I waited for Mom on a bench behind the front doors. I pulled my bike inside to avoid more water damage to my stickers. It was a pointless attempt as my Skywalker sticker had already began to peel off. I temporarily fixed it with a glue stick from my backpack. Then I began the wait.
My mother was a good mother. She used make big fancy breakfasts on Sunday mornings and took the family on adventures in the country. She used to participate in movie marathons with my big brother Chase and my dad. She played in the adult softball league and encouraged me to play little league. We used to practice for hours in the backyard, and afterwards she'd make me a drink. Sometimes a smoothie, or a hot chocolate, and depending on the time of year she'd make the best hot cider. She used to hold the family together with her impossibly large assortment of band-aids and the cheesiest calzone on the block. Now she doesn't really speak much. I'm afraid of what she will say to me now.
I see the headlights of her minivan and proceed to go outside. It's raining harder now, as if an ominous sign for how my day will go. Like crap. I pop open the back of the car and place my water logged bike inside, then I climb in shot gun.
"Hi Mom," I say. I turn to look at her. She looks straight ahead. And nods.
Nothing more is said on the way home. She pulls into the garage and turns to me. I swallow a lump in my throat.
"I don't want any more trouble from you, okay," she says."Enough." And that was it. Not even another nod.
I don't know why, but I guess I was hoping for a lecture. Or maybe a request for an explanation. Or even just instructions on how to take care of my eye. Or silence. Like always. But I could hear the disappointment in her voice. And I didn't want to stick around to hear anything else.
I turned my head away from her and grabbed my bike from the back. Then stomped inside. The numb throbbing in my head beckoning tears. I pushed it back. I want a movie, now.
I throw my backpack aside and rush down to the basement, my haven. The basement is a single room forever dark as the lights are stuck in dimming mode. In the center of the room there is a well worn couch and an accompanying ottoman with a flat screen TV directly in front and a popcorn machine to the right. The left wall holds shelves upon shelves of movies, from classics like Snow White to more recent films up to 2012. The year dad died. I needed a less depressing movie.
Bambi... King Kong... The Shining... aha! Found it. Annie. A rags to riches story where her problems are all solved. I movie I wish were reality for me. But even I know movies don't reflect the real world, though I always seem to forget the world when watching movies. I pop the movie into the DVD player, sit back, and forget about reality for a complete two hours and seven minutes.
YOU ARE READING
The Mave Movie
Teen FictionMave Morgans is a teenage movie fanatic with dreams to become a movie star. But she knows dreams may never come true, especially after her father died when she was ten. Five years later she's still dealing with loss as it tore apart her family, but...
