Today mum and dad have decided to take me out on a celebratory lunch to congratulate me on making the honor roll again. Today's the day I speak to them about what my school counselor suggested to me the other day. I tap my fingers along the piano keys as I wait for mum to finish her makeup. Dad and I have been ready for about ten minutes now, but we don't mind waiting.
"Calum, you know we're proud of you, right?" My father asks. I don't say anything, I just smile at him. He doesn't say anything else and neither do I as a few minutes pass of me playing my cover of Skyscraper by Demi Lovato. As I get to the bridge, my mother enters the room.
"Are you boys ready?" She asks, grabbing her purse.
"Yes, mum," I tell her standing from my stool. My dad and I both make our way over to my mother and we follow her out the door, into the white sedan parked in our driveway.
When we arrive at the Sydney Harbor Restaurant, we tell the hostess our name for our reservations and she shows us to our table. Mum's heels clack against the wood floor. Mum and dad sit across from each other at the table and I sit on an end in between them. We each order our drinks, mum a red wine, dad some champagne, and just water for me. Once we've all decided on what we want to eat and order it, I spark up the conversation as we wait for our food to arrive.
"So Mr. Faust and I were talking about my options for college," I begin. They both look at me when I speak. "He said that I can lots of options here in Australia, but he really thinks that I should consider my option to go abroad; I got a scholarship offer at Juliard for my piano skills in New York, out in America."
"Oh," my mother says, reaching one of her hands out, covering mine, "oh, Calum. Look, you know that your dad and I, we want the best for you, but America..." She pauses to take a look at my dad before looking back to me, "that's just really far away from us."
"Calum, your mother is right," my dad agrees. Mother retracts her hand from mine and I use both of mine to speak my next sentence.
" I know that, I do. It's just that it would be really great for me. Besides, nothing is certain, but they are having a visitor's tour next weekend for possible upcoming freshman and I'd really like to go. Just to see if I like it or not," I tell them.
"Calum, we know it would be a very nice opportunity for you, it's just-" my mother begins to explain another reason why she doesn't want me to go but she's cut off by the arrival of our food. There's no more college talk as we eat.
After lunch mum and dad take me out shopping and I get some new books, as well as a few new sweaters. We then all go get haircuts, mum also gets her nails done and dad and I go to the tattoo parlor next door and joke about what tattoos we should get. The joke is between he and I because we both know that neither of us would ever put ink on our bodies. We meet mum back out at the car when we've all finished.
It's six o'clock by the time we get home so mum just throws a frozen pizza in the oven for dinner. After we eat I take a shower and spend two hours practicing more piano before I go off to bed.
When I wake the next morning, mum and dad are both gone and they've left me a note on the counter in the kitchen
Calum,
we had to go into town to run a few errands, we should be back around lunch time. Lots of love xx
Mum and dad
I'm not that hungry so instead of making breakfast I head into the living room to watch some tv. When I flick the screen on, the news is running so I watch it. I've learned that they've finally found that girl that went missing two months ago and her body has been chopped up and thrown into a crate, there was a bank robbery at the local bank where several people were shot, and there was another hurricane in Kenya. I turn the tv off with the remote. This is why I don't like the news, it's always so depressing.
I go to my room and grab one of my new books I bought yesterday and return to the sofa where I spend most of my day reading. I have four chapters left in the book when there's a knock on our front door that brings me out of my book's universe. That's when I realize that it's beginning to get dark out and the noise I've been hearing for the past two hours is my stomach growling. I wonder where mum and dad are. The knocking at the door sounds again, causing me to actually get up this time and make my way over to the door. When I do, there's a police officer.
"Are you Calum Hood?" He asks, "the son of David and Joy Hood?"
"Yeah.. Why?" I tell him.
"Your parents were involved in a shooting at a bank robbery today. Son, your parents were shot and have passed on earlier today," he says. Suddenly I can't speak. The air leaves my lungs and I don't seem to care. There's a loud and prominent ringing sound in my ears and that's all I'm able to hear even though I can still see that the police officers lips are moving. My knees fail to support me any longer as I fall down. Finally the ringing stops and all I can hear are my own screams as I lay, curled in a ball on the floor. I scream for what feels like forever until finally my vision turns black and I see nothing.
