One Day: A Fictional Narrative

Nevaeh squints her eyes and looks passed me; I know she hasn’t heard a word I’ve said. I was used to this by now, though. She’s been like this the past couple months. “Have you gotten to talk to your mom lately?” I change the subject. “Huh?” Her eyes drift towards me lazily. She looks as if she had forgotten I was there. “No, not lately. My therapist says I need to spend more time working on myself and less time worrying about her.” I smile slightly and look at the ground. “Yeah…yeah she’s probably right.” I study the ground to distract myself from the silence that follows my words. A few whimsical pieces of grass have sprouted from the gap in the sidewalk. The grass looks happy, like it has yet to realize that it has grown in the wrong

She’d end up with some twenty-two-year-old guy, doing dope in the bathroom, maybe gotten herself arrested a little sooner.” Nevaeh words are bitter, like she is tired of talking, tired of pretending that things can ever go back to the way they were.
“I’m having a birthday party this weekend," I say. “Sorry I didn’t send you an invitation, I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come, I know you visit your mom on weekends and everything. You can come though, if you want. All the girls are sleeping over, and Jolene is going to steal us a bottle of her parent’s wine. It’ll be fun.”
She does that thing that she always does when she’s uncomfortable: pulls wet strands of hair from her mouth, twirling them around her fingers. She started doing this when we were younger because she thought it would make her hair curlier, now she does it mindlessly.
“Oh yeah, your birthday is the 16th right? Wow…that was yesterday.” She twists the blonde strand so tight around her finger I think her hair will rip, “I’m sorry I didn’t even think to get you anything…but yeah sure I’ll see if I can come.”
“It’s okay if you can’t, I understand,” I