I Know How You Feel

The weather was nice in the small city of Freehold, New Jersey and only the distant voices of kids playing in my neighborhood could be heard from my window. That was until…

“Olivia! Come out and play soccer with your brother and me!” The devil’s voice called from downstairs.

I tossed around in my bed and looked at the silver clock on my nightstand.

8:03 A.M. Do I not get to sleep in on my last full day of Spring Break? Of course I had the weekend, but that didn’t count. Those days would be used to finish the project that I hadn’t even started.

“Olivia!”

“Dad,” I whined back, drawing out the name.

No, I’m not related to the devil, but ever since I’d stopped playing sports in middle school, the words “soccer” and “outside” had been considered swear words in my book.

“Come on, Livy. Throw on some clothes and come outside. You’ve been stuck up in your room all week,” Dad prodded softly, slathering on the guilt and using my most hated nickname.

Supposedly I’d liked it when I was two, but I was fourteen now. There was no need for little puppy names.

I grumbled and sat up. “Fine,” I growled at the wall.

And before I could properly wake up, I was out in the middle of our backyard waiting for my immediate downfall. The scene in front of me wasn’t a good one. One goal was set up on the overgrown grass, its useless mouth facing away from my house. My dad was a few feet away from it with my brother and a soccer ball.

“Okay now, Olivia is going to be goalie,” my dad started.

“What? No, I’m kicking!” I said, pulling my annoyingly frizzy and thick, black hair out of my eyes.

“I’m trying to teach your brother how to shoot a goal. I can’t do it if I’m in the goal,” he said sternly.

I hated when he did that. There was no need for logic this early in the morning, I thought. My brother, Nicholas’, face held a smirk that made me think it was his fault. I knew that he wouldn’t think twice about kicking soccer balls at my face. He had a strong foot too.

I glared at him and slowly made my way to the goal. I was too tired to really argue and my dad didn’t look like he was going to budge on this one anyway.

“Okay, as I was saying, Olivia will stand in the goal and Nick, try to get one past her,” he explained.

I waited for Nicholas to comment on how easy it would be, but instead he grinned evilly and asked, “Can you show me first?”

Oh no. I knew my dad was definitely up for that when his hazel eyes widened slightly. Although he could stand to lose a few pounds and his brunette hair was graying from age, my dad was still an athlete. And he definitely had a strong foot. My heart started to race and I shook my head.

“Uh no. I didn’t sign up for that,” I snapped.

“Just catch it, Olivia. I won’t hit it hard,” My dad sighed putting the spherical item of destruction down at his feet. “Now remember to hit it with the inside of your foot like this.”

I tensed up as he booted it with his foot. You know that saying, “I wondered why the frisbee was getting bigger and then it hit me”? Well, that was what went through my head as the black and white ball sped towards my face. Before I had time to think, my eyes shut and the ball made contact. It hit my forehead and bounced off my nose to drop on the ground. I opened my eyes, seeing stars, and I wondered why I wasn’t dead.

Then the laughing started.

“What was that?” my dad asked through hysterics.

Nicholas, being his usual comedic self, was on the ground rolling in the grass and laughing. I blinked again and again until my eyes began to tear up.

“I don’t know! Could you hit the ball any harder? You could have given me a concussion! What? Are you trying to kill me?” I yelled my voice getting louder and higher as my anger built.

My brother stopped laughing, his own hazel eyes widened.

“You were supposed to catch it, Olivia,” my dad said flatly.

“Catch it? Really? I would have broken my hand, against my face!” I snapped.

“You don’t have to be so melodramatic, Olivia. You’re fine; we were just having some fun.”

“Whatever. You guys are seriously messed up. I’m going back to bed,” I hissed.

I walked to the back door, opened it, stomped in, and slammed it behind me. I tore up the stairs and proceeded to slam my bedroom door causing a poster of my favorite singer, Eva Lynn, to fall from my dark teal wall.

I heard the door open and shut quickly. My dad called my name several times before giving up and walking back outside. I felt my head for a lump and found nothing. Deciding I didn’t have a concussion, I laid back down in my bed. As I closed my eyes a wave of guilt washed over me but I shook it off. After all, I shouldn’t have been feeling the guilt. I didn’t mean to yell at him; I was just so... angry! He made everything seem like it was no big deal. Whenever I tried to open up to him it always went the same way. He’d say something like, how it ‘wasn’t a big deal, Livi. Stop being so dramatic’. My mom understood it more. She said he just wasn’t used to teenage drama and working in the ER had him jaded or something.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling for a while. I wondered why my life had to be so obnoxiously normal. My mom was at work at the hospital and my dad would be too if he didn’t take the week off to spend quality time with us, meaning babysit us because he didn’t trust me. I had an older sister in college, Elizabeth, and a younger brother who annoyed me to death because he was my dad’s prodigy child. There I was stuck in the middle, wanting out. Starting to sound boring yet? Well it does to me. I wish I could just have one thing interesting happen in my life that would make me less of a wallflower.

I was tempted to call my friend Sam and rant, but she was probably in a good mood chilling on the beach in Florida and I didn’t want to ruin it. Plus, since I was the only one in my grade who didn’t have a cell phone, I could only use the downstairs house phone and there was no way I was going back down there. My dad was down there and I didn’t want to see him. If I did, I’d probably say some more words that would end up getting me grounded.

I tossed and turned in my bed and after about twenty minutes I fell back to sleep.

The next time I saw the green digital numbers on my clock they read four thirty-five. I had no idea how I’d slept that long. As my mind tried to process my surroundings in its groggy state, I heard the familiar sound of my mom’s heels clacking against the hardwood floor. I jumped up and opened the door.

“Mom?”

“I’m at the steps!” she called back.

I walked out into the hallway and something crinkled under my feet. I looked down and saw a white piece of paper. Picking it up, I saw a note was scrawled on it in black sharpie. Typical Dad.

Olivia,

We went to the beach, be back later.

Dad

“Where’s your father and Nicholas?”

I held up the note and walked down the steps. “They’re at the beach.”

“I see,” she said taking the note. She put it on the kitchen counter and gave me a hug.

“Missed you today.”

“Me too. Dad made me play soccer.”

“Ouch. How’d that go?” she asked.

A pain in the back of my head appeared out of nowhere as I remembered the ball making contact with my face. It hurt just as bad but wasn’t the right place.

“That bad?” My mom asked seeing my pained expression.

“Worse.” I said rubbing the back of my neck.

I proceeded to explain to her the happenings of the morning and found myself angrier than I had been when it happened.

“Ugh and it just gets me—Ow,” I winced.

The pain in the back of my head turned into a full-blown headache in less than ten minutes. Things around me seemed to blur in and out of focus.

“What’s wrong baby?” my mom asked, going into nurse mom mode.

She put a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. For some reason, that just made me more agitated.

“Nothing. I’m fine. I just need to drink something. I’m dehydrated,” I growled, turning away and grabbing a glass from the cabinet.

Everyone felt like this after a long nap, I’d convinced myself. They even had a word for it that I couldn’t remember at the moment. Like jet lag but without the planes. God, I hated planes. I filled the glass with grape soda and walked into the living room. Maybe some sugar would wake me up.

“Okay.” I could feel her eyes on me but her tone was cautious. “What do you want for dinner? I was thinking shrimp and pasta.”

“Sounds good,” I said in a daze.

I had begun to carefully place the glass on the antique coffee table with a coaster when everything went black. The last thing I heard was the sound of breaking glass.