I have to apologize.  I said I'd keep up with everyone's xangas, but I failed miserably at that.  Life just got so...cluttered all of a sudden and the next thing I knew, I'd almost completely forgotten about this site.  I have school three days a week and work five days a week.  Friday, my day off, is basically completely dedicated to my studies.  I'm getting together with Christine and Mary this Friday, but it'll probably be the last one for a long while.  My work is a shark eating up all my free time.  I'm really getting sick of that place.

I don't want pressure.  I already feel suffocated enough.  One more favor, one more extra mile, and I'm likely to crack.  I can't make space for hanging out right now.  It breaks my heart, but it's true.

Gah, Baron pissed me off today.  I think he's just conning time out of me because he really wants to hang out.  I agreed to meet him at the mall today, not for very long, because I can't afford losing time.  Luckily, he didn't show up.  His alarm clock didn't go off.  He slept overtime.  Which is good, I guess, because he talks a lot and I'd never be able to get anything finished.  I mean, he's my friend, but I can't take this right now.  The reason he wanted me to meet up with him was absolutely ludicrous anyway, but I didn't tell him that.  I spent an hour at the mall with Christina instead.  We enjoyed ourselves.

I'm not going to break.  I'm stone.  I am frozen.  I am solid.  I am white walls.  I am a mountain.  I will not cry. 

There's more to it.  But it won't make sense now.  Maybe later.  Maybe, if this story ever finishes.

~*~*~

This is my assignment for Creative Writing.  My class has to read this and critique it.  I'm petrified.

The Learned

Good girls don’t cry.

They don’t cry, because they didn’t do anything wrong.  They behave themselves and don’t get punished.  They’re always happy.  They wear pretty pink dresses to church and have their mommies curl their hair and buckle their shiny, white shoes – shoes that never get scuff marks or dirt globs.  Good girls walk on sunshine, and sunshine doesn’t leave a stain.  They are always beautiful.

It’s only the bad girls who cry.  They’re the girls who are at fault.  They’re to blame.  And whatever happened to them to make them cry was something they deserved.  It’s how the world works. 

I don’t cry anymore.  I’m very happy.  I’m happy all the time.  I used to cry lots when I was younger.  But I’m eight-years-old now, and very well-behaved.  I say all the right things and do all my chores.  I play outside, even when it rains, so that I don’t get in the way.  I even get good grades in school and stay after all the time for lots of extra credit.  And if I ever think I’m going to cry, I look up, focus on my breathing, and relax.  I swallow it all down, like a pill.  I smile again.  I don’t cry.  I’m not a bad girl.

Today I haven’t gotten yelled at.  I’m outside, after a big rainfall.  It’s October, so it’s gotten kind of cold, and our backyard is covered in dead leaves, but I don’t mind.  I brought my Barbie outside with me.  She’s walking in the grass, on an adventure, and she’s been keeping her shoes very clean.  She walks around every muddy puddle and treats the bugs very nice.  I raised her well.  But as I’m talking to her, I start to smell smoke.  We both look through the kitchen window from where we are.  Mommy’s running over to the stove, pulling out something ugly as sin.  I think she burned dinner. 

Daddy must have smelled it, too, because I can hear banging from the other side of the house.  It’s getting closer to Mommy.  Barbie and I watch as he comes in the room.  He hits Mommy hard, but she doesn’t fall down.  I remember when she used to scream for him to stop, but now she just lets him beat her up.  He says a lot of bad words to her.  No, he roars a lot of bad words.  It’s like watching a movie, except the credits never roll.  Everything stays the same.  He points to the black mass on the counter, asks her how stupid can she be, and hits her again.  She falls down.

Daddy takes dinner and throws it on the floor.  I can’t see what happened to it, but the burning smell got stronger.  He walked out of the room.  I can’t see Mommy either, but she’s crying and I know she is.  She can’t help it.  She’s a bad girl.  She deserved it.

I look up, blink a lot, and calm myself down.  I almost did it, but I caught myself.  I almost wasn’t a good girl anymore. 

When everything got quiet and nothing moved, I looked at the Barbie in my hand.  She was smiling at me with her big, blue eyes.  I turned her over and stuck her head down in the puddle next to me.  When I picked her back up, her face was wet and her hair was spoiled.  She looked like she was crying. 

Barbie was a bad girl.