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Short stories: Shadows

by Elizabeth Elia

Created on: October 09, 2009

Looking up from beneath her eyelashes, Whitney looked at the teacher droning on about whatever homework he had assigned the other day. Another assignment missed. Whitney smirked to herself, a thing she hardly does, as she realized nobody was paying attention. The sky outside was a brilliant blue, the sun a warm glow, and just a faint spattering of snow white clouds off in the distance. Whitney dropped her eyes back down to her drawing she was working on, a drawing of a night sky and a bright sun burning behind it. Whitney had been working on it all day, through all her classes, and nobody had noticed. People at school, people in general, had learned to ignore her. Who would want to pay attention to her, a random Freshman in High school? Besides, Whitney didn't want to be noticed, to be seen. She had too many scars, both physical and mental. Whitney bit her lip at the unpleasant memories and forced herself to not think of her adopted parents, Marrie and Tobias Harenfiher, or about the events preceding her being taken away from her parents about five months ago. Instead, Whitney added another layer of red to the burning sun she was drawing. It was looking pretty good, she noticed, and then the bell rang. Lunch time, great. Whitney heard the teacher call out to her to stay, and Whitney made sure to lose herself among the crowd.



Once she had her lunch, Whitney went outside to her usual picnic table, and awaited the arrival of the only person that she ever talked to, Lia Vendette. After a few minutes, Whitney heard Lia sit down and she looked up at her. Lia's silky smooth red hair clashed brilliantly with her bright blue eyes, and even more so with her purple T-shirt and denim blue jeans. The effect was beautiful, though everyone else disagreed. Whitney looked down at her sandwich as Lia looked to see what she was wearing. Whitney knew what Lia would see as she looked at her, her common mousy brown hair and eyes, her faded dark skinny jeans, dark blue jacket, dark makeup, and silver hoop earring's. Whitney knew Lia wished to know what was wrong with her, why she was the way she was, but, luckily, Lia was too nice too mention anything. Whitney looked down at her uneaten lunch again, "I'm not eating this stuff. You want it?" Whitney asked Lia. "You're not eating lunch, again? Please don't tell me your starving yourself, you must weigh what, like, 80 pounds now!" Lia said, accusingly. Whitney shrugged her shoulders and as she did so her jacket caught on the picnic

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