Imperfect | est. 2015

22. The Little Dinosaur

       I wanted to sit there and hold her hand while she continued to tell me all these wise stories. But I fell asleep beside her before I got the chance to hear what I wanted to.

      Connor must've carried me up the stairs to my bed while I'd finished off the night with some sleep and swollen eyes. I didn't know that crying and shaking could be so exhausting. 

        "You awake?" Connor whispers from the edge of my bed. I was just beginning to pry my eyes open a little. He welcomed me with a smile and tucks my hair behind my ear, "How'd you sleep?" He asks me while I checked the room again if Addison was still gone. I had forgetten that she left, especially after what had went down that night. "Decently...," I murmur and began to sit up. I rubbed my forehead with my palm while my vision was still tired and groggy, "is Addison still gone?"

        He leans on his elbows on my mattress while I adjusted and tied my hair back up.

"She didn't come back last night. She figured she could leave this one alone to pass."

I flinched back in puzzlement, "Leave it alone to pass? Leave what alone?"

Her half-smiled for a moment, "She knew you needed some time alone with your family... so she went home."

That's when I started to quickly shake my head. There was already a tight doubtfulness in my gut about imagining how her family took her reappearance. 

I sat up, moving past him and threw on a pair of my slippers, "Is Grams okay?" I say, suddenly feeling a burst of energy. He was quick to respond, "She's fine... but... what are you doing?"

"What did Addison say before she left? Did she just get up and leave?"

Connor looked up at me from his place on the floor and shakes his head, "She was first to wake up and help when everything started happening... then a few minutes later, she was getting stressed out and I guess she just wanted to let it be just you and you're family."

I squinted, nearly frusterated, and focus on the little markings made in pen of the doorway from when I grew up. 

I was almost ready to storm out the door... first to see if Addison was okay with her family over the night... and to throw out my anger that I felt due to all the confusion.

But the little dashes on the door stopped me.

There was a short mark near my knees from when I was a toddler... then the markings went up an inch or two by the year. And as they drew up the doorway, the space between them got wider. Until the last dash was marked as my fifteenth birthday...

I never knew why I had given up all my creativity once my parents died... I knew that I would go through a phase and drop it for a while... but I had no idea that I would let it pass for two years... unless it was gone completely.

But I missed marking a new dash on the doorway every year...

I stopped myself from feeling upset for a moment.

And I could see Connor staring at me from the corner of my eye. 

I lifted my hand and moved my thumb over the surface of the wood, as if I could feel the marker where it was written. But I couldn't. 

I read each of the dates in my head from top to bottom. And there must've been just enough for me to feel like collapsing in memories.

"What are you doing?" Connor asks me, quietly and starts to stand.

I didn't look at him... or bother to answer his question. I just counted each of the lines and forgot all about Addison for a second.

The line that my thumb was just moving over was my thirteenth birthday... I could picture it like it was a flashback.