There’s a sense of dread that’s gnawing on the surface of her stomach as she stands there, in front of the house she hadn’t seen for over six years. The house’s still big and barren, looking so gloomy that it catches the beaming rays of the sun and hides it away through its edges. Its long walls seem almost endless; the sky rocketing ends like jagged icicles, the same ones she had been an expert in creating out of thin air.

She brushes her long hair past her ears and squints at the blue door in front; her hand clutching the iron bar of her large suitcase so harshly she lost sense of the blood circulation there. Her heart’s beating so loudly inside of her chest, the beats coming out of their confinement like angry rocks. Her breathing’s languid; held in tatters; and her face morphed into an expression of fake calm, as nothing within her is feeling the calm that she’s trying to display across her face. Her long endless legs feel jittery through her tight jeans and she has a deep thought of turning around and running away, escaping into a world that would ease the shattered wreckage that’s taken riddance within her. However, she knows that’s not the right thing to do. She has just got out of the hell disguised as school after six years of absolute torture, and unless she has other places to go aside the gloomy hurricane that is her home; she would have. 

She has spent so many months outside her home that she no longer recognizes it as a figure of warmth; not like she has ever did that to begin with. It’s so whitely dressed with paint and glamour that it looks like a figure of a design in a home page magazine. There’s not a feeling of tender heat or arbitrary coldness. There’s just the wall tall fence of the surrounding area, securing it behind it safely.  The house always used to give her tenacious anxiety, and the nervousness that occupied the residents of the house made her feelings come out badly, too. There’s an upright circulation of tuned feelings that are roaring inside of her, begging to be released; but the only thing truly required of her to do is take a step forward, not succumb to the darkness within.

She takes the spare key under a small hole in the wall to the left and begins to open the door, reluctance in her heavy gestures. Her head’s buzzing with all kind of imaginations as to what will happen once she meets the people who she lost contact with for a long time, and feeling dizzy that everything she really desires to happen will not end up happening. She slowly opens the door, the squeaking voice it releases as it spreads intensifies the anxiousness in her soul.

She takes a few steps onwards, closes the door behind her and slowly, not to elicit any sounds, takes off her old and tattered converse shoes which she had had for two years now. She bends down and puts the shoes in their respectful place, wondering if she should take any of the home shoes put to the side, but thinking that she might cause a problem and thinks otherwise. She straightens up and pokes her socks-clad feet against the cold floor of the marble beneath her. She lifts her head up and her eyes meet with a pair of cold, coffee brown eyes.

“You’re here early.” The woman with those pair of eyes says non-committedly, her voice devoid of any warmth and emotions. Mindee’s own eyes widen just a fraction, surprised at having not sensed her step-mother earlier, and forced down a gulp. 

Her step mother is a young woman in her early forties. She still has her youthful beauty and her eyes still send an abundance of shivers down Mindee’s spine whenever they meet, accidentally or not. She’s got short, pristine hair that perfectly aligns with her shoulder blades. Her lips are swollen from too many plastic surgeries but she still manages to coat them with dark red and making them look luscious and plump. She has her arms crossed on her chest in defiance for whatever reason, and Mindee doesn’t miss the displeasure in her eyes.

She hadn’t met this woman, her step-mother, for over six years and she still manages to look the same after all of this time. She’s still harboring a look in her eyes that makes Mindee feel like she’s worth less than the gum under her shoes, and Mindee doesn’t even blame her. She is the result of her husband’s infidelity after all. 

Mindee ceases to look scared from this woman, because she’s no longer the fourteen years old gullible girl that she used to be anymore. She cools her face into a perfectly blank expression; the usual rattles that encompasses her body when she’s in her presence fading away into the numbness behind her bravery. 

“Yes,” Mindee says softly. “The way to the airport took less time than expected.”

“Is that everything you have?” Her stepmom squints at her luggage, the big suitcase that she has been dragging in the road for over half an hour now. Mindee knows where that question has come from. When she left the house six years ago; she had taken stuff worth much more than one bag. But she’s a grown lady now, in her twenties. Most of her stuff has been thrown away because her body outgrew them. She only had things that fit her mature body now. Mindee doesn’t understand why that’s a hard concept to understand.

She shrugs in response. “Yes.”

“We changed your room, y’know. We made it into my studio,” her stop mom gauges her reaction with her wide, intelligent eyes, and when she sees nothing reflecting Mindee’s expressionless eyes, she continues with a huff. “You’ve been gone for a long time, as you can tell. We kind of moved on with our lives.”

“Where will I stay?” Mindee asks. She doesn’t want to admit that the statement broke something in her already dismantled soul, especially since she knows they’ve already moved on with their lives when she was still living with them, so she shouldn’t be surprised that they took the chance at removing her stuff as soon as she was gone.

Her step-mother stares at her as if she hadn’t wanted to think of the possibility she’d stay with them anywhere else, let alone having to partake in it, and it sends a silent bang through the girl’s heart, knowing that even after so many years, she’s still so unwanted. 

“Well, we emptied the attic for you,” Her step mothers gives her another one of her sharp looks, seeing if they would elicit a bad reaction out of her like it used to do six years ago. Mindee stays coldly still, eyeing her with un-thwarted attention; eyes resembling two cold-blooded robotically generated eyes. The woman’s a bit surprised that none of Mindee’s usual fury due to her sparse and knife-sharp personality reappear. “We hadn’t decorated it yet since your notice to come back has come so soon and took us by surprise. But we left you a sleeping bag there for the meantime.”

Mindee truly has nothing to say. What has she expected? A room full with glittering new stuff? That was like asking for the impossible, even more knowing that she’s living in her step-mother’s house. However, she didn’t expect an actual sleeping bag to be given to her. The le