The Five

Chapter 1

I've been waiting for Friday since Monday. Why? My grandparents are leaving town. My parents are coming by to watch the house, but in reality they're just letting me do whatever as long as I clean the house by Tuesday when my Grandparents get home. 

Once the school bell rang, me and Eli got into my car and headed to my house. We were pumped because we basically got the house to ourselves and Cody. Cody is my friend who's coming to Missouri from Washington. You know what that means. 

The two of them have my grandparents' permission to come over. I told them I couldn't be home alone for that long after what happened earlier in my life. 

Back when I was around 7 years old, I got my grandparents to trust me to be home alone while they went to a class at the YMCA for an hour. I was super excited because that meant I could cook however much ramen I wanted to and could watch Spongebob as loudly as I wanted to. 

After I made my second cup of ramen, I sat on the couch and turned on the TV. I put it up to 69 to be funny. After a few minutes, I heard the screen door open. I saw the trees moving so I just assumed a strong gust of wind opened the screen door. It happens pretty often. I just turned the TV up more and enjoyed my ramen and Spongebob. 

One moment, I was soaked into the TV. The next, I saw the front door wide open. My heart was beating so hard that I could hear it while I was tiptoeing into my grandma's room in the hallway. I picked up the landline and rang the cops.

They did a pretty good job of calming me down, until I heard the TV click off. Footsteps were getting louder. First, I heard the bathroom door open. Simultaneously, my bedroom door opened. After a few minutes of me silently sobbing and listening to them trash my room and bathroom, they met up in the hallway. They planned on taking the other two rooms connected to that hallway. My grandma's room and my grandpa's room. One of the guys tried to open my grandma's door. When the doorknob wouldn't budge, the guy yells to the other.

I hung up the phone and ran to the porch door. While I was struggling to open the porch door, the men were struggling to kick the door down. I finally got the door opened and right as I shut the door, they got the door down. I ran to the other side of the porch and they walked out. We made eye contact for a second and I turned back around to run down the stairs.

My eyes met up with three other men walking up the stairs. I panicked. The three men walked closer and I was eventually blocked from the two doors that go into the house and the stairs. I run out to the gazebo and failed to land a jump. I jumped off and landed right on my ankle. I struggled to get myself up to the side of the house. 

The men were walking down the stairs towards me while I was limping against the side of the house to get myself up to where a neighbor could see me. Once I turned the corner, I saw two Kansas City cop cars pull up to my driveway. One officer came to me and two went inside the house. There was a house key in the keyhole of the front door.

The two officers came out and found nothing except for the trashed house, the house key, and a knit hat on the porch. The men got away. I never got to see their faces. They were gone, and they were probably going to come back.

The whole time those things were happening, I was worrying about my kitty Logan. He was an orange tabby and was my best friend since the day I was born. I continued to think about the worst shit that could've happened to him until I saw him running to me and the cop standing by me. I bent down to pick him up and he stood up to let me do so, like he always did. He made me feel better than anyone else ever could.

My grandparents got back home and cops immediately questioned them. When they were done, they were finally able to come and see me. They were very worried and thankful that I was okay. Luckily, neither of them were taken away. The court did send a social worker out to inspect the house and make sure it was safe for me to live in, though. Since my grandparents had custody of me, they were required to agree to allow someone to randomly come and check the living environment.

When the cops left, we went inside and sat on the couch. That's when the yelling started. They yelled at me for having the TV up too loud. For the longest time, I had all of that weight on me. I always believed it was my fault that we were robbed. They never actually worried about my well-being. They worried about the things they could buy.

My family eventually found out about it and 2 years later, on my tenth birthday, my aunt bought me a dog. A pug named Macey. She was in a puppy mill and stopped being able to get pregnant, so she was scheduled to be put to sleep just hours after my aunt adopted her for me. None of us really expected her to ever be able to protect us from intruders, but I was able to keep her. It wasn't easy though. There was so much yelling that night, over a four year old dog the same size as Logan.

When I turned 11, Macey proved us wrong. My grandparents went to bed early and I had been in my room all day. Macey was left out in the living room. At around 10 in the evening, she started to bark furiously. After a few minutes of hearing her yelp, I walked out to get her. She was by the front door. To be safe, I turned on my front door light. There were two cars parked outside. Three men were in one of the cars while two were running from my driveway to their car. I yelled for my grandparents but they were gone again.

A couple weeks before I moved downstairs, I was taking a shower in the hallway bathroom. I heard Macey bark again, so I hopped out and grabbed a towel. I looked at the front door and saw the knob slowly turning. I ran back into the bathroom to grab my phone and I called the cops. I changed into my clothes before they got to my house. But, of course, they were gone and there was nothing they could do to find out who they were.

For the next few weeks, cops stationed themselves outside of my house to keep watch. After nothing happened, they stopped and we assumed we were safe again. 

Now, I'm 17. I still think about the times our house has been broken into every now and then. Nothing that major has happened since then. I've walked into my house and noticed things missing a good amount of times, but it honestly doesn't phase me anymore. I keep all of my windows and doors locked now, but my grandparents forget to sometimes. 

I did get into drinking and smoking pretty early in my life. I've been able to keep it from my grandparents, but my parents both know how me and my friends are. They don't really care about alcohol and pot, they just don't want me to go out driving and shit like that when I do choose to get intoxicated. 

Because they know that I want to have a good five days with the house to myself, they agreed to just tell my grandparents that they'll be at the house with me. I'm really thankful for that because I rarely get to see friends outside of school.