Only Child(14)

I wondered if the snake guy got killed from the gunman, too, and what happened to the snakes. Maybe they were on the loose in the school now?





[ 9 ]


    Yellow Eyeballs


DADDY’S PHONE STARTED ringing again and this time he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I have to go make some phone calls. I have to call Grandma back and Aunt Mary and…some other people. It’s really late. Let’s go upstairs and get ready for bed, OK?”

The clock on the microwave said 10:30, and that is very late. I only stayed up that late one time before, on July Fourth. We went to see the big fireworks at the beach club and that was the first time we went to the club for a big party because we only got into the club this year. I love going to the club because we’re allowed to go wherever we want, on the beach and by the tennis courts and cabanas, because it’s safe for us everywhere. We went there a lot of days in the summer. Mommy and Daddy sit with their friends on the terrace and drink wine, and Mommy doesn’t care that it’s getting dark and I’m still up. A lot of Daddy’s work friends are at the club, and it’s important that Daddy spends time with them, and he wants me and Andy to play with their kids, so we don’t have to leave early for bedtime.

The fireworks on July Fourth weren’t starting until it was dark, and in the summer it doesn’t get dark until late. We stayed to watch all the fireworks, which was really cool because on the other side of the bay they had lots of different kinds, and we could see them all from the beach.

When they were over it was time to go. The rule was to come back to the terrace after the fireworks, but Andy didn’t come, so everyone had to start looking for him. Finally, Daddy found him on the fishing dock, and Andy wasn’t supposed to be there without a grown-up because that’s the only not-safe place to be in the whole beach club. There was a big fight in the car on the way home, and Daddy said how could Andy embarrass him in front of his work friends like that? I didn’t go to bed until 10:30, like today.

We went upstairs, and to get to my room we had to walk past Andy’s room. Daddy walked by really fast, like he didn’t want to look inside. “Can you please put your PJs on and get ready for bed?” Daddy said, and kept walking into his and Mommy’s room. Then I could hear him talk on his phone, but I couldn’t tell who he was talking to because he talked very quiet and closed the door behind him.

I went in my room and everything looked exactly like this morning. But it didn’t feel the same. Everything felt different without Mommy and Andy here, and also it felt like a very long time ago since I was in my room.

I looked at my bed, all made nice, and I thought about how Mommy made it after we left for school this morning—she does that every day. I don’t know why, because you get right back in it at night, but Mommy says that’s the old type A account director in her. Today started out like a normal day, and so after we left for school on the bus, Mommy made the beds like always. Maybe it was right when the gunman was coming in the school, but Mommy was at home making the beds and didn’t even know that that was happening.

I thought about how me and Andy waited in Mrs. Gray’s driveway for the school bus this morning. It wasn’t raining then yet, the rain started when we were at school, it was cold though, but Andy still had shorts on. Andy always wants to wear shorts. In the morning he and Mommy have fights about it because Mommy says it has to be at least 60 degrees outside, or it’s a no to shorts, but Andy still puts shorts on even when it’s not 60 degrees, like today—it was 57 degrees when we left the house, I checked on the iPad. I know he had shorts on, but now I couldn’t remember what color they were. I just remembered he had on a blue Giants jersey, and it really bothered me that I couldn’t remember what color the shorts were.

Mrs. Gray’s driveway is really skinny and has rocks on the sides, so we sometimes play this game called “Don’t get eaten” where we try to jump all the way from the rocks on the one side to the rocks on the other side. We pretend that the driveway in between is water with sharks in it, so we can’t touch it or we get eaten from the sharks. I asked Andy if he wanted to play “Don’t get eaten” today, but he said no, he wasn’t playing that baby game anymore. Andy calls everything I want to play baby games now. He just stood there and didn’t say anything else and kicked the driveway rocks with his shoe over and over again. “Don’t get eaten” was going to be the last thing I talked to Andy about, only then I didn’t know that.

Today started out like a normal day, but now it was all changed. And Andy wasn’t going to get in his bed anymore, so it would stay made nice.

I have sheets with racecars on them and they match my bed, which is a red racecar with wheels. Mine and Andy’s beds are different because Andy has a bunk bed. He only sleeps on the top bunk because that is far enough away from us people, he said. But the rest of our rooms are almost the same, except that we have different toys. We both have a window from where we can see the street and our driveway, and we both have a desk under the window, and on the other wall we have two white bookshelves and a reading chair. There’s a bathroom in between our rooms. That’s not good, because when Andy goes to the bathroom, he always locks the doors on the inside and then he doesn’t unlock them after. I always have to walk around into his room to get to the bathroom, and he yells at me to get out of his room and throws pillows at me from the top bunk.