Dasha Rahman

She sat with her eyes wide open, the sheets wrapped around her. You could see the outline of her frame peeking through, the thin sheets not giving much comfort to the cold. Whiteness surrounded the wooden bed, with a few letters on the wall that spelled out her name—the kind you would give to a child for their first birthday. An alarm clock now projected the time, 6:23, onto her ceiling. Her father had bought her that clock for her tenth birthday. In all the birthdays following he had given her an empty picture frame—for photos of her friends, he had explained—and a pair of socks. The socks did not have any explanation. She wore the socks now, because her ankles got cold at night, in the winter, when her windows let gasps of air through. If she squinted her eyes enough, the windows and the walls blurred together and only the light from outside was present. It was funny how the light seemed so white and heavenly, despite the fact there was a forecast for rain and clouds.

On a nightstand, made from the same light wood as her bed, were two things that this girl held dear to her. One was her watch that her mother had imparted on her and the other was a card from a boy. The watch was a secret wrapped around her wrist—she could hear the lightness of her mother every time she turned the hands of the clock an hour back so that when she got home she could tell her father that she and her bike were in fact not violating curfew. The card was new, actually—just from yesterday. She could see it had been made from a sheet that had been ripped out of a notebook because it had the hole punches and ruffles at the end of the sheet. The boy had written “Happy Birthday Anna”’ in scrawly handwriting on the front with a large, disproportionate smiley face next to it. On her way home from school, she had traced the a and oddly shaped y from the word “Happy” like it was telling her a story. She and the card got rained on as she was walking home, but then she held it close to her chest and whispered no, no, no, willing for God to let this rain pass over this beautiful card. A wild smile curled on her face as she thought about this moment in her bed. It was decidedly unfunny, but an ache in her chest and a lift in her stomach forced out a screech of a laugh. The laugh was silent after its first retch but her body shook and she wrapped her hand around her mouth so that her father in the room next door could not hear her. It must’ve been deep love for the card that had made her giggle, she nodded her head to the ceiling, setting a law that it was merely her love for the card. 

She checked the corner of the ceiling for the time—now 6:31. The proverb “time flies when you’re having fun” didn’t apply to her on this occasion. And she suddenly wondered if she had been having fun, all alone, just her, the card, and the watch. No, she had, it had been fun thinking while she lay in her bed. 

She got up and stood in the darkness. Without turning on the lights, because to do so at this hour felt quite illegal, she pulled on her underwear that read Tuesday in pink letters, even though today was Thursday. Her tights and then school skirt followed. Her hair was tied with the red school hair tie, and she put on her own red hat. No one had drawn much attention to her appearance—or her at all for that matter—so she was never a person who prided herself in how she looked. But, she did like how this red hat, with generous red ribbon, looked on her. I suppose you could add it to the list of things she did love: the hat, the card, and the watch. An odd list, she agreed, but one she never questioned. 

It was still only 7:00, but she decided she would walk to school. She could get breakfast there as a treat. Written in sharpie, she left a note saying Gone to school – Anna, on the kitchen table, so that her dad wouldn’t worry. It felt final for some reason, maybe because, as she realized while she was hunched over the keyhole, she had never unlocked the front door before. She heard the click of the lock as she rotated the key. Her dad was always the first to leave—the house frozen the way he liked it, the agenda for the day set. Her fingertips were on the handle now, the hair on her arm given life by the coolness. Her note lay on the table, crumpled as if it had been scrunched into a ball many times, and curling at the edges. It looked lonely, Anna thought, under the dim yellow light, only with her table mat from last night next to it. She opened the door and the white light crashed onto the yellow, kissing her skin.  

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Dasha Rahman is sixteen years old and from London. With a love for storytelling, writing has always been an outlet for her imagination.

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