Superstitions

Chapter 1: The Boy in the Bathroom

The house was busy- as usual. Amalia's mother was in the kitchen, rushing to pack her children's lunches for school. She always left it until the last minute, never preparing the food the previous night like she should be doing. Amalia's younger brother and sister were both eating breakfast downstairs- each devouring a bowl of cereal- and Amalia herself, was going to the bathroom before she was going to get dressed.

"Amalia! Make sure your sister's pants are out of the dryer, please!" she called to her eldest child.

Amalia sighed from where she had been washing her hands in the bathroom upstairs and went into the laundry room next door. She took her younger sister's pants out of the machine and folded the wrinkles out the best she could. Heading downstairs, she saw her lazy dad lounging in his recliner in the living room with a beer in his hand. The television was on, playing some football game that was being re-aired from last night, that Amalia didn't care for at all. The screen flickered brightly, playing a quick close-up shot of one of the players throwing the football a far distance.

Really? A beer this early in the morning? Amalia thought to herself with disgust.

She didn't know whether her dad was asleep or not, so she snuck as quietly as she could down the stairs, making sure they didn't make any sudden creaking sounds.

"Don't think I can't hear you, fatty," she heard the man in the chair suddenly speak.

She swallowed, trying not to seem affected by the name he had called her.

"Good morning, pa," she greeted, making sure she didn't sound too cheerful or too bored, because she knew if she was one or the other, her dad would surely get upset with her.

"Hurry up and go to school, you're annoying me," he replied, taking a swig of his beer and turning up the television volume way higher than it needed to be.

"Okay."

She scuttled into the kitchen where the rest of her family was- and truth be told, she preferred them to her horrible father.

"Alright, you got the pants- good," her mom said as she entered the room.

Amalia nodded and placed them on the table where her younger siblings sat, almost finished their cereal.

"Go put these on then," their mother told her youngest daughter, nodding in gesture towards the pair of blue pants Amalia had fetched from the dryer.

The little girl slurped up the remaining milk in her bowl and grabbed the pants, running upstairs to change into her school outfit.

"You too, mister," Amalia said to her brother. "She's getting changed, so am I, you should too."

He nodded, "Okay, I will go," he responded, chewing his last spoonful of cereal and pushing away from the table to go upstairs.

"Can you put these in their backpacks?" Amalia's mom asked when the two younger kids had left, handing her daughter the lunch bags.

She nodded and took the bags that held their school lunches, and stuffed the three of them into their owners backpacks.

"I'm gonna get dressed now," she told her mom.

"You better go do that, yeah," she replied. "You have ten minutes until the bus comes."

Amalia hummed in agreement and went back through the living room to go get changed.

"I told you to hurry up," her dad spoke, eyes still not leaving the television that displayed the games score. "What, you're so fat you can't even get ready for school quickly anymore?"