Our Friend, Ted - Second Draft

Chapter 2 - Christi

I remember rolling over onto my side and checking the clock next to my bed. My bedroom was dark and quiet place normally, thanks to being located in the corner of the house on the second floor.

That night it was 11:40, more than three hours after mom and dad had sent me to bed.

But that night, the echoes of their shouting match still made it up to me a floor above them. This was what life had been like, every night, for nearly a month and a half.

School, then home, then dinner, then bed time, then fighting. Really really loud.

Echoes and shouting and anger. Anger was the worst of it all.

I wish there was something that I could do to make it stop. But I can’t.

I know because I have tried.

I have tried to cry myself to sleep, little soft sobs filling my bedroom as tiny wet droplets moisten the top of my blanket and pillow.

I have tried to pull the covers up, right up top, over my ears, and all I could hear was nothingness. And I would relax and let a deep breath in, and then the fighting would hit again, and even the covers could not keep it out.

I could wish for them to stop, for them to eat together at the dinner table with me, like we always had. But it never worked.

I could do any of a million things, and it wouldn’t stop it.

They would keep on fighting, and there was nothing I could do about it.

All I could do was stay in my bed every night and wish and hope that it would all stop one day, that one day it would stop and that my mom and dad would be back to who they were and we could be one big happy family again.

That’s what I wished for every night in my bed there, when all I could hear was yelling and anger reaching for me through the floor, telling me how this was my fault that they were fighting. That this was all because of me.

And their fights reminded me of the beach, because it would come in waves. There would be loud yelling and then waves of silence, as though they were downstairs listening to hear if I could hear them.

And just as I found myself about to drift off to sleep, their voices would raise in volume until I could hear it again and that was all that I could focus on.

And that’s when I would lie awake in my bed at night, wishing and hoping that I would be able to find a friend.

Because I didn’t have any, not really.

I did, I used to, just a few months ago. But that was before all the fighting. Then I had friends from my fifth-grade class, like Angela and Kimmy, who would come over to my house and play dolls or Legos or frost cupcakes with my mom.

And then one day my mom had yelled at me. Angela and Kimmy and I were playing a game, hopping on the couches and chairs in the living room, and trying not to touch the carpet.

None of us wanted to die. Because the floor was lava.

And then the phone rang and my mom came into the room and answered it, then turned away from us.

Angela, Kimmy and I kept jumping up and squealing with delight, our lungs tired, exasperated, joyful shouts and breaths all in one.

“Stop jumping on the furniture this instant!” my mom yelled, suddenly turned back to us, her hand cupped over the bottom of the phone.

Angela and Kimmy stopped and started crying. Their moms weren’t like that. But mine wasn’t either.

And when I realized that, I started to cry, too. Because it was all my fault. My mom was angry, and it was my fault.

But now it was just me, just me and my blankets. My wet, soppy, tear-stained blankets.