zara = "SO intense."

"making things right" is something of a follow-up to this...
(never mind the former was written 1st.)
and similar in my inability to ever write the actual spanking--what is that ABOUT?!?
i dunno.
well, you have been warned...
~~~~~~~~~~

The clock said Zara should be home from practice in the next 10 minutes, so Jackie quietly got up from the table and left the kitchen.
Sighing as she picked up the box her 9-year-old son Issac had mistakenly opened, she headed up to Zara's room to wait...

~~~~~

While not her daughter by blood, Zara was no less a part of her than her other three children.
She had been since nearly the moment she walked into Jackie's therapy office some 3 years ago--a tiny but fierce 9-year-old girl, with dark, soulful eyes that had seen too much.
So too much.

Her life thus far had been comprised by a long string of traumas that forced a small child to be the quickest of studies in the skills of survival and self-protection.

Zara was quick and witty, tremendously guarded...and SO intense.
That intensity was expressed as strongly in her competitive dominance as a young gymnast, as it was in her precocious capacity for coping by means of self-destruction.

Zara’s mother had disappeared when she was barely more than an infant.
Had she simply left as Zara had long been led to believe?
Died?
Foul play?
It still wasn't clear...

Her alternately abusive and unconscionably neglectful father was a high-ranking member of the mob.
And when he died an inevitably violent death, murdered by his own brother-in-law no less, with a little girl hiding in an upstairs closet hearing every word and sound...

Jackie didn't even have to think about it--she brought Zara home that very night...

~~~~~

i was having one of those days.
extra shitty with more on top.

overslept 1/2 hour.
sprinted to get ready and to school.
managed to leave half my books at home--
including my notes for the history test last period.

oh, and my uh, lunch, too.
and the (fat-free) fro yo machine in the caf was broken.

throughout the day, i tripped on the stairs twice.
managed to be late to 3 different classes, including fucking history!
snapped for no reason at a good friend--
and 2 other people i don't even know.
and on and on and on.

school day finally over, i couldn't get to the gym fast enough.
sweat it all out, nothing to think about but vault, bars, beam, floor.
the gym has always been my haven, where i could leave all the shit behind, just take it out on the mats.

dale is in one of his 'moods'.
lauren just stares at me stomping out of the locker room.

i'm going full out from minute one.
in that fierce, don't-fuck-with-me zone where everything is just BAM, rock.fucking.solid.
lauren keeps telling me to 'slow down z', 'take it easy z', 'i said 6 routines, not 10, z'

dale finally yells, "Get OUT, Zara! NOW. And chug a bottle of chill, would ya?!."
i shoot him poison daggers and prep for another tumbling pass.
GODDAMMIT ZARA, I SAID GET OUT. NOW!

i let loose a whole string of obscenities and a few choice gestures as i stomped back IN to the locker room.
well, fuck THAT.
there's still an hour left of practice.
so i went running.
for an hour.
came back to get my bags + pick up my bike, playing oblivious to the stares.
and sprinted the ride home.

i'm still stomping and muttering and kicking as i enter the garage, and through the door to the kitchen.
if i had been paying any attention at all as i grabbed a diet soda and slammed the fridge door before stomping my way up to my room,
i would have seen taylor and issac staring wide-eyed...
and noticed that jax was nowhere in sight.

if.

i bang open my bedroom door; start flinging my stuff on the ground.
and scream.

jax is there, sitting on the big cushiony rocking chair, solemn and calm as can be.

"jesus fucking porca madonna!!!
che CAZZO you doing here?!?!?
trying to give me a goddamn fucking heart attack!??!?!?"... ... ...

- posted by unquiet @ 3:08 PM