Purple
“Margaret,” my mom’s voice sounded shaky. “We need to talk to you.” Her hands were quivering, and she rubbed her hands together like she does when a customer doesn’t have a receipt to go with their return. I turned the water off, dried my hands, and put the clean dishes in the dishwasher. My father’s face looked serious, and when I entered the living room, he turned off the television. Uh oh, I thought. What’s happening? “We have something to tell you, and I don’t think you’ll be very happy..”
My father’s pale blue eyes started to water. I’d never seen him cry before, and I was hoping it would stay like that. At least, until I go off to college. I was wrong. “We’re…. getting divorced.” My mom half-whispered, half-spoke. My
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I replied with straight-forward, uninteresting answers in hopes that she would realize I’m totally fine and let me go eat lunch in peace. But one remark caught me by surprise,
“Maybe you should ask some of your friends if they’ve gone through this, and you could talk to them about it!”
I looked at her and smiled, but my expression of confusion was very clearly showing through. Wow. She really doesn’t understand me. How do you even ask someone about this kind of stuff? I lied to her and told her I would try it, and , after almost being late, I skipped down the hall to science class. As soon as I stepped in, I felt at home. The presence of microscopes and test tubes soothed me as I listened to my teacher sweetly drone on about punnett squares. I felt happy for the first time in two days.
Too soon I had to trudge into the hall to go to social studies, and I met my friend Melanie in the hall. She said something, but the sounds of Ninth grade gossip overpowered her quiet voice.
“What?” I shouted over the crowd. She repeated herself, only to drown in the sea of voices once again. “What?” I yelled again, louder than my first
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The only real friend I had there was Melanie, and she was deep in conversation with Lindsey. Everyone seemed so excited for the weekend, or volleyball season, or for cheer tryouts. I was a storm cloud in a sky of cumulonimbus. But then I overheard Lindsey talking to Melanie about something that surprised more than a pop quiz.
“Yeah, I left my hairbrush at my dad’s house last weekend, so I had to use my brothers! Talk about gross, right?”
I took a deep breath, prayed to any and every god out there, and said, “I hope that doesn’t happen to me when my parents split. I would lose my mind.”
She laughed, which alarmed me. Did I do it, I thought excitedly. Or did I totally screw up and make her not want to talk to me ever again? She responded with something about leaving all of her cool shoes at her mom’s house, and we had a whole conversation about our current (well, soon to be current) two-house situation.
The night was actually really nice. Fun, even. I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore. I felt like somebody actually understood, and wasn’t just trying to make me feel better. It didn’t feel like a secret, or something bad that nobody could know about. That night I felt like I was just Margaret. Not ‘Magaret with the divorced parents’. Just me. And it felt