Abnormal

Chapter 4

The door front door shut behind us. 

"Well, aren't you going to explain?" Mom asked.

"I already did," I said.

"Don't be rude." Mom said.

"I wasn't," I protested. 

Jo interjected her thoughts, "Wow you're dirty! Why was the policeman there? Did you get to see a fire?"

"Jo, why don't you go get a bath," Dad said.

"Nooo, I want to listen to Vivvie!" Jo protested, stomping her foot and scowling.

"You go get your bath right now or you won't be seeing the TV tomorrow," Mom said.

"Nooooooo! I'll do it after dinner!" she screamed with a hiss.

Seeing how this would escalate badly, Mom and Dad ignored her for the time being.

"Genevieve, would you please explain, slowly, what happened?" Dad asked.

Then I noticed Spencer at the top of the stairs, curiously waiting for my answer.

"Like I said before, I went out on a bike ride, I got up the big hill and was riding down it, and a truck sped towards me and over onto my side of the road, so I swerved to the side but in doing so I lost my balance and landed on the ground. As one might be after nearly getting killed, I was shocked, and so I sat there in the grass for a minute. Apparently, that same truck must have crashed into another car and hit a tree, because a few seconds later I heard another car pull over, and when I was about to get up and see why it had pulled over, police cars and fire trucks galore came rushing down by the street. I went back over the hill and saw a big firebomb, the truck run into the tree. The driver must have died."

"Jo, go get a bath," Mom ordered to the wide-eyed sister. 

"No." she refused.

"Go get in the tub, Jo," Dad said.

"No!" she said again.

Dad took her by the arm lightly. She kicked him. He screamed. She snarled and tried to punch him. He shouted.

One violent scene in a day was enough for me. I ran upstairs and plopped down onto my bed just as I heard Mom squeal the kind of squeal that normally indicated Jo had bitten someone. Slamming doors, more squeals on all sides, unintelligible wailing from Jo... this would go on for a while. It had been a long day. I popped in my earbuds and tried to tune out the noise, but the shaking floor from the slamming doors--the house was old and brittle--wasn't tune-out-able. 

Burying myself in my fluffy white down covers, I cried. It was one thing to see the kind of devastating things I had seen that day happening to strangers. It was another thing to see the pain and heartache and anger and wrath in your own family, under your own roof, in your own dining room. The tears poured out, my sobs surfacing with them. Forgetting the current state of my hands, I tried using them to wipe the tears away. It stung terribly. I cried some more. 

I could fall off a cliff and nobody would care. Mom was never satisfied with my academic performance. Dad and I never spoke a word to each other anymore. They didn't ever pay any interest in my life, didn't encourage me or cheer me on, didn't congratulate me for the successes I made on my own. Spencer was the only one who was remotely interested in my life, and he would be moving off to college and moving on with his own life soon. They didn't care about me. 

Stupid truck, stupid driver. Should've taken me along with them to the great abyss of nothingness. Anything'd be better than this monotonous misery of my life. Why not? Why couldn't I join them? It's not like anybody would miss me. What was the point in life anyway? I was just a no good nobody doing nothing important, and nobody loved me anyways. 

The stinging of my hands seemed fitting, a physical pain to match the pain I felt inside. Maybe someday somebody would see the pain and heal my broken heart. But not now. There was no one to hug me, no one to embrace, no arms to rest in... just a cold, dark world with me trapped inside it, longing for a way out. 

"Why won't you fix this?" The words floated off into the air, unreceived or unanswered. Which it was, I couldn't tell. "Won't you send someone to love me? Won't you give me just one friend? Won't you give me back the family I used to have?"

Whatever. I knew he existed, but it didn't make much of a difference anyway. He had his own plans, what did I matter? As if he'd even care.

The sadness was so deep, I felt so raw and so empty... and so alone. 

Digging further down under the covers, curled up in a ball, I continued to cry until there were no tears left.

"Come down for dinner!" Mom called up the stairs to Spencer and me. Facing them was the last thing I wanted to do, but in order to avoid suspicion, I obeyed orders and made my way downstairs to the dinner table. Seeing stew on the table nearly set me off again, but I managed to maintain an appearance of normality.

Jo, having apparently returned to a state of sanity by this point, sat down in the chair next to me. Spencer sat on the other side of me, and Mom and Dad sat across from me. Once the food was dished out, they began eating in silence. 

"Well did you want to hear the end of the story or not?" I asked. 

I realized this may not have been the best idea when I noticed how weary my parents looked and how grumpy Jo was. 

"You're fine and no one's in trouble so I think we've heard all we need to hear," Dad answered.

I swallowed my food and tried to keep from tearing up. Embarrassing myself was a common occurrence which always led me to feel as if I was the biggest dork on the face of the earth, a feeling commonly leading to--you guessed it--tears. 

Never in my life had I so enthusiastically eaten my stew as I did then, trying to accomplish the task as quickly as possible. I was interrupted with Jo questions and was promptly reminded to "not be rude" after my prompt answers. Once the trial was over, I escaped and fled to the bathroom where I would finally clean up my mess of a self--the outward part, that is. 

With a sigh of relief after one of the longest days of my life, I turned the knobby thingy and put my hand under the faucet to feel the hot water as it filled up the cast iron bathtub. Ouch, yet another bad idea. The water was excruciating against the raw skin. So much for a relaxing bath. The rest of me went in the heavenly tub of warmth and I rested for a few moments before embarking on the journey of bathing with hardly usable hands. Somehow I was successful in not screaming, though the pain was really that bad when my hands met the soap.

After the long and arduous process was done, I grabbed a new towel--not sitting in the aforementioned pile of old towels--and dried off before putting on my splendiforous flannel alpaca pajamas. Hey, we all need a little happiness in life, and if alpaca pajamas can do the job, I'm not judging anybody for them. 

Finally, I searched around in the cabinet for some bandages. Little band-aids weren't going to do the trick for this mess. It took much scrounging around, but eventually, I found something that looked about right and wrapped my hands in it (leaving my fingers free, though, of course). A little stiff, but it would do. 

While I was dealing with my hands, I realized my head hurt and had been hurting ever since I got home. Who knows, maybe I did get a concussion. I wasn't very dizzy, though, and exhaustion was understandable under the circumstances. And I certainly wasn't going to go whine to my parents about it. Perhaps a quick trip to the kitchen for some Tylenol would fix the issue.

A few minutes later I returned to my room and sank down in the bed yet again. The quick kitchen trip had used all the energy left in me. It wasn't even nine o'clock, but I was ready to go to sleep. Just before I was getting up to turn the lights off, I heard the terrifying sound of a knock on my door. I was hurt that my parents didn't care enough to want to know what had happened, but I really didn't actually want to explain it all. This event was one that would be better tucked away in the corners of my mind and reconsidered later on when I had reached a safe distance away. I didn't want to be called upon again to remember it. The knock knocked again. I got up reluctantly to answer it.

Spencer stood there. "Hey... I just wanted to make sure you're all right... I mean, I didn't hear the whole story, I just saw a police car in our yard then you marching in all covered in dirt and grass... What was I supposed to think, you turned into an environmentalist and got arrested for disturbing the peace with violent mud-throwing protests?"

"Haha," I said, "Yeah right." 

"Really though," he said. "What happened? I was kinda worried. You are my sister and all, you know."

I recounted the events of the day over yet again, concluding, "And no, the dirt and grass decorated attire was not intentional."

"I didn't think so," he grinned. Looking down at my hands, he added, "You sure you're okay? Looks like you got scraped up pretty bad..."

"I'm fine. Yeah, my hands sting and I have a little headache and I'm utterly exhausted, but it's nothing too terribly out of the ordinary. Really, I'm fine," I assured him.

"Okay then, I'll leave you to go to sleep then if you'd like," he said. "But if you still feel bad tomorrow, you should really tell Mom and Dad."

"Nah, I don't want to bother them. They've got enough to deal with with Jo being a crazy person." I said.

"Genevieve..." he said.

"Only if I really think there's a problem. Spencer, I'm big enough to take care of myself." I said.

"I don't know about that, you're still... what, four foot ten?" he teased.

"I'll have you know I'm five foot one and a half!" I said.

Spencer got serious again. "I'm glad you were able to get out of the way in time. I don't want my sister smushed. Be careful, Viv, okay?"

"Sure," I said.

Finding this answer adequate, he turned the lights off at my request and walked away. 

I laid down again and pulled the covers up over my chin. My headache was too bothersome to fall asleep, so I listened to the silence instead.