Hush

Chapter six

I stopped to look around before I went inside The sun cast a shimmering glow on the frost covered fences. The uniform houses stood proudly behind the gates with their crisp well kept lawns I looked down where a dandelion dared  to sprout in the eight by eight square of green near the front steps leaning on the stone slab for support its roots, shallow. My eyes scanned the suburban paradise just as the sun began  to melt the stiff grass once more and I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.

Crayola didn't object when I wrapped her in a towel and put her in her cage near the heater. I  Fished in the laundry basket for some socks but the only ones I found were purple and yellow polka-dots I was shivering after walking around outside barefoot And then I did something I'm not proud of. I picked up that pair of socks with their incredibly shiny bright pattern that looked so ridiculously ironic against my white T shit and navy blue sports shorts, And I, put, them on.

A mans gotta do what a mans gotta do.

I checked the time on the kitchen clock, half past noon by now My parents and Sophia must be on there way to the safari exhibit.

Three good things about being home alone are one: you're home, two: you're alone, and three you can go everywhere your not supposed to. Places that no one ever said were "Off limits" but if you tried to walk in while everyone was home they'd be all like "What the heck are you doing?" I start with Dad's office.

There are some dads who are commonly referred to as sports dads the ones with countless trophies and sons who are on the football team who scream at the players on television as if they can hear them, you know the type. And then there are those I classify as business dads ,with their sharp suits and detached polite attitudes; But then there is my dad who doesn't fit under any one category I listed or any other category that others might fall under.

My dad is a turtle dad.

I'm dead serious, if collecting turtles and turtle things and being unhealthily obsessed with anything to do with turtles was an Olympic sport he would be the champion. I know it sounds dumb but The turtle tank  that contains his two turtles Charlie and Lola takes up half the wall in his office. Every piece of supplies and decor that you can imagine being turtle themed and even the stuff you cant imagine being turtle themed, is. He wanted to expand his massive collection to the living room but Mom drew the line, and he can only have turtle stuff in his office. You probably get the point now so I won't go into further detail.

I walked into his office and out of habit closed the door behind me, there was no one else in the house but the ominous feeling that someone could walk in while I was snooping around wouldn't leave me. Beneath a cluster of crumpled turtle sticky notes a few official looking documents and a pamphlet  lay open white pages bright and bold the only things in the room that dared to not be a shade of green.

My eyes hastily scanned the document on the top of the pile checked boxes and lines of fill in the black questions with information scrawled in his handwriting a dates and numbers preferences and behaviors, age and grades, and a name, my name. My eyes returned to the top of the document looking for something I had missed,  an admission form it said in the bits of words and phrases my frantic mind was able to catch hold of while my gaze darted up and down the paper, and then I saw it and focused on that word and forced myself to read slowly and painful the stain on my pride in black ink, fount twelve, Times new Roman. North Creek  institution specialist Saul, Adonan  Psychiatrist blah blah blah a list of his qualifications as if any number of years in college would tell him what went through my mind. I stiffened and fought the urge to scream that feeling the sudden lump in my throat the dull pang in my chest and the breathless moment when my haert skiped a beat, the same feeling I got while looking down the barrel of a gun. I snached the images of those words off the paper and processed them again and again through my mind words like comfortable, safe qualified, therapy recuperation. and again and again realization struck me like a bolt of lightning. My hands rose and graped at the object that caused their distress ripping those words, empty words into fragments of the chilling reality that lay before me on a stack of monochrome sheets. 

The pamphlet one among many that littered the desk was the same North creek on the admission form. The admission form that could be easily replaced and filled out again. My shoulders sloped and I let my head bow forward as if the wait of the situation; my tearing up parer had not resolved. Had been placed upon my neck. I recalled my mornings venture outside, the cold ,the man and his dog the awful polka-doted socks, and now this. This just as I was being to feel as if there was hope for me, as if the darkness that had swallowed me might still spit me out again. Betrayed and confused I stumbled out of the turtle office and into the hallway. Stupid tears escaped their prison I had locked so many times and cascade down my face the mindless response that formed in my mind filled my head casting a looming shadow over all other  thoughts, something I had had already realized about life, something I had already been told, a lesson that through experience I had already learned. Its not fair.