You Can't Fly

Chapter 2

My sleep was anything but sound. Fitful and full of shadows, I awoke feeling cramped and crumpled like a piece of paper. I dragged myself home on foot. The moment I saw my house, I braced myself for the imminent argument. There was no way that my mother would take this lying down. She never did. If I did even something small wrong, it always turned ugly. She was probably already snarling waiting for the moment I dragged my sorry butt through the door.

I didn't even get that far.

"Where the hell were you last night?" Half of her words were muffled as the door squeaked open. A little grin escaped because it almost made her anger seem comical.

"You didn't answer my question. Where the hell were you last night?" Her nostrils flared and I half expected smoke and fire to start spewing from them.

I didn't answer because I knew that I couldn't tell her the truth. 

Her chocolate eyes grew wide and I noticed the bags underneath them. Had she slept at all? 

"Well?" Mom's eyebrows crinkled together and her hands balled up at their familiar place on her hips.

My mouth remained closed. There was nothing I could do but endure. 

"You were missing! You can't even tell me why?" She bit her lip.

Something was wrong.

"All that matters is that I am here now." I shrugged my shoulders and jammed my hands into my pockets. 

"No. You need to tell me what happened.." Mom's fists clenched against her hips.

Something was definitely not right.

I understood her need as a parent to want to know where I was, but she wouldn't understand that I simply couldn't tell her. I quivered a bit under her gaze, I had never seen her this angry before. What was going on?

"What are you so worried about?" I asked.

An expression flashed across my mother's face. It almost looked like fear before it turned back to anger. Was she afraid of something? It was clear that something was bothering her as she began to shift from one foot to the other as her hands bunched up the edges of her shirt. "Where the hell were you?" Her voice started to crack. "You flew, didn't you?"

"How do you even know I flew, Mom?" I squeezed past her into the house and tossed my dilapidated backpack on the floor with a thunk.

"Don't you talk back to me." Her voice echoed off the walls and down the hall. "It doesn't matter how I know. 

"No one saw me." I chomped down on my lip. I hated to lie to her, but I had no choice.

"How do you know?" My mom asked, attempting to look me in the eyes. She could always tell when I was lying; so, I avoided her gaze. Instead, I stared down at my scuffed black and white converse sneakers. How could I explain to her what I had done? No matter how many lives I saved, she still wouldn't understand. Then again, I didn't understand why she was so afraid of me flying in the first place. "Something could have happened to you. It isn't safe." 

"Adelle, lighten up on the poor boy." At last, my dad had made an appearance. He, more often than not, did his best to avoid all arguments between my mom and me. Shorter than my mom with tan curly hair, he often deferred to her. His leafy colored eyes peered out from beside her. His words were his weak attempt at rescuing me from my mother's rampage. Why couldn't he be stronger? Wasn't it my dad's job to be the head of the family?

Mom turned and looked at Dad. "Why Greg? So he can go off and fly whenever he damn well pleases? Put us all in danger?"

"Sorry, I wasn't born normal." I jumped in. Why did I jump in? I didn't know. Maybe I was trying to save my dad from my mom as well.