Up all night

A Story by Jupeman95

This is a loose tribute to "Up All Night", a collection of short stories. . Deals with the subject of divorce in a teenagers life , and overcoming those thoughts that keep you "up all night '.

Marie jabbed a plastic straw into a CapriSun. As she climbed the carpeted stairs in the quiet, night time version of her house, she wondered when her father had become the type of person to say things like "We're really working towards progress", or "Your mother and I are trying to change things". Yeah, okay.
At 10:03 PM, everyone in the house was fast asleep. It was a prime time for working on things, for tying up loose ends: if you could manage to not have any stagnant moments where the loneliness and creaky house sounds could get to you. Marie booted up the computer signed on to AIM, then hit Microsoft Word. Right as she was formatting her frickin' annoying document in 'MLA style', Chris messaged her.

Jupeman95:hey Click. Chris was predictable. He always, always started his AIM conversations with "hey". It was his moment of polite banter, just before he got to what he really wanted to say.

Deadforedawn: Sup
Jupeman95: Nm, U? Stuck on this dumb term paper There it is.
Deadforedawn: Lol. Me too

Marie glanced at the blank Word document. Sigh. Mrs. Murawski, as expectated, had shoved another stupid, "I'm trying to be a cool, new aged teacher" prompt in her students faces. "Write about what keeps you up all night. What just, consumes your thoughts!" What? Like she honestly cared what consumed the minds of English 1, fifteen year olds. Sure. And well we're at it, West Ridge high is in fact feeding the students healthy lunches, and we're cracking down on drug use, and, and, we're funding baby seal rescue! Marie slurped her pouched juice product. Cherry.

Deadforedawn: I'm doing mine on my "future"
Jupeman95: lol
Deadforedawn: I figure the engish department will think its cute. Gotta stay in the "torian range"
Jupeman95: but you dont even know what youre doing with your future.

Oh but Chris, she thought, I can guess.

For all Marie knew, she'd be boxing up her stuff, deciding things just "weren't working out anymore". Marie leaned back on the rear chair legs. Adulthood was a dumb idea. Unless you could be famous or super rich, it all just seemed a little too monotonous. A little too...eventually sad. And Marie wasn't going to be famous or rich. She was "Vanilla". Destined to be middle class, divorced and eventually old, being fed apple sauce from the tired hand of her equally vanilla, middle class and unhappy children. Marie could've used a few more solid years of warm, sparkly, cuddled, normal childhood.
Her blank document stared at her. Now it was...HolycrapJesus, now it was 10:42.

Deadforedawn: Cue writers block, heh
Deadforedawn: Did you tell me your parents got a divorce?
Jupeman95: I did
Deadforedawn: How old were you?
Jupeman95: Like 4 or 5, y?
Deadforedawn: Curious
Jupeman95: OK
Jupeman95: Earliest I can remember is that we lived in hotels with my dad during the weekends
Deadforedawn: Sigh. Im sorry
Jupeman95: No its probably better I dont have to remember my parents fighting.
Marie crunched the foil juice pouch in her fist, forcing up the last few driblets of sugary drink.
Deadforedawn: Its just a sad topic...ya know? Like, "Gameover" Like, "hopefully you kids can do better" Like, we're not so much a family anymore. We're just related people who try to keep in touch.
Jupeman95: You're very thoughtful, for someone whos just "curious"
Jupeman95: It gets normal, eventually
Deadforedawn: If you have to try and wait for something to become normal, its not normal
Jupeman95: Will be. You gotta give things time in times like that. or else you'll look back and see you've made a d****e of yourself.
Jupeman95: Still there?
Deadforedawn: Yeah, sorry

Marie could sense she didn't know the full story behind her parents bedroom door. In any event, it really wasn't her bushiness and she felt like a whiny little b***h for being upset about it (There were children starving in Africa for Chrissakes. She was an American white kid, whose biggest problem was that her parents were making "progress" she wasn't happy with). Still, the whole thing irritated her. She didn't want to give it time. She wanted to wake up from this dream into a reality where her parents were happy, and most of all, together. But the dream was dragging on forever. It settled within her. She felt diluted, and just a little bit sad and delirious all the time. She felt it when her mom boxed up her clothes, and again when her little brother started wetting the bed and flunking his spelling quizzes. The heavy grayness sunk and sat in the bottom of her stomach, and she felt it like a constant drone.

Deadforedawn: Gtg, see you later Chris

She signed off and told Word she didn't want to save her changes. Marie staggered over clothes and her backpack in the dark of her bedroom, fumbling and tumbling until she surfaced two familiar objects from the abyss of underneath her bed. She burrowed underneath her comforter and switched on her heavy duty flash light.
Marie ran her index finger over the leather cover of her family's photo album. As she flipped it open, she wondered if they would ever add more happy snapshots to its tattered grasp. She smiled when she saw a photo of her young mother, laying tired but so blindly happy and irrevocably in love, in a hospital bed, clutching her new, screaming baby Marie. Then it was a picture of " Marie's first day of kindergarten": Herself standing, totally psyched out, grinning from pig tail to pig tail in front of the elementary school. Then later a picture of the whole family at Disney world. Marie chuckled. It had rained the entire day, but still, her frozen picture family smiled like, "Lol, we're soaking wet, but look how happy we are." And they were, too.
A fat tear fell on a laminated page. It was the random instance pictures that got Marie the most. The ones that truly captured her family as they were. These were the real ones. There was one with her mother laying on her side in front of the fire place, Christmas jammies in all, petting the cat. One with her brother finger painting, and one with her father trying to scrub a finger painting out of the couch upholstery. Good times. None of these "real" pictures showed her family members together, bearing staged, toothy grins. And yet...She still recognized and loved them as her family. That was still Charlie, and that was mom and that was dad, even though they weren't all together in the same square. Marie wiped her eyes with her wrist. Maybe it would be okay, her parents splitting up and all. They would still be a family, how different it would be, Marie wasn't sure. And it scared her, but deep in her stomach, she felt better in knowing that some unknown force kept them a unit. Marie glanced at the neon green numbers of her clock. 11:59. There was still time.
She jumped out of bed and re launched Word on the computer.

"What keeps me up all night is...."
Now she was ready to put it to bed.

© 2013 Jupeman95

Author's Note

Please excuse any grammar/spelling errors you may find. This lil' story is a brain child I produced in an email format, while running off Cherry Caprisun and not enough sleep.
Take care

Also...Any names/screen names or venues mentioned are purely fictional. If Imention something or someone you know, it was a coincidence.