notes | this is for the Back To School contest '13 / 1A; hope you like this though it's sort of short; please leave a review, :)

prompts: biological fathers, cranberry muffins, & "you push away everybody close to you"

the world that's waiting for you

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It starts with a storm.

She's only nine years old at the time but Massie sometimes wishes that she could pretend that she was younger; back when she was younger and when everything was much simpler, in which she could sometimes just pretend that the world was a safe ball, and nobody was going to infiltrate her bubble, filling it with the notions of spilling blood and screams.

Shadows and reflections mix together in a shallow pool of water, and then the clock trembles, letting out the haunting melody of a tick tock, tick tock and in reality, time does screw everybody. Her aunt has signed up for martial arts classes for years — self defense is always of the utmost priority especially for a small girl of such a young age, who'll be heading off to college in no time. I don't want to go, I don't want to go, she repeats to herself, chanting the words over and over again as though they are everything that she can hold onto but then Aunt Charlotte makes a snide remark about Massie's lumpy waist and full thighs, and she pushes herself off the bed because this is the only way that she can be worth it. Before the incident, her sister had been worth it.

Massie had a sister — her name was Cassidy. All it took was a locked door, trembling sobs dripping into cold carpets, broken glass, and at the end of the day there was a note addressed to her. Tears had smudged out the words but Massie still kept it in her first drawer. It was all that she had left to hold onto.

Whenever she sits upon that piano bench — the cold, hard one that always makes her back hurt without the proper posture her Chinese etiquette teacher had taught her, she can see Cassidy playing the piano. Playing the piano had always been Cassidy's thing. Making friends and being popular had always been Cassidy's thing. And when Cassidy wasn't there to do her thing anymore, Massie had to step in, whether she liked it or not.

She never was quite, or ever will quiet be as good as Cassidy was.

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Sometimes, on Saturdays, she finds herself not wanting to move away from the relaxation.

A warm breeze blows through the June air, turning the ambiance, the overall environment — Massie should be proud of herself for remembering the vocabulary word — into one more humid; leaves are already changing their colors and the light blue sky threatens to rain down quickly. Most of the other children are playing in the jungle gyms, sharing sips of fifth grade graduation's day lemonade and inhaling the refreshing scent of freedom; it's not much, but with the sun blazing down and the noisy sound of trucks and other construction vehicles across the street, it's all children could ask for. They spend their days, spinning the summer vacations away in the playgrounds, never once understanding the greater meaning of life and wasting time.

The days move on and suddenly middle school starts and everybody's telling her that this is preparation for high school and then some people are telling her that she's just supposed to be having THE TIME OF OUR LIVES they all say, playing the cheesy music as she walks through the hallways but personally, Massie's just counting down the days until she moves to Octavian Country Day — it gives her a reason to become the person she was meant to be.

Or something like that; it's something new and exciting, and perhaps she thinks back on that time period time and time again and realizes that perhaps she might have been slightly obsessive but it was new and a leniency period must be given.

Middle school passes by in a blur, but some of the most significant memories stand out, while others are concealed under layers of secrets and ohsoscandalous gossip which usually tends to be about how matchmaking goes awry between teachers and rebellious wild girls. Massie walks home alone, holding tightly onto his backpack and angrily rips apart the KICK ME sign, plastered to her violet fingernails, chipped and marred with mud stains.

Perhaps the Pretty Committee will soon enough become her true friends, but they are not yet anything to her; her fingers fly madly across the keyboard, blue nails chipped and repainted over several times, cut too deep as blood flows out onto taut strings of a violin, perhaps tight enough to break at any moment and her bow is flying quickly, transitioning positions and she wonders what would happen if she kept on playing forever, if one day the bow would collapse. There's always something deeper behind that question; what if she would have collapse, but she's only eleven. She tries not to think of her future.

The sky is gray — Massie declares it very fitting that the sky is not a colorful scheme of brightness, because this is the day that she has been dreading for years to come; the Ahnnabees call her mentally unstable for deserting their so called clique, but they are the ones who are mad, not knowing what will be happening soon. The sun casts a final shadow of darkness, its luminescence forever lost into the starry expanse of doubt.

Massie was born an ugly duckling, and the mother of her wished for the transformation to occur almost instantaneously. After all, they were connected by blood, but there was no point in having a daughter whose beauty was not of something to brag about to the neighbours, with their violet, fuschia, and wisteria children, while all she had was a simple gray one.

She tries to believe that the shadow left behind slumped onto the velvet linings, seeping through the pores of the bruised material and finally absorbed by the bookcase of Forbes and Capitol Weekly, shades of brilliant blacks and whites turned into a dull remembrance; because, if he is nonexistent, then he'll be easier to forget, but in a way, he'll never be completely gone. The holes left behind expand, swallowing in broken shards of empty hearts and devil's workshops all the same, not pausing, not breathing as the body is finally consumed, and she has let go.

In a way, everything has changed. She is walking through the midst of discomfort and horror —sometimes, Massie can still hear voices in her head. Even though she's escaped everything, escaped Prebysterian, escaped the children that had taunted and mocked her, they still follow her throughout her lives, as if the world wants her to always remember than no matter how many challenges she's overcome, she's still an ugly duckling.

In a small town like this, Massie thinks to herself. It's important to know that you have a reputation.

It starts with the bruises, if she's really certain about everything; she should have seen things like this coming up, the fact that her mother, Kendra Block, was the only woman in that sort of age group, living even in a city like Westchester, who cared more about Botox and bragging about how she had been a model for all of these brands more than taking care of her own daughter, or anything that normal parents would have done. Massie should have seen it coming.

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Massie Block, please come down to the front office. Massie Block, please come down to the front office.

She is a young, pretty thing with a wreath of carefully picked roses around her equally rosy red neck, mindlessly doodling sparkles in the edge of her trignometry notebook when the announcement is made —everybody looks at her. It is Valentine's Day, or for those unfortunate souls who do not seem to feel the least bit unfortunate, Single's Awareness Day. Massie is one of those children that you call seemingly perfect.

There is no explanation for why she should be called down to the office. People like her best friend, Derrick Harrington, Jr. , would have strolled casually out of the classroom, not even bothering to pick up their stuff, because they had the confidence to know that they would be back in class before the hour would end, but Massie is not one of those people. I'll be back, she murmurs, beneath her breath, but the teacher only shoves Massie's materials towards her, as if she's been accepting her star student, the epitome of academic excellence to mess up some time or another (after all, nobody's really perfect). Walking through the empty halls brings a sense of loneliness to her otherwise enthralling life —there are posters, with quotes and poems that she hasn't really ever seen before.

For some unknown reason, unknown to most but her closest friends, she feels faint all of a sudden when she nears the front office, because she hasn't seen this person, her father, at least in seven years, or maybe it was eight, but Massie remembers all the same all the tears that her mother had shed when he had walked out on them, leaving nothing but a few suitcases and unlimited bank accounts, yet money couldn't really mend broken hearts. Her father looks at her with this strange look in his eyes as if he's almost sorry for her, and that's probably when she starts to be worrying because there's no reason on earth why her father should ever even know which middle school she goes to anymore; even if he's her biological father, he's done nothing to support the family besides supplying monthly tuition and shopping fees.

William, she murmurs – because she can't bother to call him father – what's wrong?

Her fath — William says slowly, It's your mother. She's in the hospital. And the doctor says that she has cancer and Massie just thinks about how her television shows; how this was happening to some of them, and all of the vampires could just switch off their humanity? She wants to do that. She wants to be a vampire. She wants to feel numb.

And Massie Block always gets what she wants.

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She keeps of the fake facade of being the school's biggest bitch and for a while Massie's quite sure that nobody suspects a thing — her grades are kept up, and her fake smiles are even better than her real ones and nobody notices except Derrick. He's the only person who sees her for who she truly is, she realizes but that's why she keeps pushing him away.

Nobody should be able to know the truth about her, because then they'd just tell her that "it's going to be okay" and "I'm sorry" but the voices are still there in her head and they won't show up — SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DYING, SHE SHOULD HAVE CANCER INSTEAD OF HER MOTHER.

The notification comes when she's in the middle of the high school dance, resting sore legs and replacing the strappy stilettos with a more comfortable footwear option and munching on a piece of oily pizza, dabbing gently at the exterior with one of the several napkins that are set at the edge of each taple, most dropped carelessly on the floor or tossed in the garbage cans, which quite frankly, tend to reek – especially with the rotten pizza crusts and the smell of sweat and teenage adrenaline.

Massie notices the couples slow dancing, resting their heads perfectly on their partner's shoulders or chests as if this is the dream. She's never been one of those perfect children; one of her friends has disappeared with an alluring boy, who dragged her off to the middle of the dance floor, laughing. Somebody sits down next to her, and she really hopes that it's somebody like Danny Robbins, but it's not and she pinches her bony wrist and pointy collarbones for dreaming something up like that.

Hey, Derrick, Massie says, not really in the mood to talk; instead, looks longingly at the dance floor and then glances away, knowing that nobody's going to ask her. What are you doing here?

It's a valid question, but his chocolate brown eyes look puzzled. You're not really fine, are you? And it's something that she knows that she would be hearing at some point but then the notification comes up on her cellphone and she can't help but run out of the auditorium, the dance floor, ignoring all the stares and Massie smiles in the back of her brain because she's wanted attention for so long, and now she's getting it, but it doesn't feel as good as she thought it would.

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He finds her outside one of the hospital chairs forty minutes later, fingers entwined with the fraying edges of a skirt, a shock blanket loosely thrown around her thin toothin shoulders and she doesn't even look up. A piece of paper is held tightly in her fingertips, in a death grip as she utters the words, Dr. Lively just came out and gave me this bag. It's — it was my mother's wedding ring.

And for a moment, Derrick's left speechless because there really is nothing left to say and Massie's fragile; she's been fragile for a long time, but this is Massie Block at her weakest, and if nobody helps her up from this state, it's always going to be volatile and everything will be changed. Everything already has changed. So, he pulls lightly on her arms and she looks up tears forming in her eyes; he slowly wipes them away and leads her up to the hospital roof.

And their fingers are interlaced on the roof of the hospital — Massie's wearing the same pair of worn pink lace pajamas that she's had since the sixth grade, loose on her bony frame, and her shoulder rests delicately, fitting into the frame of his shoulder, and together they wait for everything to get better.

It ends with the sun shining down.

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