Pg. 9

She's been in my room, Nor. I know that shouldn't be possible, and I guess it isn't, but it's happened.

I came back from my short walk outside, my ten minutes in the sun, which sometimes the nuns let stretch to fifteen or even twenty. I guess today might have been longer rather than shorter, I can't really tell. But it must have been.

When I came back to my room, it had the feeling of having recently been vacated by someone furtive. And there, above my bed, etched into the wall, was one of her little symbols:


There it was, scratched, rudely, I'll admit, into the grimy wall above my bed, a slightly darker brown than the wall itself. Admittedly, this was below her usual exacting standards, the ones that she used to tell me meant she was an artist and I just scratched out drawings to please myself. But what was one to expect, really, when I'd been gone at most twenty minutes and the wall wasn't as soft as it looked?

It was undeniably her work, and it was undeniably staring me right in the eye.

Nor didn't like to be quiet, not ever. But she wouldn't ever say anything real. She would talk for hours about how angry she was and why, but when it came to finer emotions, she would quite simply shut down.

These pictures were her way of communicating smaller emotions, the ones that mattered. And the one she'd left in my room, the one I was staring at right that second, the one which was causing my heart to beat as if I'd just seen a ghost (For hadn't I? Okay, maybe not...) was telling me she was unhappy.

I'd like to think she was unhappy for me, rather than with, but the chances of that weren't too good. She was generally unhappy with me, even when it wasn't my fault.

And I'm pretty sure this, what's happening right now, is my fault. All mine.