CHAPTER FIVE

Within the four walls of her bedroom, she wished to make new sketches with her art materials. Such a feeling of eagerness quickly faded. The mood for sleep, the intense and horrific emotions within her heart came. She made sure to lock the doorknob of her bedroom and placed the heavy chair after the door. She walked to her bed, laid her weary body down, and stayed quiet as much as she could in fear that her impostor would enter her room and decide to do a crime on her, any crime that is possible at the moment.

A total of ten minutes have passed inside; boredom began to strike. Via now wanted to turn on the television inside her room to watch some cartoon shows. The noise that it might produce prevented her so. She was not in a good mood to read either a magazine or a comic book. Soon the heat became intolerable for her. She felt an excessive amount of sweat on her skin. Such appalling heat conditions evoked her to turn on the air conditioner. When she walked back to her bed, she covered her body with a thick and soft blanket and had realized that the air conditioner produced a noise. Such a thing frustrated her. Her laziness drove her not to stand up again and paid no attention to it any longer. She fell into a deep sleep, with no disturbance from the outside; that lasted for the straight five hours.

Evening came, around seven o'clock when her mother had returned home and saw the school bag, white socks, and black shoes thrown across the living room and the opened coke bottle and unfinished biscuits left on the dining table. She could hear from the doorstep the turned-on air conditioner inside her daughter's room. The overall clutter her daughter left across the living room had given her vexation that she walked to her bedroom, only to find the door locked.

Their house was small in size. There is only one living room that fits the complete setup of their sofas, a television, and a small coffee table. The dining area only had a rectangular-shaped table paired with four chairs.

The kitchen contains one cooking range, a sink, and a refrigerator.

The bathroom was small; there was no bathtub, only a toilet, one-person sink, and shower space. The laundry area was perfect for a washer, a dryer, and a sink. Two bedrooms could place one singular-size bed, a small desk, and a cabinet. It was built on a two hundred and eighty square meter floor area and had no second floor, a typical space for a middle-class family in their country. The smallness in size of their house has provided little privacy for the three-member family. One would hear the sounds of television from inside the bedroom. The exhaust fan could not prevent the smoke from the kitchen across the living room. As small as the house can be, they lived a financially comfortable life, able to afford to send their daughter to private education.

She went to the master's bedroom, reached for the house keys, and unlocked her daughter's bedroom door. She discovered the chair placed after the door; this irritated her more. Her displeasure with her behavior led her to grab the school bag, white socks, and black shoes and slammed it on the floor inside her room. This loud disturbance had woken up Via all of a sudden.

"I told you to be organized in this house! By the time you arrive home, put all of your stuff inside your bedroom. There's a reason why you have a bedroom. Now stand up, get your food from the table, and put it on the fridge if you're not going to finish them." Via heard her mother shouted angrily at her.

Via slowly stood up and walked to the dining room to clean the disarray of her leftovers and placed them on the fridge and with no noise to hide the frustration towards her mother's scream and quietly walked towards her room to avoid a longer sermon that might occur. While on her way to the bedroom, she saw her mother prepared a roasted chicken, boiled broccoli, cauliflowers, and carrots mixed and plain white rice on the dining table.

"Did you have dinner?" Her mother asked, still in an angry tone. Amid vexation that Via felt due to her unwanted scream, she slammed the door and instantly regretted the occurrence.

Her mother walked in loud footsteps towards her and yelled in a blaring voice, "Is this how the school teaches you to talk to your parents?"

Via was shaken more by the fear her mother's scream brought her than the witness of an imposter hours ago, answered with almost tears, "No."

"What should be saying?" Her mother was more in terror than before.

"I should have said yes or no," Via answered in trembling fear.

"Did you eat dinner?" Her mother asked again.

"No," Via answered immediately.

"Eat then." Her mother's tone has calmed.

Via walked to the dining table and filled her stomach with the dish prepared. Her mother has stopped talking and just watched the television in the living room yet. The previous occurrence had prevented Via from enjoying the delicious taste of roasted chicken and boiled vegetables.

"You don't understand. There was someone else in the house, an impostor, someone who look like me, the same uniform. It was her who answered your call on the landline. That's why I could not get out of my room. She was standing there..." Via attempted to have a clear explanation.

"Did you see this impostor before you make a mess or after?" Her mother interrupted.

"Before." Via lied confidently. "Right after I unlocked the main door, I was scared and..."

"It was probably your guardian angel punishing you for being messy in the house. And the voice from the call is the fallen angel to remind you to clean up your mess." Her mother laughed.

Displeased in the response, she went back to sleep as soon as she had finished her dinner. The morning came; Her mother woke her up around five o'clock in the morning. She had noticed that both of her parents were preparing for their departure from home as well. It was unusual as the parents would habitually leave home around ten to eleven o'clock in the morning for their work in the business sector. Her mother was in gray jeans and a blue and white sweater, preparing her red handbag. Meanwhile, her father was in loose dark jeans and a plain t-shirt, combing his hair in front of the hand mirror on his hand.

"Where are you going this early?" Via asked in curiosity as soon as she walked outside her bedroom.

"We have to reach somewhere around six, so we have to leave earlier before your school service comes. We will be home late tonight, so the breakfast is there in the dining, I already ironed your school uniform last night after you slept. Take a shower, then wear your underdress, eat your breakfast, brush your teeth, wear your uniform, and then wait quietly for your school service." Her mother said while she checked on her handbag the things she should not forget to bring like her wallet, cellphone, emergency medicine for headache, and other things, "And for your lunch and dinner, open a can of sardines, there is enough rice that will last for lunch and dinner. There is some bread and peanut butter. Don't drink coke anymore. I'll use them for the guests tomorrow."

Via was surprised because the last sentence sounded familiar to her. After a little while, she paid no heed and walked straight to the shower. The cold splashes of water prevented her from the whisperings of her parents regarding their business matters. It took her at least fifteen minutes to cleanse herself. When she stepped foot outside the bathroom, both of her parents have deserted the home already. The house remained quiet. Soon, fear began to form inside her as her impostor may appear again later. She put herself underdress such as her bra, underwear, the thin fabric of the white sleeveless shirt, and black cycling shorts and had herself seated on the chair in the dining area. She had nuggets, sausages, fried eggs, plain white rice, and some milk chocolate drink. After her breakfast, she brushed her teeth. She walked around the house to search for the impostor but failed to find it again. Afterward, she later put on her complete school uniform. And a thought came inside her.

She checked her lunch bag to see what her mother prepared for her; two pieces of banana, five pieces of Hansel biscuit packs, a water tumbler, and a tetra pack of Chuckie. Her parents would not give her a money allowance like her classmates for her food will be prepared, she had a school service to fetch her and drop her off at their house; making the money allowance not required. After she had seen her prepared recess food, she grabbed one piece of Hansel biscuit pack and ate them.

Around six o'clock, her school service arrived in front of the house gate. She grabbed her school planner and gave it to the school service rider as she said, "I'm sick." and she gave her rider the school planner. Her school service rider laughed it off and immediately drove the vehicle. Their school required their students to possess a school planner in which will be used to write reminders for home works and upcoming school projects.

The students could easily track the deadline for the dates were on each page. The absent student must hand their school planner to another classmate to be aware of the homework and projects.

She felt a little happiness over a success that she scanned every room, the living area, the dining area, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the laundry room to see if the impostor will appear again. To the goodness of the situation, there is no longer any. She reached for her newly bought art materials from her bedroom and sat herself down on a chair at the dining table. The first package she opened was the pencil art as she believed this would be the easiest to use because it was similar to the use of a regular pencil; it happened that these pencils are colored.

She roamed around the house to look for any object that she could draw. She was curious about her parents' bedroom because she was never allowed to go inside it. When she opened the door, she observed their belongings. She found the hidden underneath bed storage where her parents placed the albums, credit check papers, credit card payment papers, important documents such as birth certificates, medical records, business transactions, properties papers, and a fiction book. She reached for the fiction book that had the cover of a white woman with blonde hair, fair skin, pointed nose, small lips, rosy cheeks, and blue eyes dressed in 16th Century English fashion.

She brought it to the dining table and began her sketch. For the first time in drawing a lifelike person instead of a cartoon character, she had difficulty doing so that she realized that she had wasted five pages of her sketchbook, attempting to imitate the curve lines. It made her regret not using a regular pencil as an outline. She grabbed the regular pencil she used for school to create a drawing outline. However, she failed to draw a good start that she traced the characters instead for her guide. The result came out good but not perfect for the paper is not thin, unlike the school notebooks. When she had finished the outline, she started to use colored pencils and tried to copy as much as possible the position of shadows and the areas of darker shades and lighter shades.

She mixed a few colors as she tested it on the back cover of her sketchbooks. Although she was not perfectly satisfied with the outcome, she was almost joyful for such. The five attempts were bad guides of the characters with colored pencils; the sixth attempt was the one that started with a regular pencil as an outline and colored pencils for its shadows and colors. She observed the result. It was neither perfectly imitated nor close to it; the two eyes were not the same, the nose seemed flat, and the face shape was different as it was in the book. It was not bad for a beginner, at least not for someone her age. However, the drawing failed to come to her liking.

For the next practice, she used the oil pastel colors; the colors turned out too bright. She had trouble polishing the right areas of shadows and lighter shades. She only attempted one drawing using the oil pastels. But according to her judgment, it was way better than the previous artwork. She studied how many pages of sketchbook she had already used - six pages. The seventh page left a mark on the next page; it brought her downhearted emotions. Anxiety began to form inside her as she did not use all pages of her sketchbook quickly.

The practice took her at least two hours in total. What she did was she continued in tiny forms of sketches to save her papers. It went on for an exact forty minutes. The drawings progressed; she went to the length of combining color pencils and oil pastels crayons to achieve her desired result. She was still unable to copy the guide despite the effort that went on for another thirty minutes. Although she has improved on some parts, she was almost delighted - almost.

She ate her recess food, picked more fruits on the table like oranges and peaches, opened a can of sardines, and partnered it with rice while she continued her practice. She turned on the water dispenser for colder water and indulged herself more in food until she realized that she had used seven pages of back to the back of her sketchbook.

The interruption came when her school service arrived in front of the house gate to give back her school planner. To her surprise, there seemed to be no suspicion from the school. She went to continue her art practice. After a straight five hours of artwork, she rested her worn-out body and turned on the television for her amusement of successfully skipping a school day. She did nothing but proceed to her practice and watch on the TV until around six-thirty in the late noon when she began to clean her, clutters before her parents arrived. It was a joyful day for her; the enjoyment she received from her newly bought art materials had made her realized her appreciation for her parents despite their absence and constant screaming whenever they want to discipline her.