She was annoyed.

Asked to take time out of her life to pick up her little cousin from daycare, when she could be sitting in the local movie theatre with a boy she fancied. Of course she had the right to be annoyed. No warning or a simple ring the night before. Her aunt told her now. Right when she was curling her hair and applying a light amount of sapphire mascara, she called. She wanted to say no, looking longingly out her bedroom window situated inside her two bedroom apartment shared by her inattentive father and busily working mother. She so badly wanted to deny the simple favor, but she caved. Maybe from sympathy known that her aunt had breast cancer while struggling to raise an active daughter and fulfill her duties and a newly engaged woman. Such a simple and small emotion made her cave, grasping violently for a wet piece of cosmetic cloth as she wiped away her skill of make up, slamming her cell phone on her unmade bed and thrusted her sprawled hand through her mane.

She said she would do it. It didn’t mean she had to enjoy it.

As soon as the clock hit four o’clock she walked out her door, crossing the busy streets of Toronto to the desired location where the tiny child currently played on the swing with a friend. She doesn’t bother to smile at the workers as soon as she entered the glass doors, her body rigid and cold only there for one thing and one thing only. There was no need to mingle or exchange such fake terms of endearment while thinking of such false and immature thought at the same moment. So she sulked, maybe even glared at times.

Blame it on the sun. Blame it on her aunt who made her feel this way.

Tapping her foot impatiently she grew impatient while her cousin laughed and ran around the room chased by a boy her same age, playing a game the involved such noise and chaos. Quickly, although not very subtly she gave the little girl a look. One that held no understanding or any way of standing in the room with a permanent frown painted across her once made up face. With one last tiny giggle escaping the little girls mouth she waved her goodbyes to her new friend and the workers at the daycare center who grew found of her cousin from her bright persona to her vivid tales galore made from her imaginative mind. No one dared to let out a decent goodbye to the girl with the upside down smile and eyes filled with nothing but negativity.

Walking out, ten paces between them, quickly but slowly, happily but quite sadly did they make their way to the apartment building. She didn’t even bother to make conversation or ask her if she needed anything, only locking the door behind her and mumbling a vocal presence to her father who sat in the living room drinking his beer and shouting quite ruefully at the screen. Her cousin could do what she pleased, not that she exactly cared at the moment. If it were any day but today she wouldn’t have been such a horrible presence as she currently emitted to everything and everyone around her.

She blamed it on her aunt.

Rationalizing the fact that emergency hospital visits weren’t exactly planned removed some anger from her state, but did not dig through her stubborn mind. Emergency was the key word, knowing this wasn’t the fist time. Statements such as ‘The boy who cried wolf.’ And ‘The straw that broke the camels back’ entered her mind. For the past month there were many emergencies, although hours later finding out that it was just a little over reacting about a tiny cough or pain in an area of her anatomy. Overreacting was also another key word. Therefore, this was probably another overreaction that cost her a day where she was actually excited about going to a movie that involved guns and many gory effects because all she really cared about was the boy with her. A boy that she liked. That she had known for just a mere few weeks and instantly couldn’t stop thinking about . A boy that she actually wanted to tolerate in her sixteen long years of existence. And it was all gone after one ring of her stupid piece of electronic crap.

She was going to sulk. That was a decision she made while plopping herself onto the bed and sighing deeply, wondering how many tiles where on her bedroom ceiling. She wondered what would have happened if she had gone on her date. She wondered what would things have been if her cousin didn’t exist. A horrible thought, but she was thinking it.

Thoughts and what if drifted in her mind as her eyes drew heavy, blinking turning into this mournful, tiresome extra curricular activity that her body did not need. The movement of her eyelids stopped, breathing in slowly finding some kind of piece during the war flickering insider her head. Peace.

Drifting.

Softly.

Ringing.

There was ringing. Calling out loudly she waited, detecting any sign of movement outside of her bedroom door. Waiting for someone to pick up the home phone meters away from where she was situated. She called out again for someone to answer the device that somehow found away to increase in volume. In return she hear an echoing yell back filled with annoyance and anger, how her father always was like when he ever was in a conscience state.

Groaning and cursing such foul words under her breath she picked up the phone with a forceful gesture placing it on her ear as she greeted loudly, no inhibitions to how she was presenting herself. For a second there was no reply but the faint sounds of shuffles and murmurs of voices. Normally she would hang up the receiver after her one second rule : hello and no reply is an instant goodbye. Today she broke it.

She spoke again, uncertainty in her voice.

There was a reply. A reply that was unexpected, certainly unwanted.

She was dead. Her aunt was dead. It wasn’t a case of overreacting when her aunt had entered the emergency room, it was an act of pure helpless cries to be saved. She had died.

She was dead.

In her world she could hate and love when she felt like it, deny and take when she pleased, eat or make herself throw up when she was unhappy with the results on her scale. Her world was not made up death. Who she knew would never leave in her eyes. Never before that minute did she lose someone close to her.
Never did she hold a grudge and not take it out on the person who created it the next day. She had never lost someone.

Until now.

Without warning she hung up the phone, turning over to where her father sat contently watching his game and her cousin playing with her stuffed animal. Never was she the one to provide such heart breaking news.

Never.

Slowly, quietly she walked back into her room shutting the door behind her with a large blow. Grabbing her curling iron she waited for the temperature to rise before watching her hair mold into soft ringlets. Her eyelashes once again painted with mascara. At this time she was able to put on enough lip gloss to receive a smile in return to her reflecting figure.

She walked out her door, looking at her watch to see she still had time.

She had no time to lash out when she was called that morning. She had no time to finish applying her make up that afternoon. She wasn’t going to get the time to lash out on her aunt for doing this to her. She didn’t want to have any time to be the messenger.

In her world she had time.

She wanted it all for herself.