Just What I Needed

May 25

"Ugh," I lifted my face off of the hard, flat surface of the shed floor. My entire body felt stiff, especially my neck from sleeping awkwardly on the ground.

As if the Scotty fiasco wasn't bad enough, as I walked up to the house, I saw my dad in the kitchen actually out of his online poker room during daylight hours. He was putting the coffeemaker on for visitors, who were sitting at the table in the kitchen. I recognized one as a friend from his work, whose name I knew was Jeff, and another man I had never seen before.

I didn't want to just walk in on the meeting, so I walked around to the front of the house and entered through the front door. 

Moving as quietly as I could, I tiptoed through the living room to the hallway toward the bedrooms, but my dad saw me.

"Where have you been and what happened to your shirt?" my dad asked with a tone of disgust in his voice.

What was I supposed to say in front of the visitors? "A drunk boy tried to dry hump me on the back porch and I spent the night sleeping in the shed to hide from him"?

Jeff and the man I didn't recognize peered over dad's shoulder at me. I must have been a real sight. I could feel that my pony tail was loose on one side, no doubt hanging awkwardly to the left. What little makeup I wore had likely faded off while I slept and my shirt had a gaping hole from my right hip to halfway across the torso.

"I tried to go out running this morning. I tripped and fell. I guess I tried to push it too much," I lied and dashed off to my room before he could say anything else.

I wanted to stay in my room and avoid whatever meeting was happening, but my stomach was rumbling in starvation and I had no idea how long they would be in the house. 

After waiting twenty minutes, I heard the group move to the living room so I quietly crept into the kitchen to find something that would soothe my rumblings.

 Grabbing a bowl from the cupboard and the family sized box of Frosted Flakes, I tried to mind my own business, but the conversation from the other room caught my attention.

"I think it will be really great to have him in your house. Restore some sense of family. Give you a sense of purpose," Jeff said as he sipped his coffee.

At first glance around, you'd never know such dysfunction existed under the roof of this house. Even though my mom wasn't around to nag me about my chores and my dad essentially being a recluse, the house still had the appearance of a welcoming home.

Once a week, I took care of the dusting and vacuuming, washing the kitchen floors, scrubbing the washrooms. I had even learned how to turn on the lawnmower and pushed it around the yard a few times.

Our living room never got used anymore. This was the first time people had sat in it since the accident.

I shoveled cereal into my mouth at the breakfast bar, pretending to leaf through some coupon flyers as I listened closely to what was unfolding in the next room.

"It's really quite simple. You provide him with necessities – basically food, a bed, a bathroom to shower in. As I understand it, Nate has his own car, so transportation isn't a problem," the unknown man said.

"And house rules?" my dad asked.

I spluttered. House rules my ass. My dad barely knows what's going in his own life, let alone being able to be aware of what's going on in anyone else's. How is he going to enforce house rules of any kind when he's holed up and hypnotized by a computer screen?

"Are you ok in there?" my dad asked. He sounded annoyed rather than concerned.

"Sorry. Cereal down the wrong tube."