Ticking Time

Is my skirt too long? Too short? What if they don't like my hair? Wait, the lighting's bad. Eh, who cares. It's not like anyone's going to see it. But what if someone does? Ok so it's left arm out, left arm back in. Right arm down left arm up. My phone lays up against the pale brick wall, my case scratched by the rough red cement. The little clock icon sitting in the right hand side of the screen awaits my finger to command it to count down. I hesitate over the screen, contemplating whether or not I should change my shirt. Will they think it's babyish? 

I go over my dance one more time, before I finally build up the courage to hit the clock icon. The beeping of the countdown is like an alarm. Ok I am doing this. My body bounces along with the beat of the music. I might look happy on the outside, but on the inside I'm shaking. What if I mess up? Sure, I have an endless amount of tries. But how long before I lose my temper? I don't want to lose my temper. Ever again. The song ends just as fast as it started, now taking me to the next stage; editing. My screen displays my final video. I watch over and over again to make sure there's nothing wrong. I caption the video: 'I made this dance! Feel free to use it. Don't forget to tag me! 😅🤪 #fyp #foryoupage #viral' It feels so fake. But it might just work.... The public can view this video. I will allow comments, duets and reacts. I will not save it to my phone. The bland white ‘Drafts’ button sits next to the bright pink ‘Publish!’ button. I am doing this. In one swift motion I press my finger onto the bright pink rectangle. 

Mom’s rules: no phones one hour before dinner. I drop my phone into the infamous grey bin before it goes in a locked drawer underneath her bed. She thinks we don’t know. But we do.

I attempt to pass the time in my room. Trying not to think about my device lying in the dark drawer in Mom’s room. Have people seen the video? Did people like the video? My feet dangle from my bed. I watch them go up and down and up and down, the floor a long way away. I’ve always been short. I sometimes feel like people don’t even see me. They look over my head, and it takes them a couple of moments to realise where the sound is coming from. I’ve never really been teased about my height. Not on purpose that is. I hoist my legs back over onto my bed, hug my knees and stare out the window. There is a bird hopping around our small tree in the front yard. His head is turned up to the sky. Like he’s trying to find something in the tree, or someone. I scan the long thin branches for a nest, or any kind of cluster. Nothing. What is the bird doing? Can’t he just fly up into the tree to find what he is looking for? The bird hops around the thin branch for another five minutes. I get bored and walk around my room. 

As I am walking, I catch my reflection in my long, rectangular mirror. I look different. My once stringy blonde hair looked not so stringy. And my pale thin face has a shape. I walk closer to the mirror, my big brown eyes widening. I have never worn this shirt, I look weird, almost good in it. My mom bought it for me a while back, but I never had the guts to wear it in the public. It was too…. frilly. I thought I looked stupid. I put it on only for the video, thinking this is what ‘normal’ teenagers wore. Right? Two pieces of pink fabric reached across my chest tying together in the back. Shoulder to waist, shoulder to waist. I stood in front of my long red framed mirror looking at my skirt, no, my mini skirt. I never thought I would be wearing a mini skirt. Why am I only noticing this now? How did I get past Mom wearing a short piece of blue fabric? 

I hear Mom grunt from her room. Next, the crooked slide of the ‘secret’ drawer opening, then after a few seconds closing. 

“Mom?” I open my door and poke my head out into the hallway. She stumbles out a few seconds later her hair up in a messy bun. 

“Yes, what is it? I’m just about to go make dinner.”

“Are you okay? I heard something from your room.” 

She looks back into the room, as if she’s hiding something. 

“...Mom.” I take a step into the hallway and narrow my eyes at her. 

She slips in front of her door and closes it with slight aggression. 

“You know the rules. No phones before dinner,” she says as she briskly passes me on the way to the kitchen. My head tilts to the side in confusion. I wasn’t going in her room looking for my phone? And yes I do know the rules. 

“Honey, come help me with dinner!” 

I slowly turn on my heel, suspicious why she is leading me downstairs. I climb down our narrow carpeted stairs and into the living room. Here I find my dad sitting on his favorite chair reading his favorite magazine. 

“Hi Daddy!” I lean down to kiss his balding head. He only grunts in response, too intrigued by his magazine. My mom looks up when I walk into the kitchen. She stops cutting the carrots and slowly puts down the knife. Her eyes stop on my skirt. 

“I was wondering when you’d notice.” I try to laugh it off but her stern look quickly drops my smile. Without saying a word she hands me the knife, gesturing for me to cut. And I do.

30 minutes later we sit down to a dinner of stew. The steam rising from the pot fogs up my dads glasses as he serves us a hot bowl of yumminess. I raise the steamy goodness to my mouth and blow on it. As I am eating, my mind wanders. What was going on in Mom’s room? Why did she lead me downstairs? Unless… I drop my spoon in the bowl and hot liquid flies out. 

“Brenna!” My mom quickly pushes back her chair to go get a paper towel. 

“Mom, why were you opening the phone drawer earlier?”

She tries to act like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about while cleaning up the mess.

“Phone drawer? What’s that?”

“Mom I’m serious. Was it something with my phone?” 

She looks up for a brief second.  

“Fine, yes your phone was going crazy. Buzz after buzz after buzz.”

My chair screeches against the wooden floor with the force of my whole body trying to get out. 

“Brenna! Come back here now!” 

I skip the stairs two at a time, my heart beat in sync with my steps. I almost run into the wall when I reach the top of the stairs, but I push back fast. My target is at the end of the hallway. I sprint. What if it’s the video. Is it blowing up? What if people are making fun of me? I slow to a fast walk, then a slow walk. Mom’s door is only four feet away. I take a deep breath, turn the handle and walk in.

I got caught up in the excitement to forget that the drawer is indeed locked. It’s only unlocked after dinner. I’m about to rush downstairs to plead for Mom to open the drawer, when I hear something. A faint vibration. I stop and turn towards where I think the sound is coming from: Mom’s closet. There's a shaking pile of clothes on the floor of her narrow closet. I pull the long beaded string to turn the light on. I can hear my heavy breathing. In and out and in and out. The suspense catching on every second. I slowly crouch down and fumble through the clothes. Shirt, skirt, pants, sweater. My finger brushes up against something that isn’t a soft piece of fabric. My phone. I quickly toss all the clothes out of the closet. My phone tumbles onto the ground with a thud. Mom must’ve put it here to try to mute the vibration. The screen is face down on the wood floor. I shake my hands out in preparation for what I may or may not find. I slowly pick my phone up. Texts from everyone scatters the lock screen.

“BRENNA ANSWER YOUR PHONE!!!!!!!”

‘Tik Tok: You have 100,447 new notifications’

“HOLY CRAP BRENNA WHATTTTT!!”

“AHHHHH YOUR VIDEO!!”

‘20 missed calls’

I breathe out a shaky breath and cautiously open Tik Tok. My inbox has 100,458 new notifications and the numbers keep going up and up. 

“O-oh my” I place my shaky hand to my mouth and drop to the floor on my knees. I open up my video. 90K likes and more than 9000 comments, which is a lot for a video that has 90K likes. I carefully scroll through the comments, my heart beating faster and faster. 

User_484937344292: Wow this is good!

iheartunicorns_993: She’s sooo pretty 🥺

potaotesareamazing🥵: @charlidamelio DO HER DANNCCEE

I am in awe. Absolute shock. I don’t know what to feel. 

I rush down the stairs breathing twice as fast than on the way up. 

“My vid- video” I hold my phone up with one hand while the other leans on my bent knee for rest. 

“Your video?” My mom walks over and takes my phone from my hand. 

I listen as the music plays itself out over and over again as my mom watches the video. Her face is emotionless, un-readable. 

“So? What do you think?” I say as I stand from my bent position. I’m getting nervous. She’s very quiet. Too quiet. 

“Nate,” she hands the phone over to my dad “look at this.” 

I look back and forth between both of them. Do they like it or not? 

A smile slowly creeps onto my dad’s face. He looks up from his seat. 

“This is really good.” A huge wave of relief floods my body. I slowly turn my attention toward my mom. I raise my eyebrows. 

“Is your name on that video?” Her eyes don’t leave my phone. 

“What?”

“Is your name in the video, or on your username thingy.”

“Wh- well no. It’s just a bunch of numbers. See?”

I take the phone from my dad and show her ‘user’ followed by twelve numbers. She sighs. 

“It is really good. The cherry blossoms in the back are a nice touch.” A smile appears. I squeal.

“Ahh! Yes, oh my gosh. Thank you!!” I kiss both of them on the forehead and rush up to my room to call my friends. 

Later that night, I lay down with a smile on my face. People liked my dance. I am happy because total strangers liked my video. I think: There are millions of people out there who live their life like this. Judged every second. Someone doesn’t like it? They feel the need to point it out. Every movement, post, word from their mouth is judged. It can be hard. But all the positive good words, they’re worth it. Or at least I think they are worth it. 

I fall asleep thinking, ‘I hope that bird found what he was looking for’.