Just Hold Hands

Chapter 4

"Theo, come watch the news!"

"Mom, for the last time-"

"Now, Theo! It's important!"

"My essay is important!" Theo's throat hurt from the yelling. Her hands were shaking.

She trained her aching eyes back on her screen, and went back to typing. If she just finished this paragraph, she could go to sleep. She was so close. Catherine walked in and turned off Theo's harshest overhead lights. Her hair was down but she was still dressed for the day, still in her new cardigan and favorite lace-lined shirt. "Mom said she wants you to go downstairs."

Theo fell off her chair, yelling some garbled exclamation.

"Message received. Good luck."

Catherine disappeared, and Theo crawled back onto her chair to go back to working. As she was finishing up her last sentences, words away from getting her glorious eight hours-

"THEO!"

Theo let out the largest yell she could and slammed on her keyboard with each letter. She decimated her touchpad and her finger as she slammed the button to turn in her essay and crawled into bed, shaking. Still in her clothes, she felt herself crashing, and resigned herself to sleep. Those magical eight hours.

Unfortunately, Theo did not wake up eight hours later. She woke up maybe forty-five minutes later, blinking in the sudden harsh lamp light as her mother stood over her like a phantom.

"Theo, please, you need to see, you need to see." She clenched her reeling eyes as her mother pulled her out of bed and led her downstairs. "Theo, you need to see."

At the stairs, Theo opened her eyes. She saw Catherine at the feet of the stairs, wrapped in a knit blanket, staring up at them, wide-eyed. She looked so young.

"Mom," she whispered, "what is it? What's going on?"

The television was still on, flashing headlines and reports that Theo was too tired to quite make sense of, but filled her stomach with a tight feeling regardless. She gleaned enough to understand that the aliens were firing at cities, some guy from her state knew alien secrets, and that she was supposed to be very afraid. At some point her mother started crying, and when her mother cried, Catherine did too. Theo doubted that she was crying for any reason besides their mother, but amidst the sounds of explosions and rapid journalist speech and soft sniffling, Theo passed out within hours of being dragged to the couch.

She awoke some time past dawn, the gentle morning light and bird song filtering in through the carelessly open windows pulling her to waking. The television was still on, replaying the same terrifying headlines from the night before. Theo carefully extracted herself from her family, her arm trapped under her sister and her mother's arm around her. She turned off the TV and tiptoed across the room to close the window. She didn't close the blinds, though. There was no way she was going back to sleep, so she might as well stay awake.

From the kitchen, Theo could note two heads poking out from the couch: her sister's curly blonde hair dripping over the couch's arm, and her mother's sagging ponytail trapped against the cushions. Theo swallowed as she felt a rush of anger towards her mother. Catherine should have spent the night in a bed. Theo should have spent the night in a bed.

She got out a pan, her favorite egg pan, and threw in a slab of butter. She quickly swirled it around and turned down the heat, letting it slowly melt as she cracked some eggs into a bowl. Theo took a deep breath and relaxed, focusing on the small motions. Crack, pour, crack, pour. Some milk, and she whisked.