Flashbacks (2)

 Bridget stepped up to the scaffold.  She couldn’t even think straight.  She didn’t know why she was being executed.  Her head was down and her hair partly covered her face.  Out in the sea of faces before her, she saw Jordan and Kevin.  They didn’t even see her.  She looked farther.  There was her dad.  He was looking at her and laughing.  Fury surged up in her and she threw her hair back and looked him straight in the eyes.  He stopped laughing.  She looked back at her friends.  They were staring at her now in horror.  Then she woke up.

Bridget was slipping backwards, falling, falling.  She blacked out before the stair even hit her.

Jeffrey laughed as watermelon juice dripped down Bridget’s face.  She grinned as much as a mouthful of watermelon would allow.

Bridget opened her eyes.  Some strange lady was looking at her.  She couldn’t turn her head or move her limbs.  Someone asked if she was okay.  She tried to say yes, but it came out in a jumble of nonsense.  She thought that it was funny that it meant no, she was probably not okay.

Bridget picked up the crushed flower and held it in her hand.  She wondered why people would worship beauty but step on blooms just because they happened to be in their path.  It didn’t quite make sense.

Bridget saw Jordan stood in the corner looking as if she were about to cry.  She wondered what on earth was wrong.

Bridget sat on her bed and breathed.  Hard.  She wasn’t going to let herself cry.  And she didn’t.

Bridget stood at the edge of the living room.  “Dad lost his job again.”  She stood there motionless for a moment, then walked silently back to her room and quietly laid down.  She needed sleep.

It wasn’t fair to force feelings to go away, only to have them come back with a vengeance later.

Bridget danced to her favorite song, and sincerely hoped that no one was watching.

Bridget twirled in front of the mirror.  She had never felt so pretty.

Bridget woke up in the middle of the night.  Her arm felt wet and sticky.  She flipped on the lamp by her bed.  Her arm was bleeding.

Bridget hit snooze on her alarm – for the eighth time.

The sunset was so perfect that night.  She thought it was sad that she had no one to share it with.  Then her parents made her watch it with them, and she thought it was sad that she couldn’t see it by herself.

“I can stand here in my nice clothes, with perfect hair, and I can be beautiful.  And right now I’m going to smile and laugh and be beautiful, because I have to and because it’s all I know how to do.  And when I get home I’m going to lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder why I feel like this, even though the reason is so perfectly obvious.”