Ashlyn Joshi
“I never intended for this to happen.Will, this is going to ruin our lives. There is nothing we can do about it now.”
“What should we call it?”
“Maire.”
‘Maire Hart’
Maire could hear her parents arguing inside as she lay on her back on the terrace, admiring the stars above. “She’s just a kid!” “I had never wanted this.”
“Never did I want her.”
“Even though we may not have wanted her, you can’t treat her like garbage!” Maire exhaled deeply and stood up from her seated position. “The sky, the stars... all of it is a lie.”
The sound of birds chirping and car horns blaring startled Maire. On the roof, she was rolling around until she stood up straight. She got up from the roof and made her way downstairs to her room. She could still feel the tears from the previous night. She got dressed before going downstairs to meet her mother. “Good morning, Ma,” she said to which her mother sighed whilnodding her head.
She took a quick look at the dinner table and noticed it was empty.She sighed and left the house, but she wasn’t surprised. She walked with her head hung low, lost in thought, towards her school. “Boo! Hey Maire, What’s up? Why is your face so gloomy?” Carmel and Ariyaan, a few friends of hers, circled Maire. “It’s nothing”,she said.”Come on, Maire! You trust us, don’t you?”Ariyaan asked. “My parents don’t even treat me like a daughter at all; they never truly wanted to have me”,she said. “It’s as though I never existed in their lives at all”. “As if I were a mound of trash taking up room in their house.”
Ariyaan and Carmel looked at each other like they were about to burst out laughing, yet they kept their composure. “Maire, don’t worry! It’s going to be okay! “,she was consoled by Carmel and Ariyaan. While Maire was following behind in the group, the other two friends were heading in front. She finally felt loved and cared for by someone after hearing her only two friends console her.
She also felt as though she now had someone she could trust and love, but that feeling didn’t last long because she could hear others laughing and pointing at her as she walked through the school’s hallways. She approached her friends and asked them why people were making fun of her. Laughing loudly, Carmel exclaimed, “Look, everybody! it’s a waste of space and a piece of trash whose parents don’t even pay attention to her.” Everyone in her surroundings began to laugh, throw garbage at her, call her names, and do other such things. Maire was shocked and unsure of what to do as she stood there. The world started to spin around her. Without turning around, she hurried for the door and then headed home.
She smashed open the entrance to her home and entered to find her dad seated on the sofa in the living room. “What in the world?! You can- not enter my home in that manner, young lady!”, he said.She didn’t listen to a word her dad said and ran straight to her room and shut the door. She collapsed onto her bed and shut her eyes on the painted stars that covered the wall. Her mind was completely trapped inside, and all she thought about was the incident at school. She was ashamed, powerless, and frail. She couldn’t put her faith in anyone. She was in excruciating pain, but she was unable to cry. Her body forbade her from crying. Her eyes may have occasionally welled up with a few tears, but that was about it. She was unable to cry, and her sorrow persisted inside. “How am I supposed to attend school like this? How do I approach everyone? What made me trust those two? They seemed like my close friends; I’m so stupid!”,she kept thinking over and over again until she fell asleep.
Later, she awoke once more, but this time in an ominous location. A clock, a notebook, a door, and a sea of stars with a huge star in the center. She got to her feet, her body aching like crazy.As she scanned the space, the enormous star in the center of the ceiling caught her attention. She slowly approached the star that was hanging down and examined it. It resembled a massive brilliant white ball, but it wasn’t quite the moon.
The star seemed strange to her because it didn’t feel like any other star she had previously seen. She moved over to the notebook after that. The notebook seemed highly familiar to her. As she turned the pages, she saw a ton of drawings that she had created as a child. She also noticed the clock, which read 10:52. She finished reading the journal, then moved in the direc-tion of the entrance. The energy emanating from the door felt foreboding,as though it were luring her toward it. She hesitated a little, but as soon as her finger touched the doorknob, a loud beeping sound was heard. When she turned to face the clock, she saw that it read 2:21.
She passed out when she was about to walk out the door. She eventually woke up, or so she thought. It was still pitch black, but she could hear and feel everything quite well. She heard both her mother’s voice and another voice that she was unfamiliar with. She attempted to speak but was unable to do so because she felt as though something was preventing or suffocating her. She kept trying to speak but couldn’t get a word out. She also tried to scream and move around for help but couldn’t since she was stuck. She was paralyzed and unable to speak or move, but she was still able to hear and feel everything. The nurse said, “Ma’am, it’s been three weeks, and she still hasn’t woken up.How long will it be before she wakes up? My life is about to be ruined by this girl”,she heard what her mother was saying. “She could be in a coma for weeks, months, or even years, so please keep calm, ma’am.”, said the nurse.Her mother was sighing and groaning as she slammed the door before leaving the room.
Her heart ached as she felt her heart sink to her stomach upon hearing her mother say that. She believed that her mother genuinely cared for her, but she was once again mistaken in her beliefs. She didn’t even trust her own mother. She experienced mental blurriness and lost the ability to hear sounds from the outer world. She was once more lost in her own thoughts and in the threatening area. She collapsed on the ground after feeling her knees give out. Her heart ached even more as she began to sob in silence. “What have I done to deserve this? Do I not have enough to say?”,she was lying on the ground when the enormous star lit up and shone a spotlight on the sketchbook. She approached the sketchbook after becoming curious. She took it in her hands and turned the page. Up until she turned to the last page, it read:
“To get out of this space
Problems you shall face”
She narrowed her eyes in confusion as to the meaning of the riddle. She gave the phrase a long, drawn-out look.
Maire was eventually teleported back to her house. She was baffled when she turned around and saw her mother lying on the couch and herself leaving the house. Getting close, she called out, “Mom?” .There was silence. The dining table pushed her aside when she attempted to sit down. It was like she was a ghost.
She made several attempts to touch various objects in her home,but they kept pushing her away. She was restricted to going through the several entrances around She left her home and went after the past Maire. She was following Maire as she heard her speaking to her friends. She was furious as she saw the scene where she revealed information about her family to her “friends.” Her old self was far ahead of her, as she was thinking about how naive she might have been.
She soon arrived in her class, where Maire from the past was sitting happily at her desk. Maire was smiling as a result of being able to open up, but she knew exactly how it would end. Maire thought, “Maybe I can try to talk to her and warn her about the two’s shenanigans”. She approached herself and whispered to her about the two’s shenanigans, but alas, she was unable to hear her. She screamed and attempted to sway past Maire, but instead of getting Maire to pay attention to what she was saying, she was dragged inside her body. After experiencing a shock, she gazed around as though she had seen a ghost.
Did I shift into Maire’s body? This means that I might be able to stand up to the two bullies. But it won’t be simple; I’ll have to put everything into it. Later, as she was recreating the same scene as in the past, she asked the two girls, “What’s up?” “Why is everyone laughing at me?” Carmel exclaimed, “Look everybody! “It’s a waste of space and a piece of trash!” “Whose parents don’t even pay attention to her.” Maire took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are to tell everybody what I felt comfortable telling you. I considered you to be my close friends, and I trusted, loved, and cared for you in a way that no one else in this school could have ever done. Is this how you treat me, then? “You can’t go telling people that I’m a waste of space and a piece of trash while you yourself are messing with everyone’s heads,” she said, raising the intensity of her voice. “You manipulate every one of your pawns into thinking that you’re everything anyone could ask for, but you’re far from that.” You think you’re so amazing and perfect, but all I see in you is imperfection. All you do is partake in gossip and talk behind everyone else’s backs, and you say I’m the trash? You disgust me, Carmel. “and this goes to you too, Ariyaan”. With her speech, everyone was in awe, while Ariyaan and Carmel were left speechless.
She walked through the halls and out the door as fast as she could and hid behind the school. “Oh, my god. Did I actually do that”? “Was that me”? After that, she blacked out.
She eventually woke up in her bedroom. It was all dark and gloomy, and you could hear her parents fighting downstairs. She saw her child-self, Maire, at the age of 9. She was sitting on the floor, drawing something in her drawing book, and sobbing silently in hopes that her parents would not overhear her. She sat down next to her 9-year-old self and looked at her drawing. “What an amazing artist I was,” she thought to herself. As she was admiring her childhood drawings, she heard her mom thumping up the stairs and into her room.
She got startled and backed up further. “You can’t do this to your own child! “You can’t do anything to me!” her mom started screaming. “I don’t care about that damn child. “It’s useless to me.” “Will, it’s your child.” “Have some sympathy, you monster!” Her mother was sad, carrying young Maire in her arms. “Monster? You’re calling me a monster? Look at yourself before talking about me. You’re a woman. There’s nothing good about you. You birthed this child, and you were still no good. “You’re the monster here, woman.” Her dad threw a bottle at her mother as she fell to the ground. Maire felt as if she had to do something, but she couldn’t. She froze to the ground. She couldn’t feel any part of her body and couldn’t move. She want- ed to stand up for her mother, but she couldn’t. She could hear her mother sobbing on the floor of her room. She wanted to comfort her and be there for her, but as a faint figure, she couldn’t touch or feel anything as a faint figure.She saw young Maire approach her mother to check on her but be pushed away. She told Maire to leave. Young Maire, however, paid no atten- tion. “I told you to leave, Maire. I’m not having it. she said, but this time she aggressively shoved her aside. Maire made one final attempt to check on her, but her mother eventually started crying. “Maire, I warned you to stay away.” It’s entirely your fault! Stop trying to interact with me. Maire collapsed to the ground on her rear and was violently shoved down by her mother. The bottle’s glass shards were thrown at Maire by her mother. Maire sobbed hap- hazardly while she sat there, since she didn’t understand anything that was going on. Her mother finally came back to her senses once Maire started crying loudly due to her cuts. “Maire! Oh my god! I’m so sorry. “What have I done?” Her mother says this in shock and runs out the door.
She stumbles upon her dad and runs past him, trying to get to the door. “Larisa! Where are you going? “You can’t just leave the house like that!” Her father abandoned everything he was doing and began pursuing her. Her mom rushed downstairs to see that her dad was chasing her. She followed them both on an empty highway. “Larisa! “What are you doing?” “I’m sorry, Maire. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t have been a better mother for you,” her mom said while walking down the road.
She was explaining what she did with pure guilt and nervousness. She was fumbling over her words, and she couldn’t explain very clearly. “Will I hurt your child?” I hurt my child. “I don’t know what got into me; I just was really mad and—” Everything blacked out again. She again woke up in a different dimension, where she was falling into an endless pit, but there were stars everywhere. All the different kinds of stars and planets, including her personal favorites. She kept on falling and falling and falling down the hole; which never came to an end. After what felt like hours of falling, she fell into a bright white light, which burned her eyes. Just as she fell into the bright white pit, her life flashed before her eyes. Every single one of her memories, bad or good, were made into one little movie in her head for a few seconds. As soon as she finished her short film, an image of her parents arguing out- side appeared.
She gasped and frantically got up from her sleeping position. She looked around the room while she was out of breath. She could hear sirens, vehicle horns, and people crying from outside. One of the nurses walked in and looked at her in shock. “Excuse me, ma’am. What happened? “How am I here?” The nurse frantically rushed out of her room without asking any of her questions. Soon, the nurse came back with a doctor. “Hello Dear, “How are you?” “I’m fine, I suppose.” What am I doing here?” “Where are my parents?” “Well, you’ve been in a coma for about nine and a half years.” “With a sigh!”, the doctor said. “What?”,Maire asked with disbelief to which the doctor re- plied, “and I’m afraid your parents have met with an accident and will not be coming back.”
“What? she stutters. “I can’t believe it. You’re lying to me, right? You’re joking. There is no way this can be true.” The doctor lowers his head and dis- agrees. “This can’t be.” I didn’t just throw away my life like that. I could’ve done so much with my life. Where are my friends, my school, and my relatives? My everything.Did I lose absolutely everyone?” “We’ll give you some time to your- self, Ms. Hart.” “No. NO. I wasted half of my life trying to fix my problems with my family, my school, and myself. and this is what I get in return? This isn’t fair, is it, doctor? “My parents can’t just leave me like this after bringing me into this hellish world.”
