After-school sunshine beams over clusters of oak trees and freshly manicured lawns. After slouching in a chair for six tepid hours, Sophie feels the knots untangle in the fibers of her back and legs. It’s the same liberation she feels as the 3:00 bell rings and indicates temporary freedom from the prison she attends five days a week for nine months a year, more commonly known as high school. Sophie trudges home, her backpack weighed down by binders and cow-heavy textbooks, scratching at her collarbone. The faint breeze is as silent as the empty roads, and the thick afternoon heat hangs with oppression in the stillborn air and makes her neck crawl.
Sophie’s fingers stumble through her jean pocket for house keys. She spends a full two minutes fighting against the rusted metal mechanisms of the door-lock. Tossing aside her black converse in a casual manner near the shoe rack, she plops her backpack on the floor, just out of tripping distance. Her head aches with more angst than her teenage heart. The fatigue of listening to Dr. Love (he had gotten his PhD last year and refused to be called “Mr”) drone on for a millenium about numerical integration and exponential s*** was 82 percent of the cause of Sophie’s “after-school headaches.” Her throat burns, and her stomach growls. Sophie trods to the kitchen, reeking of last week’s trash that her father forgot to take to the curb on Monday (although who could blame him; it was Monday), and scours through the fridge for something semi-edible. After stomaching the thought of eating the lone slice of the most generic bread ever, drinking her father’s “ginger ale”, or gulping the chunky and sour milk that has surely passed its expiration date, Sophie settles on a packet of uncooked instant ramen. She doesn’t know how to cook anything, so she munches on the raw noodles straight from the packet. They have a crunchy and hard texture, and taste like the healthy flavor of MSG. Frankly, they’re kind of delicious.
Normally Sophie would be in a dejected mood, just because. Today, however, was special. It was her parents’ 15th Anniversary, which meant dinner at the fancy Japanese restaurant across town. Any day when Sophie didn’t have to eat either of her parents’s “food” was special. Her father, a military seargant, came home two weeks ago from his post in Afghanistan. Sophie was a rare cryer, but that afternoon, her waterproof mascara cascaded in black rivers onto the floor, staining the laminate wood. Her mother, a former stay-at-home mom, decided to get a degree and “do something” with her life, so she enrolled in an economics course at the local community college. After her oddly satisfying packet of uncooked ramen, Sophie unbraids her walnut-colored hair and heads upstairs to lie on her bed and spend two hours on her phone doing virtually nothing. She trudges down the hallway that leads to her room, with its familiar hot pink walls that she begged for as a child. Her father had frowned and told her she’d regret it later. She did. It was ugly as s*** and hard on the eyes, but there was nothing she could do about it now, unless she wanted to get her butt off the couch and get a job. But Sophie was much too self-aware; she knew she was too lazy and “people-allergic” to ever consider a job. Sophie hears noises from across the corridor, the click of brass against lid. She walks into her room, unassumingly, and sees a figure kneeling in front of her vanity, legs spread apart in her chair, lips smacking together with the strawberry tinge of her lipstick. A pointed, wide chin tilted to the side, a pose frequented by twig-thin models in Vogue magazines. Lips puckered together in cherry-pink sheens of lipstick and lip-gloss. The night-hue of mascara and eyeliner, practically stamped with the word slutty on its seductive packaging, dripping from the mysterious stranger’s eyes. And… are those Sophie’s clothes?! A white-silk spaghetti strap dress, the same dress Sophie had worn to her middle school graduation but still fit her perfectly, choked tightly against broad, muscular shoulders, much too big for her size. A newly hot-pink mouth pouts to form a duck face. High heels, her high heels, suffocate on the stranger’s much too large feet. A wig slides off, and with it comes the stranger’s luscious black tresses to reveal a stumpy bed of mundane brown hair. Sophie drops her phone, her mouth hanging open at the scene in front of her.
“Dad?”
Tonight was certainly going to be a very special anniversary.