A RESTLESS NIGHT

The first day at home, Marie did not think about anything to do with school. She did not even do anything much at all except for lying on the bed and playing with Shadow. Her bags were still kept on one side of the room, and that was pissing off her step-mom because they were still unpacked.

Marie had some clothes in the cupboard at home, and she was changing into those because it had been months that she had been wearing the selected ones which she had taken to the hostel. She wanted to be in different clothes now that she had holidays from school, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Everyone needs options and gets bored with monotony. Be it clothes or books or routine or even people these days. For Marie, it was her life; the struggle that she had to go through every time she changed her locations from the hostel to home only because she was not comfortable with any kind of changes. She wanted things to remain the way they were and not change every few months for her.

Sleeping in her bed at home after so many weeks of being comfortably sleeping in the hostel bed was difficult for her. Changing the things that she did, and the way she lived every couple of months was just one problem to list. The major problem of hers was the big difference in the atmosphere she felt at home every time she came back here.

Her step-mom, Delilah, had never welcomed Marie that well because she always felt extremely insecure when Marie was with her dad. It was completely illogical for her not to be accepting of Marie spending time with her dad. Delilah’s dirty mind made it too obvious to Marie not to feel loved at home and especially when she was around.

She would keep a watch on the father-daughter duo by walking into the room even when she was not called. That used to happen every time Marie walked inside the room to speak to her dad. Both of them never discussed anything related to anyone at home, but rather they would talk about Marie’s school, studies, hobbies, and life in general.

The little girl was growing up, and she needed some support from her parents. Delilah was not that matured a mother to guide the two girls well. She was living in a century-old world of her own, and to her, what people would think about her mattered the most. She barely ever used emotions to connect the two threads of a different yarn even though they tried their best, but yet they were not that successful.

A guiding hand of someone who was at home monitoring them would have definitely made a lot of differences, and yet Delilah was too shallow to accept Marie as her own daughter the same way Marie’s dad, Mr. Jones, had accepted his step-daughter, Rebecca. Not even once did he ever mention it to her that she was a love child and her biological father refused to accept her like how Delilah had been reminding Marie time and again that her mother was dead.

It was very sad of her not to understand that her own daughter had a somewhat similar condition and was without a father. But at least Marie’s mother did not refuse to accept her. Everyone has their own troubles and none of it is worth any kind of comparison because something that may not be very big for you may be the biggest hurt for someone else. No matter how little we have in life, we must always be grateful and remain humble to be known as kind human beings.

The first day was very boring for Marie, but she did not have any option other than to get used to it for a month because the holidays from school were until then. She had to be very attentive at home noticing every new thing on her own and paying attention to the talk that they were all having because no one would specifically come to tell her about whatever the ongoing discussion was, and poor Marie hated being left out.

She went to bed pretty depressed. The minute she laid her head down on the pillow, she remembered her life in the hostel at school was so different, and she failed to understand one more time why people in the hostel cried to go home. Immediately, it struck her that it had been one whole day, and she had not even thought about Jean who she called her best friend.

Jean and Marie at least believed that they were best friends because any other name to their bond made no sense to them because they did not really know that anything else other than being friends with the people of the same gender was possible. Their country did not recognize non-heterosexual bonds.

Feeling guilty for not remembering Jean, Marie not only felt sad but got extremely impatient as well. She wanted to call Jean right at that very minute, but her parents had the mobile phone she used at home to play games. They confiscated the phones from Rebecca and Marie each time they sat to study or went to bed at night. They were strict.

There was nothing that she could do at night other than to wait until it was an acceptable time in the morning to make a call to her friend because she was supposedly answerable to her step-mom. Mr. Jones would either be at work happily or busy with his stuff at home; he never gave extra attention to anyone at home.

He made it look as if he was tired of all the jazz which used to happen at home with Delilah complaining about his daughter all the time. It could have been possible that Mr. Jones was having an extra-marital affair, and that is how he maintained his sanity at home amidst everything negative. Besides, the long hours in the office could possibly have no other explanation other than the fact that he did not actually stay over there for so long.

Many things were all haywire and all of them at home had some or the other secret to hide from each other. The interesting point at that moment was that for how long everybody wore a mask in front of people they called family.

As Marie closed her eyes for the night to be gone soon after a lot of turning and tossing as she was getting restless for it to be late morning already because that would be when she could use her phone. She was counting every second as time was passing as only in the morning she would get a chance to speak to Jean on a call.