“I’m home, mom!” Ink called. The door slammed shut behind her.

Ink’s mother emerged from the living room. A white, surgical mask covered her mouth, and her glasses had been replaced with a pair of goggles. “Hello, Ink,” she said from behind the mask. “How was school?”

“It was eh.” Ink peered around the corner. “Cleaning?”

Her mother nodded. “Yup. Heavy duty stuff. Here.” She handed her a mask. “I don’t want you to have a coughing fit.”

Ink put it on. It was rough and scratchy around the edges. “Thanks, mom.” Her voice sounded muffled. “I’ll be in my room.”

“All right, dear. You’re going to do your homework?”

“Yeah, unfortunately. I hate math.”

“And you keep reminding me of that, Ink. Don’t worry, you’ve only got two more mandatory years of it. Then you go to college and do some more.”

Ink rolled her eyes. “Whoop-de-doo. Looking forward to it.”

Ink’s room was on the second floor, the first door down a narrow hallway. She’d gone in and out of that room so many times, she was certain that the carpet had been rendered its flattened state by the tons of pounds she’d walked all over it. As she went up the stairs, she went over what she had to do tonight. It wasn’t much, but it was still something she didn’t want to do.

When she opened the door, she almost didn’t recognize the room. The bed, usually sloppy and wrinkled, had been neatly made, ironed, and folded; even the pillow cases appeared to have a new shine. There was the clear stench of shampoo filling the air; it smelled of lilacs. Someone had taken the liberty to dust Ink’s bookshelf to the point where it no longer had a dull, grey sheen to it. She wondered how much dust had come off. The books themselves had been straightened and rearranged alphabetically. All of her knickknacks had been straightened, now that she thought about it.

The sight made her head spin and chills run through her spine.

She stood in the doorway, the backpack slowly dropping to the floor. “Mom?” she called. “Did you clean my room?”

“I did,” her mother said. “Since you weren’t going to do it anytime soon.”

“It wasn’t that dirty.”

“I found five dust bunnies in the corners. And you only have four corner. I’d say that’s pretty dirty.”

Ink groaned. “But mom, I like it a little dirty. It feels more like me!”

“Well, I don’t. You’ll have to deal with that while you still live under my roof.”

Ink grumbled to herself. “What was that?” her mother called.

“Nothing!”

She went into her room and threw her backpack down. She closed the door behind her, and set to work “fixing” the space. She threw the covers off of her bed, crumpled them up into a ball, then threw them back on. She tore some books from the bookshelves and put them only slightly back in, then rearranged the other items to give the room a disjointed feel. She took a step back to admire her work.

“Ha! And they said I didn’t learn anything from taking Interior Design.”

Her eyes turned towards her desk. She sighed. “Guess that means I have to get to work, then.”

Well, she thought, maybe it won’t take that long. Maybe an hour at most.

With that in mind, she sat down at her desk, took out her books and binders, and set about torturing herself.

It took longer than she wanted to finish her math. Two hours had passed by the time she was done, and she still had to do some history and physics. Her mind was quickly becoming a muddled mess, dulled by the boring, black printing of some obscure instructions. Her mother had long since finished cleaning, and was probably downstairs cooking dinner. Ink could just smell her favorite pasta dish, and the thought of it made her stomach growl.

Her homework load did not let up for another half-hour, and when it finally did, she felt mentally and physically drained. For Pete’s sake, it’s the holidays. Why do they have to pile everything on during the holidays? No one’s gonna give a crap.

She shuffled her homework back into her backpack, then threw it against the wall. She leaned back in her chair and sighed. Her mind really did feel like mush, malleable like clay. She wondered if that was at all a good thing.

Guess there’s no point in stopping, she thought wryly. If I feel like crap now, I can’t possibly get worse.

In stiff movements, she reached for the tray under her desk and pulled out her laptop. It, too, had been cleaned by her mother, and was actually shiny under the light. She flipped it open and turned it on. A beep followed. She keyed in her password and was in.

The laptop opened the last program she had used—it was blank, still, just as it had been for the past few days. In a way, that terrified her; this great, big whiteness that stretched across her screen. Her fingers lay limp against the keys. Her mind was as blank as the page before her.

She got out of her seat and walked over to the thrown backpack, digging inside for her papers. She shuffled through her notes, frowning all the while, and made her way back to her seat. The ink had smudged slightly around some of the text, so some words were obscured. This didn’t bother her, though; she simply sat down, cracked her fingers, and let them rest on the keys once more.

Silence.

No ideas were forming; nothing imaginative was leaping out of her head. Stuck in a metaphorical molasses that felt all too real, she was quickly exhausted by doubts and worries. Her fingers danced and glided but did not press down or land strong enough to make music; that same blankness carried over from the page and her mind to her face. She was in an altogether different place; an empty place.

Ink closed her eyes and sighed. Forcing the words out wouldn’t work; it just made her head hurt. And waiting for the words to show up on the page wouldn’t work either, because she still had to type them.

She recalled a quote from one of her favorite authors: “Writing is easy. You go from Point A to Point B and on and on and on until you’re done.” If only she could get to A in the first place.

A long time must have passed, because suddenly, Ink’s mother’s voice broke her frustrated musings. “Ink? Dinner’s ready!”

“Coming, mom!”

Ink came out of her room, moseyed down the stairs, and headed for the dining room. She could smell the scent of pesto and chicken coming from the kitchen; her stomach kindly reminded her of its hunger.

“Hi, mom. Smells good.”

“Thanks, dear. Could you set the table, please?”

Ink put down the plates and utensils as her mother carried over the pasta dish. “Did you finish your homework?”

“Mmhmm. Can’t say I enjoyed it.”

“I don’t suppose you’re supposed to; work isn’t usually enjoyable.”

“Isn’t the trick to getting work done to convince yourself it is enjoyable, though?”

“If it is, then a lot of people mustn’t be very much aware of it.”

She set the dish down and they waited for a little while because the food was hot. Ink went to grab the water. She poured her mother and herself a drink. By then, the food had cooled just enough to start eating. Her mother gestured for Ink to start, so she did, taking a bit of the pasta dish onto her plate.

The food was warm and good and filling.Soon, her hunger had been satiated. They talked, about random things, mostly about the day. Her mother asked her how her classes were going. Ink was still struggling along in Math and Physics, but that couldn’t be helped. Ink asked how long it had taken to clean the house; only a two hours, her mother said.

Her mother then reached behind her, for the bureau, and brought a plastic case to the table. Opening it, she took out three pills. Ink furrowed her brow. “Medicine?”

Ink’s mother nodded. “I went to the doctor’s today while you were in school, and she gave me a new prescription. This is supposed to help with my high blood pressure.” She put all three pills in her mouth and took a gulp of water, scrunching as the liquid and pills went down together. “They still taste and feel awful, though.”

“Unless they’re grape-flavored, I guess that’s how they all taste and feel.”

“Pills are everything but lovely, that’s for sure.”

Ink wondered if she should write that down. Her mother was known for spouting strange but wise sayings every now and then; some lines were just too good to surely have come from her own mind.

They ate a little more and talked a little more, but Ink wasn’t really paying any attention to either the food or the conversation. She couldn’t help it. Even though the food was great and she liked talking to her mom, her mind was elsewhere. Neither high nor below, it was stuck at a terrifying middle ground, pulled by all directions, stuck in stone. It felt good to be in someplace familiar, and awful at the same time.

“Ink?” Her mother’s voice was strong enough to snap her back to reality; her mind had been wandering far. “How’s your story coming along?”

Oh, right. Her favorite topic of conversation.

“It still isn’t,” Ink said with a resigned sigh. “I talked to my friends today, especially the ones in a relationship, and they all tried to help, but nothing’s really resonating. I just freeze up when I see the blank document.”

Her mother took another bite of the food. “Any idea why that is?”

Ink shook her head. “Nope. I have all these ideas but I can’t transcribe them onto the page. It’s awful.” She swallowed the rest of her water. “I wonder if this is what being mute feels like?”

She took her dishes and went into the kitchen to clean them, then put them in the dishwasher. She took her mother’s dishes, too, cleaned them, and placed them with the other dishes. When she came back, her mother was still there. “It’s that bad?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. The worst.”

“Well, what do you have so far?”

“Nothing, really.” Ink sat down. “Just a girl and a guy are supposed to meet and fall in love. And dramatic things happen between that time. Like, really dramatic stuff. I don’t know.” She paused. “I have ideas; just not a story.”

Ink’s mother pursed her lips. “I know I’m not really an expert about this sort of thing. But… maybe you’re looking at it too clinically.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… writing is a deeply personal activity, right?”

“I guess so.”

“So you should make it sound personal. So… maybe, instead of just writing what you are being told love is or what goes into love, maybe you should give your own take.”

“But I don’t know anything about love!”

“But you know some things, don’t you? At the very least, you feel things.” Her mother shrugged and tilted her head. “Maybe that’s what you need to do, just to start. Add your own emotion, and not necessary the ‘love’ kind. Make it personal. Make it you.”

Her mom got up and took away the dish. “I’m not saying to discount everything your friends say, especially since they are in relationships. There’s validity in that. But I am saying that if you want to start this off right, then you have to write it as you would write it.” She paused. “But, then again, I’m not a writer. But I have loved before, Ink. And love is a deeply personal feeling, and everyone knows it.”

Ink was silent at that, left sitting in her seat as her mother put away the food and turned on the dishwasher. Then, as if fate itself decided to step in, her phone vibrated. She took it out and found a simple message.

“Good writing tells the truth.”

She put the phone away, feeling somehow different. Her mother was humming in the kitchen. She felt different, but not badly.

After she’d taken a shower, changed, and had settled in her bed, Ink couldn’t sleep. Her mind had stopped being mush for a brief moment, and ideas were pouring in and pouring out. She leaped out of bed, dove into her chair, and opened her laptop to the document.

It was blank, and despite the sudden influx of ideas, she still didn’t know how to start. But her mind was alight with the possibilities. There was something there; something she could grab and turn into words. She just had to find it.

For hours she sat there, at her desk, staring at a blank document. To an outsider, it would have looked like she was stuck still where she had been for days, mulling around in splooge and waste. And perhaps, she was, but for some reason, this didn’t bother her.

The clock struck midnight. The chime was like an alarm, a sign to start, and despite her drooping eyelids and slow breaths, she managed to place her fingers on the keys. They moved naturally, on their own, without her having to hesitate or even think about it.

Five words. Twenty-two satisfying clicks.

She fell in love once.

Ink powered down her laptop and went to bed. She dreamed vibrantly.