I Wanna Be Free, I Wanna Be Loved

"Bye Alejandra!" I called out to my friend before getting in my car. We had just finished putting together our midterm project for biology and I was pretty confident that we would get at least an A-.

"Wait Hannah! You forgot your notebook!" Alejandra said, running up to my car.

"Oh, thank you! Wouldn't want to lose that! It has all our notes from this entire school year!" I threw the notebook down on my passenger seat and waved goodbye to Alejandra. I checked the screen on my cell phone which I had silenced while we worked and saw several missed calls from an unknown number. I dialed it back and a woman answered:

"Is this Hannah?" she asked.

"Yes?" I replied.

"Oh thank god. My name is Linda, I'm a social worker. You should get home as soon as you can so we can talk"

"Are my parents home?"

"I feel it would be best if we didn't discuss that over the phone. I would appreciate it if you could just find your way home immediately"

"Yes ma'am" I said, hanging up the call.

My hands were shaking as I sped out of the school parking lot. On my drive home I ended up getting stuck behind an ambulance that seemed to be following my same route. when I got into my neighborhood, there was a firetruck and a group of police cars parked at the end of the street where my house was. The neighbors were also standing outside their houses and looking upon the scene; all of them eyed me when I parked my car and got out. I screamed when I saw our house up in flames and the paramedics loading my mother into the ambulance that I had just followed.

"Hannah?" a woman asked, she must have been Linda. She rushed up to me and gripped me into a hug. It felt somewhat awkward to be recieving sympathy from some social worker but I understood her concern.

"Linda, what happened?"

"Well it appears your mother was enjoying a glass of wine when--"

"Impossible! My mom has been sober since 2008!"

"Well she relapsed" Linda continued "She was very drunk and apparently decided to take a bubblebath with candles. She fell asleep in the tub and a few of the candles fell over and ignited a towel and the fire spread from there. Your father came home and foolishly braved the flames. The firefighters found his body burned in the living room. He's dead, Hannah"

I broke down in tears and fell to the ground. My dad and I had one of the calmest father-daughter relationships. We talked about football, baseball, or school. Now who would I get excited with on Sunday morning? Who would ask me about my latest math scores? Who would take me snowboarding? I prayed that mom would be okay, the ambulance had rushed away while the firefighters worked to douse the flames.

"Hannah, would you like me to take you to see your mother?" Linda asked. I remained silent, curled up on the ground in the fetal position and sobbing while all my neighbors stared at me and whispered to each other; I had one dead parent and one in critical condition and my neighbors were talking shit? I was allowed to react this way!

"Come on" Linda said, helping me up off the ground and loading me into her government-issue Toyota. I got in the passenger seat and she offered me a box of tissues before driving me away from my still-burning home.

"What about all my stuff? Did any of it survive?" I asked.

"I'm not quite sure" she replied "You'll have to talk to one of the insurance company representatives. With the way those flames were engulfing everything, I wouldn't expect many things to be saved but you'll most likely get a check to replace all of your belongings"

I started crying again, blowing my nose into tissue after tissue and tossing them on the floor of the car, not caring where they landed or the fact that my snot was all over this woman's vehicle. I owned nothing; all my awards for writing, my clothes, my autographed posters, all burned to a crisp. I didn't have any money to replace anything yet, not to mention I didn't have anywhere to live.

"Hannah, let's not focus on material possessions right now. Let's go make sure your mom is okay" I hadn't even noticed we were at the hospital.

I sat motionless before finally getting out of the car and following Linda into the hospital where we were told that my mom was in intensive surgery. Linda asked if I needed her to wait with me but I declined her offter, yet she stayed anyway. I couldn't sit still, I paced around the waiting room until five in the morning when I was told mom was still being operated on and that I would get a call from the doctors as soon as she was out. Linda thanked the nurse and took me to a hotel where I would be living until a more permanent situation could be arranged.

The room was so bare; boring walls, plain bed, small bathroom, and a TV. I didn't have any clothes to fill the dresser with, didn't have a toothbrush to put in bathroom, I had nothing. I used my phone to check the balance of my bank account, which contained a hundred and fourty seven dollars. I ordered food from hotel room service but didn't end up eating it. I couldn't even watch TV or do homework, all I did was cry myself to sleep.