. It said: Why are they forcing guys to do this ballet thing? She searched through her mind like it was Google.
“Well,” she began still looking through her head, “I think it’s because no guys were interested in ballet and we have to do this important recital to actually show that we’re improving and in the dance, there has to be guys, so they selected some in the school system at random.” I nodded. Perfect.
I want the guys to choose, I wrote.
“What if everyone chooses who they want and you and the last guy are just stuck together? I’d rather choose so you don’t feel hurt, that’s why I want to be in control. I don’t want to be hurt.” Amanda was smart, and I didn’t want someone to be stuck with me when he probably wanted to be with another girl.


“Yoga again?” Shane asked sitting himself on the couch watching me stretch. I nodded. “Why do you do yoga anyway?” I shrugged. If Shane hadn’t been my step-brother, he would’ve acted as all the other kids did. But other than that, I guess you could call him nice. “Can I do it with you?” he asked. I was officially annoyed. I turned back at him as I stretched my legs over my head and bent forward.
I mouth, “No”. He gets all upset and goes back to his mother. He was only thirteen anyways; I’ll let him be upset even though he was only two years younger than me.
“I bet you’d like it if I told my mom that you murdered someone. My eyes shot open. I stopped stretching I tilt my head to the side upset. He knew well that I hadn’t done that. He knew that I could never do that. I summoned him to do the yoga with me. He didn’t even know how to do it. He could hardly touch his toes; he couldn’t do it at all. I frowned at him as he stood beside me. “Did you do it?” he asked helplessly. I looked at him angrily as I walked away. “Orphelia, I’m sorry, I’m just not so sure what I can believe, as soon as you left, the guy is dead, I just want a clear explanation.”
I yelled at him on top of my lungs practically hurting myself. “How could you get a bigger explanation from me?! I’m mute! Will you ever remember! After I left was when I left and went straight home!” There was silence. My step-brother looked at me silently and sadly. He looked as if he were about to cry. I covered my mouth.
“You forget so easily,” he says with his voice slowly wavering, “but there’s no voice coming from you throat, there’s nothing.” I stared for a moment blankly. I was so embarrassed but sort of happy that he didn’t even laugh. I was straining my throat but for nothing, nothing at all. I held onto my throat and cleared it. There was an awkward silence between us both.
“I’m sorry.” He said sadly. He’s known me for four years so I was surprised that he had an attachment to me as a real brother would. He began to cry as he walked away. I fell to the ground. I’d wait for my father to come back home but I couldn’t let him see me like this: still living in a fantasy, still thinking I could talk. Stop being a baby! I laughed to myself as tears ran off my cheek. I was crying and laughing at the same time. I ran inside my room.
I tucked myself underneath the sheets. What would I explain to him? Should I write on a piece of paper that a couple wanted to send me off to jail for no reason at all? He’d get so upset and go on a rampage through the school until he told off every person in that school to prove that I hadn’t been lying and it was true. I never had been so tense before. I hardly wanted to move. My feet were sweating, my teeth were chattering, I was starving. To give away all the pain, I stopped all of these functions. My heavy eyelids sweeping over me till they closed. It was done, I was asleep at last. Finally. But nightmares were never better than reality.

My hands again, were sweating under a palm of another. I looked down at that other hand that slowly turned into the palms of leaves. This place’s skies were purple that soon turned gray, the sun turned into a huddle of fierce clouds. Creatures loaded into buildings. Where was the palm in my hands? Why had it turned to leave? Who was this person anyway? I can’t be in this place alone. I had opened my mouth to speak but reminded my self that I couldn’t. I’d be stupid to try. A creature leapt on top of me when I finished thinking. I shrieked. I gasped as the creature’s drool came over my shirt. I just made a noise? Not even a noise but a scream which was much stronger than words! I could speak! I put my hands against the creature’s stomach to get it off of me. Gurgling green acid was spit out from his mouth but quickly missed me by an inch. I put my hands under the creatures squirming body. The leaves that were once a palm turned into a dagger and gutted the creature in the stomach. I pushed the creature off of me and I stood up. I picked up the dagger and it fell easily into my hands and…

I woke up now. How didn’t I finish that story? I wanted it to be finished so badly. It was not much of a nightmare as I killed the thing, whatever that thing was. I was talking; I didn’t have a clue to what it sounded like. It still sounded like a twelve year olds’. I was disappointed. That must’ve been something out of the past. I remembered it all of a sudden. This was a dream I had as a child, when I was eight. Sorrow drowned me once again. The palm was actually my fathers and this was just a pigment of how I wanted my life to be back then. That was not how it was to be right now. Above me, my father came in with his work suit. “How you doing?” he asked. I nodded.
“You’re sweating, what’s wrong?” Had I been dreaming long? Dreams did seem to feel like a minute but could’ve been much longer. I got up from the bed. I took the flyer from out of my pants pocket to show my dad. He looked at it with pure frustration. He sighed deeply and nodded. He looked at it seeing that tomorrow; we’d be picking partners, and a ballet routine.
“Are you going to dance with Amanda?” he asked. I showed him the three boys from three schools part. He nodded.
“I don’t think you should go.” He said. I opened my mouth in surprise. I gave him
a questioned look of, Why not?! He smiled. “It’s so late at night; you wouldn’t have enough sleep for a school day.” I pointed over to the Saturday part. He sighed and gave me the flyer which I had taken irritably. “Isn’t it your birthday tomorrow though?” he asked. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. I have never even dreamed of having such a careless dad. My stepmother drew in quickly.
“What’s up?” she asked. I showed her the flyer. She nodded. “You gonna go?” she asked. I waved a hand at my dad again who had his hand connected to his brief case. He shrugged. “I don’t know, she’s only fifteen.”
“Only fifteen!?” My step-mother yelled. “You can be in this thing before the age of fifteen! You have to be….” She stopped and read the flyer. We all knew that this dance competition was for sixteen and higher but I was practically sixteen. My birthday would come any minute now. That was one of the only reasons my dance teacher even let me in, because I was near the age. All of my friends were older than me because I was a little under age for the grade I was in. Not really, my birthday just came later in the year, in December, and this was the winter dance. I smiled weakly. My father nodded.
“I’ll let you do your thing.” He said, “But make sure the dance is your choice.” Why did the dance have to be the one that I chose? I nodded anyway smiling.


I hear a shriek through the phone. “I can’t wait!” Amanda yells. I snap showing that I’m listening. I’ve spent ten minutes on the phone and walking to the dance studio listening to Mac Dale’s name repeatedly. “Mac Dale has to pick me! I got all made up; my make up is perhaps astonishing. I’m already dressed and all.” I snapped again, but before she spoke again, we met at the corner. She shut her phone fast and ran after me. She put her slender arms around me. She was so bony that it was actually a little frightening. Did she have, what was it called? Anorexia?
We were right around the corner from the dance studio. All of the girls were already dressed. Should I have been too? “Why aren’t you dressed?” Amanda said realizing the dressed girls too. I looked around and covered my mouth. I’d be an outcast. “Go in there!” she yelled. “The boys are using the dressing room and the girls have to be ready before them.” Why were the guys getting dressed? I ran before everyone as the watched me as I ran by.
The sun put a glare to my eyes and I couldn’t see. I ran into the dance studio half blind with the shine still in my eyes and I ran into someone’s flat chest. I fell down silently. A bunch of guys