Chapter Text
There were just seven more months to go.
Seven months of high school.
Seven months of being ignored by Troy Barnes.
Seven months until she got into Harvard, or Yale.
Seven more months until she could finally move away from her mother.
Annie sighed, the pen in her hand tapping incessantly upon the notebook paper, once again reviewing the plan that she had made when she entered high school, the one that had been set for her since she was young.
She called it her dream journal, it wasn’t a particular one, there were no visions of her ideal future from her childhood, nor were there the films she envisioned while she slept; not that she did much of that anyways these days.
Her eyes screamed at her to close, to just rest, but she was too wired. The swirling thoughts and anxieties within her head would not cease long enough for her to slumber. She checked the clock again, 3AM, and she couldn’t sleep. Again. Just like the night before, and the one before that.
There was too much to do, she had the essay for Mr. Jones to write, and she had to study for the test on Friday for Ms. Patel, and she had to work on her scholarship applications, and she had to tidy her room, and….
And Annie could have stayed up the whole night and still not have enough time to complete everything she had to do for school, or all the things her mother asked her to complete. It was not enough.
The chaos in her head was drowned out by a soft voice in her head: It’s alright, you have time, you just need to sleep .
She hadn’t heard it in a while, that voice of reasoning, the calm dialogue that sounded like her. The voice that said plenty of teenagers don’t need to do all of this work and put themselves under such duress to become doctors in the future.
Annie looked back down at the journal, a dream journal should be filled with wishes and imaginations of a bright future where she is happy and content. Where she has friends and people who love her unconditionally. That is the dream she wishes that she could yearn for.
She loved when that kind voice appeared in her mind, the one that could quiet all the noise.
But that voice of reason was flooded in by all of the tasks she needed to do, and what her mother had told her that night: I don’t care how you do it, just get it done, or you are a disappointment to this family .
Annie closed the journal and wondered if once she finally made her mother happy she could properly dream.
But for now, she got out a pill bottle and started her essay.