Nothing like him

Part 8

I sat up in a room. My room. From my childhood. It was the room I had in my parents' mansion. The barbies all sat along my shelf, right above the stuffies and under the stuffies were my art supplies. The ocean theme of my room walls made me smile as I counted out all the painted mermaids that danced on the wall opposite from my bed like I used to when I was little. 1...2...3...4...5. They were all there.
My closet door was open revealing my variety of colourful clothing, it looked like a rainbow lived in there. I looked around more of my room, walking along the wooden floors, hearing every footstep. Thump....Thump....Thud.. the floor was hollow under my foot. I kneeled down to the ground and pried open the hollow wood panel, and it all came back. My secret hiding spot. I'd hid everything in here. Notes from boys, my diary, a bag of candy. Anything I wanted to hide from my parents. I reached for the diary as it was what I had been most drawn to.
I flipped to the first page;
Dear diary, May 11 2007
Today I am 7 years old. My mom bought me this as a birthday gift so I decided to use it as my diary. All my friends talk about their diaries and I realized I never had one. From what I understand it is something you write all your thoughts and secrets in. Something private for only you to see. The thing is I don't have many secrets. My mom always yells at me to tell the truth so I do. My mom yells at me a lot. Sometimes I feel like she doesn't like me because of how much she yells.
Dads always at work doing his own thing so I barely see him. And when I do, he never wants to talk. Mom always says my dad has another wife, but I don't think so. Dad just works a lot to keep this house running. Anyways, enough for now.
               -Mariana Rosabel Sinclair

I had forgotten that I wrote this. I wanted this book. I flipped through more pages trying to read them. Until I hear footsteps. Familiar footsteps. Angry footsteps. And they were coming for me. I quickly threw the diary back into the hiding spot and closed the floor up in fear. It wouldn't go in properly. The footsteps turned into stomps, like a March toward my bedroom. I panicked and fought harder to close the spot. As I heard the doorknob turn I fought back tears and tried to push and shove the floor panel in before the angry parent walked in.
The door swung open and I squinted my eyes shut so hard I started seeing colours. And then.......

I woke up. In my living room. In my apartment. I looked around to see that Dean was still out on the balcony typing on my laptop and drinking my wine with a smoke in his hand. While I remained curled in a ball on my couch. I felt a tear fall and quickly wiped it away. It was a dream. It was only a dream.