On Hold

Lie to Me | Four

Lie to Me | Four

I stood on the porch for a moment, wondering if I should go in now or not. My hand drifted to the cold doorknob on its own accord. With a heavy breath, I tugged my necklace loose from under my shirt and gripped the key that dangled there in my free hand. I bent forwards- which had been actually very awkward to do the first couple of times- and slipped the key into the keyhole. With a twist, the heavy doorframe opened to reveal an empty house. The key fell down against my chest. It was just as I had predicted it this morning when I saw my dad sneaking off to ‘work’.

     My mother, on the other hand, had probably left during the day. Lately, she has been sleeping in later and staying out later as well. I walked to the kitchen, ready to confirm my suspicions. And, again, like I had predicted, there on the counter was a small sticky note in a bright pink. I walked over to it, hoping beyond hope that it didn’t say what I knew it said.

     -Halz, out for the next three days. I left a $100 for food-

     I dropped my hand with the note to my waist and looked under where the note had been to see a fifty, a twenty, and a bunch of fives. It was a hundred dollars. All for me because my parents would rather be somewhere else. They left me to my own accord once again. I wondered if this meant that my father would be gone too or was my mother just expecting him to be out.

     When I was a kid, I would cry at these moments. But, there were only so many tears that could fall before you realized that this would happen again and again. You could only be shocked so many times before this abandoning would become ingrained.

     And, I had reached that point last year. I remember the day that I broke for the last time. It was a day like this one. One of my parents saying that they would come back and the other just telling me right out that they would leave. It was hard and I had cried for hours. I walked out of the house and down the street. I just went.

     I had actually made it all the way to an abandoned marry-go-round, the horses long broken and discarded. The seats old and falling apart. The metal rusted over and unusable. I had climbed into the old contraption and cried in the access hatch alone for a while. All the knobs and levers were long since broken.

     But, then I was found. I was found by a small abandoned cat. Its main scruffy and overbearingly knotted. The tip of its tail crooked and it’s coat in an all black. It sat at the top of the hatch and watched me. And, like all crazy people would do, I talked to it. I told it every lie that I had heard that day. I had told it every lie that I could remember being told, or heard by proximity. And it listened to me moaning about my life with a cock of its head and a swish of it’s tail.

     And, you know what it did next, it followed me home. I still have that cat. My little guardian angel. And, now, I needed his comfort. I went to the back door and opened the screen to a waiting black form on the back steps. He walking in leisurely, like he owned the place. Both of my parent said that I couldn’t keep him but, it’s not like they really enforced that rule. Guardian Angel followed me up the stairs and all the way to me room where he strutted towards my bed. He hopped up easily.

     I sat on the bed too and pulled out the cat brush from my night stand. He curled contently onto my lap and I began to brush him.

     And for the first time in a long time, I told Angel a good story. I told him about Ian.

. . .

Now, I sat in the small coffee shop with my headphones in once again. My iPod was fully charged and I had some ‘Attack! Attack!’ playing loudly. When I was alone, I actually preferred soft beats but when I was around other people, I needed coursing songs. And don’t get me wrong, I love this band; it’s just that I like them at a much lower volume.