The Thread and the Needle

I was six years old when it happened.

I was in the backyard, under the shadow of the tree in which I had taken refuge so many times before when the windows of the house simply snapped.

Screech. Screech... Boom. It sounded like a cannon. Really loud, really scary, and just as vicious.

Small, deadly pieces of glass were blown all over the place, some even reached where I was sitting under the tree, hissing by my ears like some sort of pissed off snake.

For a moment, I was too surprised and stunned to register it completely. Just what and how that had happened? What had caused it? And... And. Just. What!?

My moment of complete confusion was snapped short when I heard the cries coming from the house: Rosalynn, Grandma, Alaric and his friends were inside the house.

I regained mobility over my frozen limbs and jumped to my feet. But my knees felt shaky and weak and I almost crumbled down if I hadn't braced myself and slouched messily in the tree, my heart hammering wildly on my chest, my eyes wide and incredulous.

Alaric and his friends were the first ones to come running out of the house into the backyard (wailing, I need to add), followed by Rosalynn and Grandma. Grandma came last, being in a wheelchair and all.

Her eyes were wide. Wide but not scared. Instead of scared, (as I realized some time after the incident) they had a wild light in them. A wild, greedy, smart light in them. Those were the eyes of someone who knew what was happening.

When her eyes landed on me (standing dumbly by the tree, eyes wide and scared and incredulous and breathing shallowly and looking like I was going to pass out at any moment), they sharpened and narrowed into slits.

I looked at her and saw understanding in her eyes. But far from reasuring me, it made me shudder, made me so uneasy it became hard to simply breathe.

Right at that moment, when I saw her eyes on me, I did not knew what scared me more: the explosion or the way she was looking at me.

The police and the ambulance and even the fire department arrived in our front door in matter of minutes. By then, Alaric and his friends were jerking around, pushing each other and laughing and making fun of each other for screaming "like a little girl when she sees a bug" and the neighbors in a wide radius were outside, peaking through the windows or even standing outside, watching as the police, the paramedics, and the firefighters rushed about, coming in and out of our house.

The neighbors to our right were talking with Rosalynn over the fence and some kids in bikes had stopped in the street to chat with Alaric excitedly.

I just watched it all in a haze. (In fact, the next ninety six hours were a blur passing right before my eyes.)

The paramedics moved about, checking us but aside from me (I had some cuts in my forehead, my arms, and even my neck) no one was injured at all. My cuts were shallow and didn't required much assistance; some desinfectant and a few band aids later and I was apples.

When the police asked us what happened, we had no idea. They had been calmly going about in their businesses when they simply had been godsmacked by the exploding windows. Mostly, Rosalynn and Grandma talked and Alaric kept going on about how he had been nearly hit by pieces of glass that passed milimeters away from his eyes. I just muttered something about me being outside when the whole thing happened and that I hadn't been able to see much. But my heart was beating wildly in my chest, my pulse jumping like a kangaroo all over the place.

When I was able, I moved away from them all and just hung in the background, trying to become as invisible as I could. I was good at that.

All the while, grandma watched me. It was hard, ignoring her when she persited on glaring holes through my skull. Why was she watching me? Why was she looking at me like I was some sort of specially interesting frog that needed to be disected and studied immediately? When this kept going on for over half an hour, I looked up and glared back at her. Her eyes meet mine. It was like beign slammed against a steel wall, all coldness and roughness and no mercy at all.