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Highly Commended
Lisa MacPherson
Shawlands Academy, Glasgow
Scream
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I walk home from school with a splitting headache and a newly formed lump on my head from where Harriet hit me earlier today. I open the stiff door with my keys and am greeted by the familiar sound of yelling. It's not the first time it has happened but I still choose to ignore it. Block it out.
It scares me.
I've never heard Dad as angry as this so I go straight up to my room, the only place in the whole house where I feel safe. The same surroundings welcome me but fail to improve my mood. The thumping downstairs is unavoidable an as much as I try to block them out, the horrible painful screeches still manage to find a way into my head. Mum has probably been drinking again. Dad has got frustrated and started hitting. The whole story is mapped out in my head, a routine, you could call it. After all, it has happened too many time before.
I lie down on my bed, finally collapsing, able to rest all the muscles in my body after a difficult and unnerving day. I let out a deep sigh while reviewing my day. It rishes through my head like a tape on fast forward. Harriet kicking me, Harriet punching me, failing my maths test and finally, the icing on the cake, coming home to this.
The anger and feelings that are bottled up, trapped, pushed to a distant corner of my mind for so many months can't be held in for any longer. There's no possible way of forgetting them or shaking them off. It's like he scores of permanent marker scribbled all over my body that just won't wash off. I'm always the child that's stared at in school, the one with no friends, the one who, all of a sudden, has started failing all her tests, with or without those permanent marks. I just want to let go of these feelings, let them free, finally. Just anything to rid myself of these emotions. So I scream, scream at the top of my lungs, as loud and as long as I possibly can. Banishing all bad feelings, freeing them at last, letting them flutter away like butterflies.
Silence occupies the whole house after my scream. It is even more sinister than when Mum and Dad are yelling. The stairs thump. Is someone coming up the stairs? There's a knock on my door and Mum pokes her head round it. Her eyes are looking big and blue, full of apprehension and fear. She has a tear-stained face, her mascara running right off her face, making big black patches on one of her favourite blue tops. The newly formed bruise on her head is throbbing, guaranteed to turn a bluey purple colour within a few days as they have all done on previous occasions.
'Everything all right, darling?'
No, nothing was alright. How can things be alright when my grades are gradually deteriorating? How can things be alright when every day I walk to school I face the torment of being kicked and ounched? How can things be alright when I know my dad is hitting my mum and how can things be alright when the only thing I really want to do is to tell my mum all this and the one thing I can't do is that.
'Yeah, fine. I thought I saw a spider.'
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