Passing Elm Street | Teen Ink

Passing Elm Street

July 29, 2010
By bakergirl455 BRONZE, Topanga, California
bakergirl455 BRONZE, Topanga, California
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"life is to important to be taken seriously"
Oscar Wilde


Small white lights popped into existence behind her tired eyelids then fluttered away. Cold tile pressed sharply into her back and legs, her body shivered, her brain felt  tired. Waves of terror, hope, and relief washed through her. These emotions flicked across the blank plains of her brain, one after the other. Memories both good and bad, were  sluggishly coaxed from the recesses of her mind. She sank into one.


Eve had grown up on Elm street. The perfect lawns, pristine hedges, and crisp sidewalks were part of her earliest memories. Elm was a street where unhappy people tried to hide their imperfections; they did a fantastic job. You would have never guessed that such a perfect place could hide so many hardships. Yet despite the lies and broken dreams that were tucked away behind the immaculate white houses it was her home, and she loved it. 

Her best friends all lived on the street. Every day after school all three friends: Adam,Chloe, and Eve would hurriedly deposit their school books on the living room carpets. Then race out the door to play until bugs appeared on the lit street lamps. Then they would all scamper home leaving promises to meet the next day, and the day after that, for ever and ever. To meet everyday for the rest of their lives.

Gradually though everything had changed. The three friends started to hide their own secrets and broken dreams among the rustling hedges of the little street.  Their "play dates" became "hang outs ". Their friendship changed, Adam and Chloe grew closer together and began to close her out. She fought to keep them close, but the harder she tried the more they resisted. They became  more and more concerned with school gossip and their own lives and hardships to care much what was happening to her. She had lost her best friends; the two people who she cared most about in the world. They had erased her from their lives.


She pulled her mind out of the memories and gradually became aware of her surroundings. Dim light filtered into the little room. Dust eddied over her body, she watched the swirling patterns in the air that were created by her breath. She sighed and closed her eyes watching the lights behind them scamper around dizzyingly. She retreated back into her memories.
 

She remembered a beach, the sunlight washing over her, the smell of the ocean, the seagulls and laughing children she was completely happy.

Another day, she was sitting in a field with chloe, both were laughing. The sun was hot, she felt comfortably over baked. They had sat for hours reminiscing about their childhoods, planing their futures together, spilling their hopes, and laughing about their weaknesses. They laid out their life like a scrapbook and flipped through the pages together remembering everything as it had been and seeing it as it was now. It made both girls feel a little sad, they knew that one day things would change.



Her mind returned to the present. She watched a fly buzz around the room. She was loosing it, the world was becoming a little softer, a bit more unreal. The fly was huge. She frowned at it, it waved at her, she stared in awe for a few seconds then  forgot about it. She closed her eyes again and dove back into a memory.
  

 Eve watched her feet cruise over the cracks in the sidewalk, and felt the breeze blow throughout her unruly hair. She took a breath and felt the cool air sweep through her lungs. She looked up at the blue sky, leaves swirled through the air. she followed the path of a bright orange leaf as it swept down the street, It bumped into a man walking down the road and flew away, Eve's attention shifted to the man, he looked familiar. It was Adam. "Hey stranger" she called. He looked at her.

"Eve?" 

" Adam, I haven't seen you in while ! Hey, do you want to do something tonight? We could call Chloe, the three of us, just like old times !" He looked at her.

" That sounds fun, but i can't i've got studying to do tonight ." She laughed.
 
" Oh come on Adam, hermitage doesn't suit you." He didn't smile.

 "I cant, i've got to go work." He had said goodbye and gone home.


She had called Chloe later that day, Chloe had also told her that she was busy with school and feeling sick. So Eve had gone out alone.


Her conscience snapped back to the present. She was exhausted but restless, antsy. A blue bird chirped on a branch outside the noise floated around her head lulling her into a daze. She retreated back to her head.


voices echoed throughout her mind, taunting her, she heard adam and Chloe's voices. Adam was telling her that he didn't have time to hangout because he had to study, chloe was saying that she wasn't feeling well enough to go out, Both had been hallow excuses, lies. She had run into Chloe and adam while she was out. They were they were laughing and happy together, without her. They had looked at each other, all three friends and she had finally understood the truth, it surfaced with the lies. The lies that at that moment were cutting through the bonds of their friendship. The truth was that they had grown apart. Adam and Chloe no longer needed Eve. She had become part of their past, while they were still very much her present and future, they knew this and had lied to escape her. Escape her...

Eve thought about her family. She had known that her mother was changing and seen her pulling further and further away, watched helplessly as she had withdrawn more and more into herself, watched as she detached herself from her family and the ones who loved her. Eve knew that she could do nothing to help her, so she stood buy and watched as her family fell to pieces.

Eves mother had began to see her husband and her daughter as the chains to her ball, the lock to her prison. They were the reason that she was stuck here, they were the reason that she was forced to live in this hell hole. She had come here for eve, come here with her husband whom she had loved, come here because she had stupidly believed that she would be able to create a happy ending, that everything would turn out alright. Well things were not alright, and that " happy ending" had never come around. Now she was here living with a daughter she didn't understand, and a husband whom she did not love.

Eve knew that her father could see all of this just as plainly as she could. He could see all of the resentment his wife directed at him, could feel it in her attitude, and tone of voice. So as a result he became a hollow man doomed to be forever trapped in a terrible, hateful, loveless marriage. Eve felt responsible for this change, and knew she was a reason for all of this pain. She heard her mothers voice in her head. The angry words that were directed at her. The heartbreaking, hurtful truth that was finally spit from her mothers lips.

"I never wanted this life for myself, I never wanted you, I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU! " Her fathers voice

"Eve, leave me alone." mothers

"Eve, go away, this is my time, go call your friends. " Mothers again.

" Eve, what the hell is your problem, stop sulking around!" Fathers voice.

" life isn't fair, it isn't fair eve." Chloe's lie,

"I've got stuff to do, and I don't feel well." Adams lie

"I have to study." Her mother.

'' I HATE YOU" The voices were frantic and laughing. They told her,Your useless your stupid, your bratty, whiny, self absorbed, horrible, unloved, unliked, no one will miss you. The voices frenzied then were stopped. One last thing was said. "No one, will even notice that you are gone."

The room was warm, and she was so tired. Her heart beat sluggishly, laboriously pushing her thickening blood through her body. Her breathing faltered, it wouldn't save her now. Her eyes rolled back into her head, as she passed out. blurry images swam behind her eyes then were sunk in darkness. Tick tock tick the clock on the wall was counting away: three seconds, five seconds, nine seconds. She sucked in a breath of air, jolting her mind back to reality. She peeled open an eye. A ray of sunlight passed through the window,  it illuminated the small white bottle on the counter,  The pills scattered randomly about. They looked so harmless but she knew, she could feel what they really were. They reminded her of the houses of elm, little capsules of lies with an illusion or perfection. She knew the truth though they couldn't fool her. She would not be trapped in the world of elm, so she was retaliating in the only and harshest way that she knew. She wouldn't become another hopeless resident on the street of secret. She wouldn't be pushed away into a corner and forgotten about. She was leaving it all behind. The world where best friends forgot about each other. Lovers hated one another, and parents saw their children as  reminders of their failures and lost dreams. A world where people tried so hard to maintain their perfection that they lost everything that had ever mattered to them. She would not become one of these people.

The pills worked their magic, she closed her eyes and felt them saw away her bonds. They cut through her friends and family. Through her world, and what a world it was, her friends had deserted her and her family was broken. She wondered why they weren't here, and why they hadn't come. She knew that her friends and family would be waiting as they had once been with open hearts. Thoughts scampered from her brain. She let out a breath, nothing held her here now. she closed her eyes as a blank darkness settled over her, cutting out her existence. She was finally free.


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This article has 1 comment.


Gwinn BRONZE said...
on Feb. 14 2011 at 11:18 am
Gwinn BRONZE, Topanga, California
1 article 0 photos 4 comments

Hey Bakergirl455, (hehehe) 

Your story is amazing and everyone knows it! Can i email it out to people and say that they should just rate it because its amazing and ya? Please! Its amazing! 

Hannah