Felicity: The Unwanted Emotion

~Chapter 3~

My mind is racing. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck. Of course you kick your newfound friend's father in the groin, just your luck. You have to be less aggressive when dealing with strangers. I scorn myself while driving down the highway on the way home. But I was not always this aggressive. When I was younger, I was an angelic child and loved being nice to everyone and said "hello" to strangers and loved helping. But that was a very long time ago.

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7 years previous

An explosion queued the start of the worst day of my life. Followed by smoke, flame, and gagging I stopped, dropped, and rolled to the floor. I screamed for help, hoping that I would not be consumed in the flames.

"MAMA! MAMA! DADDY! HELP!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, that were filling fast with smoke and I started wheezing, struggling to obtain oxygen. I heard the familiar sound of the ambulance and fire department come our way, and I hoped for the best. All of a sudden, I heard a blast on my door, followed by a metal clang sound that I could recognize anywhere, my father's metal baseball bat. I was relieved.

"Darling, where are you!?" My father panicked, followed by a gut-busting cough. The smoke was getting to him too.

I stood up and ran into his arms and we didn't say anything as we tried to escape the third story of our house. By now, the staircase was burning, but we still had to try to get out of the house. We did not want to die today. My father pushed me forward and between coughs he said, "Go Daniella! I will be downstairs soon. I have to get your mom and Alex first then we will all meet in our group spot!"

I cough back "OK,"and run down the stairs, praying that it holds my weight and doesn't burn beneath me. Three minutes later, I see my my mother and brother Alex outside our burning home, but where's dad? I see my mom crying and ask slowly "Wh... where's dad?"

My mom looks at me with melancholy eyes and starts crying all over again. Something has happened, I can feel it. I look at my brother Alex, he looks at me and what he says in a little over a murmur tears my 10-year-old heart in two.

"Dad....didn't make it. Part of the third floor fell on him. Dragged him to the bottom of the cellar. Dad's dead."

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I step out of the car and regain my train of thought. Sometimes I wish I did not think about him. No matter how hard I try not to, I end up crying every time. My father and I were really close and I miss him everyday. I look down at my phone: 11:58 p.m. Great, only 5 hours to eat dinner, get homework done and sleep. I might as well put on a brave face tomorrow and pretend I'm not a zombie. I turn the keys in the door, lock my car, and walk in with my backpack that ways like an elephant. Then, I heat up the leftover lasagna that mom cooked and spread my homework across the dining room table, getting ready to settle in. Suddenly, I hear a tap from the window that is adjacent to my left arm in the room. I know it's my friend Matthew, he loves coming over at the middle of the night and mom seems to be totally ok with it. She's one of the good moms, I love her to death.

"What's up Matt?" I asked. I was almost positive that he had a story to tell me about his latest drug-phased adventure he probably had a few hours ago. Matthew graduated a few years ago and was now 21. I swear, since that day he turned twenty-one, he has never been sober. But my family still loves him to death because he has manners and cares about everyone.

"Hey, little Danny," he says in a long drawl and a cocky grin on his face, "you are not going to believe what happened to my guys and I tonight."

"You can tell me all about your latest sexual escapade after you get my lasagna out the microwave."