SAVE POINT 1
10 Years Later...
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1102021402707628096/1106673336639049899/d3156542-cf93-4d70-b36a-181e4fec5757_1.png][https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1102021402707628096/1106673336261550180/36c532ab-b944-4900-ad6a-326825c91cda.png]
Rosabella
He doesn't even know how much he stifles me.
...These are my thoughts? I huff, laughing a little to myself as I swing around the streetlamp, buzzing and flickering overhead in the night sky as my fingers wrap gleefully around the freezing, smooth base. My hair billows out, strands getting caught in the collar of my coat and sticking to my exposed neck. The cloud of my breath warms my cheeks and the tip of my nose, but I don't mind the cold.
Not if it lets me breathe for just a minute.
He thinks I love the Chinese food place at the corner.
What I really love is the freedom.
This two-minute walk where I feel like no one is watching me.
Not even him.
...Shouldn't I be worrying about talking to some crush or something? Or about homework or painting my toes a certain color? Like any other teenage girl?
But something inside me has known I'm not just "any other teenage girl" for a while now.
And, honestly, it's getting fucking annoying.
"General Tso's and orange chicken? Pre-pay?" the Chinese man asks me, holding up the take-out bag he knows full well is mine like he cooked it himself.
Maybe he did.
I grab it from him with the small bow that I know he likes.
"Thanks, Ming!" I call over my shoulder.
...As I dance out in the drizzling rain for just a few more minutes, spreading my arms and tilting my face back to catch all the little drops of life misting down on me as the moon swims, high overhead.
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But my watch vibrates.
The timer.
If I'm over two minutes late, Dad'll go into nuclear meltdown mode, and the food will get cold before he finishes his lecture about safety, self-preservation and stranger-danger.
...I'm getting kind of worried about him. His caution has increased to paranoia lately.
"They're getting closer, I can feel it, Rosie," he'd said just this morning, pulling back the curtains he always keeps firmly secured over every window to stare blankly out at the street.
The blankness in his face scares me most.
It's like he's losing touch with reality.
He's been jumpier in the last few months.
Seeing shadows.
Talking to people who aren't there as he's making something on the stove and trying to cover it up whenever I walk into the room.
It's probably not normal to feel like this as a teen—to feel like you have to take care of your parent.
I see my classmates all the time, circling the street with their bikes well past 9pm.
Talking raucously.
Their jokes and laughter wafting up to my bedroom window like a lie I try every day not to believe.
But it's hard to not want what they have...
Freedom.
No fear.
No restraints or restrictions—
It's like dangling candy in front of a starving three-year-old; there's only so much one can take.
My thick-soled boots thud up the concrete steps of the apartment. I jam my thumb into the buzzer button till the static clicks—sometimes, it gets stuck.
And I swing past the blinking elevator button to take the stairs two at a time, feeling the churn of my muscles as I haul up each step...hearing the swish of the plastic bag in my hand.
And the grime on the wall passes.
And the smell of some type of burnt beans and rice dish wafts into my nose.
And I reach the top of the stairwell—
Throw my weight to wrench open the door—
To see our door.
Our apartment door.
Also, wrenched open.
Barely hanging by the hinge.
And I drop the bag of Chinese food.
I barely hear it hit the carpet with a dull thump.
And I race forward, my mouth twisting in utter desperation—
My heart pounding in my ears—
My mind tripping over itself more than my feet are—
The world past the doorpost blurs as my fingers clutch at it, heaving me forward as quickly as possible.
"Dad???" I scream.