"Annie is coming back today," Kyson grumbled. The small group stood on the front lawn of Kyson's home.
"Oh my God, like Fattie Ann?" Vanessa giggled. Kyson nodded, rolling his eyes. It was only Kyson and his best friend who stood there first, but the girls came and crashed their conversation.
"For good unfortunately," Kyson scoffed.
"Why for good?" Ethan asked.
"Lilah died," Kyson rolled his eyes again, his brown eyes shimmering with mischief, "now she's going to demand to be waited on hand and foot because of grief."
"Lilah?" Peggy asked.
"Annie's mother," Ethan answered Peggy's question, "who's picking her up?"
"Supposed to be mother, but you know her, she's not going to. I'm not, so I guess some cab driver," Kyson shrugged, "should be here anytime now."
As Kyson said that a taxi rolled up to a stop on the front of the house. Peggy and Vanessa were waiting in anticipation.
The taxi's yellow door opened as a young woman got out of the taxi, she wore a light blue summer dress, her pitch black hair wafting around her face as she made brief eye contact with the group.
Peggy gasped as she saw Annie, "that's Fattie Ann?" She scoffed, jealous of the transformation that Annie had went through after three years apart.
"Ahh she's still ugly, Peggy, don't work yourself up because the b*tch is skinny now," Vanessa laughed.
Kyson and Ethan took their steps forward as Annie paid the taxi driver and grabbed her suitcase and bag out of the back seat.
"Kyson!"
"Ethan!" The girls whined, upset that the boys were there to help Annie instead of mocking her from afar like they had been. Kyson and Ethan continued to walk, ignoring the huffs and whines from the woman behind them.
"Annie," Kyson said.
"Kyson," she nodded to him in acknowledgment.
"How was your flight, Annie?" Asked Ethan who took the bags out of her hands.
"It was fine," she mumbled as they made their way to the front door.
Ethan dropped Annie's bags off infront of her old bedroom door, "get some rest, Annie," Ethan offered her a kind smile.
Annie gave Ethan a small, polite smile accompanied by a nod. In the three years she was gone, Ethan had grown up into a handsome man.
His black hair tousled from the wind, his green eyes ever so piercing. His build had only gotten bigger, broad shoulders a nice mass of muscles, not overly strong like a body builder. But subtle as of to say 'I work out to look good, and maybe protect a few damsels in distress.'
Annie had always liked Ethan, unlike Kyson and many other kids in the town, Ethan had always treated Annie with respect.
Annie didn't know why Ethan didn't follow along in her torment, especially seeing as the main abusers were on the front lawn with him, chatting like best friends. Annie didn't dwell on it long as she opened the door to her old room.
The purple walls a reminder of her childhood, many things in the room hadn't changed, other then the few boxes in the corner. Annie shut the door behind her and let out a shaky breath.
Annie deduced that Margaret- her step mother, and her father, were not home. So it was only her, and her former tormentors. Anxiety filled her bones as she took a seat on her old bed.
She looked around her room, taking a deep breath she stood again and opened her suitcase. She started putting some clothes away as she played some classic rock music from her phone. Singing lowly to herself.
Once her clothes were put away she took a quick bathroom break before entering her room again. Forgetting to shut the door behind her.
Annie pulled a box onto her bed, one full of the few paintings she had made over the years. Landscapes to portraits to some interesting phycadelic paintings sat in her bed. She looked over then contently, wondering which ones were going up on her walls and where.
Annie picked up a painting, one she made a year after she moved. A woman in a white dress that clung to her body, swimming up to the surface of the water, the only limb poking from the surface of the dark water was a finger. The woman's dark blue hair wafting around her face making it hard to see her features.
The painting was simple, the brush strokes each telling a story of a girl struggling to break free from the clutches of water. Annie felt the painting had many meanings, one of self discovery, one of fighting for life, and one struggling to break from the clutches of the pressure those put around her.
Every few months her therapist told her to paint from her heart, from how she felt in that moment in time.
And at the one year mark, this is what she painted. The artwork sleek, and beautiful. Each brush stroke was deliberate in her emotion.
"That one should go right above your bed," a deep voice rumbled from the doorway, making Annie jump and look in the direction of the voice.
"Did you paint it?" Ethan asked, interested in seeing more of these paintings.
"I did," Annie nodded before turning her attention back to the painting, setting it down with the others on her bed.
Ethan took a few steps inside her room, looking at each painting that lay on her bed. "You don't have any particular aesthetic you paint, interesting, any reason why?" He asked.
"No, I just paint how I feel," Annie mumbled looking up at Ethan, she was wondering why he was in her room. He had never been inside it before. "Any reason you're here?" Annie stammered realizing what she said was a bit mean, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that-"
"Don't worry about it, Annie," Ethan waved her off, "well I came here to tell you were ordering pizza, your parents won't be home until late tonight, you still like meatlovers pizza with Pineapple?"
Annie stammered, stunned that Ethan remembered, or even knew in the first place- her favourite type of pizza. "Y-yes."