The Latchkey Kids

1 Meet the Latchkey Kids

"I am freezing to death, it's so cold. Seriously, I am going to be a frozen dead body stuck to these stupid steps and they will have to pry me off with a crowbar and thaw me out just to bury me."

Madison is standing outside the locked door to her house. Around her, the world is covered in snow and ice. It is very cold despite the bright sun, possibly the coldest day of the year. She is fumbling in her parka pockets for the key, shivering with the cold. Her mitts make it hard to feel for the small piece of metal.

Madison is a slight thing, average height for the girls in her class, but skinny enough that they sometimes tease her about it. It's friendly teasing, not meant to be mean.

"Oh come on key, where are you?" Her breath hangs like a cloud in the air, each breath adding a new cloud of vapor.

"I had my key to lock the door this morning." She tries the door again, just in case it is somehow unlocked. Again, the door is still locked.

Feeling a surge of fear and hopelessness, Madison fumbles through her pockets again. "I can't find it."

She has the urge to dump her backpack out all over the steps, but that would be embarrassing. "Seriously, nobody does that except crazy people," she thinks.

Madison looks around, hoping no one sees her. At the same time, she hopes someone does, that they come and help her.

Taking off her mitts, she tucks them between her knees, the cold biting immediately at her fingers. Her hands hurt from the sharp bite of the cold without the protection of her mitts, a mix of burning pain and numbness. Her fingers won't cooperate. She fumbles in all her pockets, one after another and digs through her backpack again, breaking down and pulling stuff out and dropping it on the steps.

"My key is gone!" Tears burn at her eyes, but she is determined she won't cry. Someone might see.

"What am I going do?" Madison moans. "None of the neighbours are home and I have no way to get in." She looks at the house hopelessly. "I wish there was a way I can break in."

"If my parents would let me have a cell phone," she groans, "I could call them." She leans against the locked door, cold and scared and alone. The urge to cry is growing.

"Today is my first day going to school and coming home on my own and I completely blew it."

Madison has been looking forward to this day for three years as she watched the older kids come and go with a freedom not granted to mere children. She is finally a 'tween' between being a kid and a teenager, who has to come and go to school on her own, spending hours without adult supervision until her parents come home because both her parents work. Her twelfth birthday was just last week.

"I was looking forward to today. Finally no more daycare. No more being treated like a little kid. And I blew it." She was so excited all week, eagerly waiting for this day to come. She felt so grown up but she was nervous too.

Her mother's words ring again in her head, the constant reminder replaying over and over in the most annoying way. "Don't forget to lock the door when you go. Don't forget your lunch. And do not lose that key or you will not be able to get back in!"

She had repeated that so many times that it made her crazy. Madison got mad at her mother, thinking she was treating her like a child. She is a tween, not a little kid. Next year she will be a teenager, thirteen.

Now her mother's words are mocking her.

"My two biggest fears, and I would never tell them to anyone, are missing the bus and losing my key. And I lost the key on my first day." She sags even lower against the door in despair.