Wish We Were Kids Again

Present day

The sun reached through the blinds on the window to wake the dead, or in this case, Hunter. Hunters eyes fluttered open she immediately groaned and held her head. 

Hazy headed, she reached over for the ibuprofen on her bedstand. Last night it had taken even longer to fall asleep than usual. The constant worrying about what state her mom would come home in made her nervous. 

She looked at her phone and read the time at 10:45 AM and looked out the window. Her face was greeted with warm sunlight and an empty driveway. It seems Mom didn't come home at all last night. Hunter slugged her way back into bed dreading school the next morning. Every time she skipped a day of school, hell awaited her when she returned. She always managed to miss the most important days of school, but when her alarm rang this morning she slept straight through it. 

The funny part about not being able to fall asleep is the fact that waking up sometimes proves to be harder. Hunter picked up her glasses from the stand and looked at her phone again, this time looking to see if she had missed any messages. Of course, it was unlikely she would've. She didn't have many friends at school, and no one's number was saved in her phone. If anything there might have been a message from her mom saying, "Getting home late!" or "Don't wait for me! Go ahead and go to sleep!"

Hunter's hopes always soared each time she opened her phone expecting to see something new, only to be met with the monotonous blank screen with a picture of a butterfly peering into her lonely face, almost mocking her. 

When she saw there were no messages to be read, she put her phone back down. Almost immediately as she did, it buzzed. She scrambled to grab her phone again and gazed intently at the screen. A new phone number awaited her. 

She opened her phone and went into her messages to read the text. 

"Hey, Mr. Winters! Is your phone coverage slow? Well, that's no problem, just buy our new line-"

Of course, it wasn't anything important, Hunter groaned. She tried to shrug it off, but reading that text made her heart heavy. It had been 7 years since her dad left, but her mom still refused to change the name the phone coverage was under. It was almost like she was leaving a clue for her husband to find if he was lost and trying to find his way home. 

Hunter leaped off of her bed in defeat and shuffled down the stairs into the kitchen. Their kitchen was spotless except for the few dishes "soaking" in the sink. Hunter walked over to the fridge and opened it. There were a few things inside, but nothing she was craving. She closed the fridge and walked over to the cabinet in the corner and opened it. The two boxes of cereal were her mom's favorite, but this morning she didn't want to go through the effort of pouring out a bowl, then getting the milk, and pouring that, and then having to put it all away just to clean the dishes later. Hunter sighed heavily and closed the cabinet and walked over to the fridge once more this time looking harder. Sitting on the middle shelf was a small yogurt container with strawberry chunks. Hunter shrugged and took it out, wondering why she hadn't seen it the first time. She quickly grabbed a spoon before waddling with her meal into the living room. 

She plopped herself down on the couch and started eating her yogurt. She remained lost in thought for the ten minutes she sat there. Nothing in her mind, just more of a dazed state. A beep of a truck broke her out of her daze.