Neon (Ch.1)

Chapter 1-  The Seventh Night Without Her

   Another cold, gray, and rainy night, I was heading down to the kitchen for a glass of water and saw my father. I jumped silently into the laundry room and peered out to watch him. My dad placed his heavy elbows on the counter and buried his face in his hard-working and greasy hands. And he rubbed his eyes and shook his head to himself it seemed.  His hands then hovered over a picture of mom beside the few blue, silver, and empty beer cans. He stared deeply into this photo.

   The photo had my dad, mom, sister, our dog, and I when we went camping in the mountains. Dad and mom were standing up and hugging each other. Miles, my older sister, was sitting on a rock and holding her soccer ball in her crossed arms. I was on the dirt ground with our dog in my lap. It was a great time when we were there.

   A tear came streaming down from the corner of my dad's eye. I felt compelled to come up behind him, hug him, and say, "It is okay daddy. Life is a made of rivers, lakes, fields, forest, mountains, and more. We'll get on that mountain top, and we'll view the happiness all around us." I didn't do so; instead, I came out of the laundry room and slowly slid against the cold wall in the hall to the door of my overly filled room. I sulked down to the wooden floor.

 

    The dim night-light flickered, rain continued its dive to earth, and I sat there in the corner hugging my legs to the point my knees had touched my chest. I stared at my ceiling where my glows in the dark butterflies were and one soared down. My hand stretched over the soft slopes of clothes and toys to pick up the small and plastic butterfly. The cyan butterfly glowed so. I placed it to my heart as a memory of mom sheared my other current thoughts.

   "Mom, where are we going?" I asked in the back of the car.

   "To the dollar store," my mom answered as the car took a turn to the car lot. She easily parked our car and unlocked the doors. I ran to my mom's side and held her hand as we walked to the store. The bells rung once we came in. Chips, soda, candy, little toys, flowers, clothing, and etc. were in this little store.  I ran down the aisle of glowing and sparkling objects. Out of the objects there, I found myself picking up a package of glow in the dark butterflies.

   Later, I was placing the butterflies on the ceiling. My mom entered the bedroom, and she looked at the floor, "Neon, don't you think you should clean your room?"

   "What is there to clean?" I answered using a question. My mom just turned around and left the room. I shrugged to myself, "It looks fine to me."

   Thump-thump, I heard my dad tiredly walking down the short hall to his room. He headed to bed; finally, I thought he was going to never sleep. I hopped over to my bed and covered myself in my layer of blankets. I closed my eyes for a second, and saw my mom bursting through the door with her bags. Smiling, I knew thing were about to get better as the butterflies glowed brighter in my room.