The Karate Kid

Chapter 3

No….No...no.no.no.no This is not real. This can’t be happening. I feel all of the color drain from my face as the tears start to cascade down my cheeks. I reach for the door handle, opening the door and walking out into the hallway. At this point, I have no idea what I’m doing. I am just letting my legs take me where they want to go. I find myself knocking on Daniel’s front door.

When he opens it, his eyes go wide at the sight of me, and he immeadiatly pulls me into a warm hug, not caring if my tears stain his shirt. He pulls me over to his couch where we sit down and for the next few minuted, y head is buried in his chest and i feel his hand stroking my back and arm reassuringly.

“You okay?” He asks worriedly after a few minutes of silence.

“N...no…..My mom-just d-d-died..” Is all I can manage to say between sobs.

I look up to see his face with an expression that I can’t quite read. He was sitting silent and wide-eyed, staring off into space, as if remembering something from his past.

“You can stay here as long as you n-need, okay?” He says, breaking the silence. I can see a tear escape his eye and I figured that he has lost somebody too.

“T-thanks….I have n-no idea what I’m g-going to do now…” I reply to him, shakily, and for the first time realizing that I really don’t have a place to live.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks me.  I nod. And spill.

For the next hour, I find myself telling him about all of the good times me and my mother had, and all of the laughs we shared together. I told him about my past, and about my dad, which i never really tell anybody about because it is an emotional subject for me.

Daniel even shares a lot about his past with me, and I find him shedding a few tears here and there, remembering the loss of his dad, and how he wasn’t there to say goodbye, just like I wasn’t.

He offered to let me live in their apartment with them, but I only agreed to if I had no other good options.

A little bit into our conversation, his mom came in, and I told her the whole story. She was in on me staying with them, too.

We talked for a long time, and before I knew it, I found myself drifting off to sleep, wrapped in Daniel’s arms on the couch.

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When sleep released me from it’s warm hold, I found myself back in my own apartment on the couch in the living room. For a second I expected mom to be in the kitchen making breakfast, but then the memories of last night flooded my thoughts.

Then I realized that I have nowhere to stay, since mom was my only ‘legal guardian’. Dad is nowhere to be found.. Heck, he might even be dead, too. Just thinking about how I am all alone now made tears come into my eyes. Both of my parents left me to live the rest of my life alone… Now i know that I will never be the same after this. Part of my heart was taken along with mom last night.