Entry 3: Already gone

It was five in the morning and Georgia was already dressed to go to the hospital. The ambulance would only arrive in three hours but she couldn’t sleep. Now, she was sitting in the living room, looking out of the window. The house was silent. Her parents were sleeping upstairs. Tomorrow, the house would be even more silent. She would be alone with her father. Indeed, the ambulance was not for Georgia but for her mother. Cancer. Chemotherapy.

Georgia had accepted to accompany her mother in the ambulance but she secretly hopped that it would be the last time. It was too hard to see her crying and suffering. She wished only two things for her mother: death or recovery but no more cancer. She had enough. Her mother was not the same anymore. Georgia couldn’t recognise her anymore, physically and mentally. In a way, Georgia’s mother was already dead. Recovery would not bring her back. There are things you can’t change, words you can’t erase, memories you can’t forget. Her lovely mother was now a ghost and Georgia had understood it a long time ago.

Georgia thought of her father, this man who never accepts defeat. He would be devastated in the case of the worst scenario. He was not prepared. Nobody can but Georgia wanted to help her father to face the reality. How? The question was still unresolved and Georgia was worried. She did not want sadness to be her everyday life. Living without her mother would be hard enough, she did not want to live with a father with no more willingness to find an aim to his life. So many things were still to be experienced. The only thing she could do was to stand by his side and to support him when things would be… different and certainly harder too.

The sound of a siren interrupted her thoughts. The ambulance was now in front the house. It was time for Georgia to face her reality: at only 10, her childhood was already finished.

Entry 2: My sister is crying

My sister is crying in the garden and I don’t know what to do. I’d like to take her in my arms and dry her tears but Mother won’t like it. She says that Louise is too selfish and that her attitude is a shame for the whole family. According to Mother, Louise should be proud of her lot but I’m pretty sure she only thinks about the money and the prestige an opportunity like this one could imply for the country. Mother is not very sensitive. It seems that she never takes the feelings into consideration as if she had no feelings herself. As far as I can remember, I never saw her crying. Luckily, my sisters and I have feelings and it’s only thanks to Father, a great man with no other concern than our happiness and the one of his subjects. The only thing is that I’m the next one on the list. Louise is the eldest so she’s the one who has to open the ball, but then, it’s going to be my turn. As the President’s daughter, my life is not really mine. I have no power of decision, I have to obey as Louise and my other sisters must obey as well. I hope my fate will be happier than the one of Louise because I don’t want to become an object more than I already am. Yes, I want for nothing and it should be enough to make me happy, but I could be a painting that it would be exactly the same thing: my opinion counts for nothing. Poor Louise. I really don’t envy her. She’s going to marry a robot… a real robot. Now that they have feelings, it was inevitable. This world is sick and I don’t know where we are going with stupid decisions as this one. Louise is sacrificed and I’m the next one. There’s nothing else to say.

Entry 1: When She Left

The day of her death, Victoria Harding was about to tell her parents that she wanted to leave home, definitively. In a way, her death made things easier: she left home, definitively.

Victoria is my best friend or was my best friend – I don’t know which tense to use now that she’s dead. The fact is that I’m the only one to know in details the truth about her life and her death. I was there for her first kiss, I was there for her first tattoo and the four after. I was there for her first car accident, for her first hangover… I was also there for her last word, her last breath and her last smile. Yes, I was with her when she died. This image will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Victoria (or Toria for close friends) was the kind of girl you could only remember. She was not particularly pretty, but her beauty was more subtle than the one of a harmonious face. Few were those who noticed her in a crowd. However, everything in her attitude exuded happiness and that was the reason why she was so attractive. She had a milky complexion, olive-greenish for some. She was a twenty-year-old girl, brown-haired as most of the people living on this planet, and her eyes were exactly of the same colour. A common beauty as I mentioned before but with this little thing no one could really explain, except that she was a ray of light to everyone who had ever received her smile. I have to confess that she is the one who taught me how to smile but now that she’s gone… I prefer not to think about it for now. Tears are not very far away.

Today is a sunny day. No cloud, no wind. A perfect day for a funeral, for her funeral.

Homework for Monday

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I was reading on the grass of St James Park when I felt that somebody was looking at me. I looked around but there was only an old lady on her bench, feeding a squirrel. I don’t know why but I felt a great danger. I decided to go home even if I only had read a few pages of my book. To reach the exit of the park, I passed in front of the old lady but she grabbed my hand and forced me to sit down next to her. I tried to escape but in vain. I was very surprised by her strength and for a minute, I wondered if she really was an old lady or even a lady. She whispered something in my ear but I did not understand. My brain was paralysed by fear and her words stayed in suspension in the air. I was about to faint when she repeated and I suddenly calmed down. I looked at her in the eyes and everything became very clear. She was nutty but not nasty: in my precipitation, I had stepped on the squirrel’s tail and she wanted to protect me against a potential attack from the squirrel’s family living in the Park. Here is what she had said to me:

“Don’t move, the squirrels are watching you. You’ve hurt one of them, the one I was feeding.”

I started to laugh but quickly stopped when she threw hazelnuts in my face.

From that day, I’m terrified when I think about squirrels and I often do nightmares about hazelnuts. Is it necessary to say that now, I prefer reading at home rather than in St James Park?