Polaroid

Chapter 2: Hole in the Wall

I was absolutely drenched. My clothes alone felt like they weighed fifty pounds. The rain seemed to have picked up even more from when I had been coming up the front steps. As I gazed out the window, another bolt of lightning struck right in front of our house. The following boom of thunder was so loud that it had knocked me to the floor. Despite the fact that I knew the thunder would probably shake the house again and make me fall over, I rose to my feet anyways. Another bolt of lightning illuminated the sky. Everything went dark, and I couldn't see anything. Everything in my house turned into a screaming match after the power went out.

"The power went out, so now I can't play Xbox!" my brother Eli hollered. He acted as if nobody else could tell that all of the electrical things in the house were pitch black.

"Thanks for stating the obvious," I replied. I could feel the eye rolls coming on. When I turned my phone flashlight on and shined it towards my mom, she looked absolutely disgusted.

"Melodie, that's no way to talk to your brother!" my mom babbled. I think she may have said some other stuff too, but I tuned her out.

"I'm sorry that Eli was stating the obvious. I was just pointing out his stupidness," I responded sarcastically. I was then given the death stare by my mom.

"Go find some flashlights in the back room," my mom stated with a hint of anger in her voice.

As I attempted to run up the stairs in the dark, I stumbled twice. Eli's door was shut, so I opened it to annoy him. He just grunted angrily and rolled his eyes at the sight of me. I noticed that my other brother, Vaughan, wasn't in his room. Just as I was about to ask Eli where Vaughan was, I had remembered that he had texted me earlier saying that he had to work late today. Hopefully he gets home safely, I thought to myself. Vaughan was the brother that I actually like out of the two. Favoritism was something I made obvious towards him. Anyways, I made my way into the back room without falling or running into a wall.

I had tripped on something in the back room. That caused me to slam into the wall, and knock something down. Glass shattered all over the floor after that occurred. A framed picture must have fallen and broken. If my mom found out, I would be in so much trouble. I found a battery powered lamp and put it on a table. The picture that had fallen didn't look that important. It was just a picture of a flower that my mom must've taken. She could reframe it later. I grabbed the box of flashlights quickly, and made my way through the room. As I passed where the picture used to be, I noticed a hole in the wall.

The hole wasn't that deep into the wall. It looked as though it could have been from Eli or Vaughan punching the wall. Maybe the flower picture was in front of the hole on purpose, I thought to myself. I noticed a blue freezer bag tucked inside the hole. Insulation scratched my hand slightly as I tried to grab the bag. Pain filled my hand as I hit it against a beam in the wall. After multiple tries, I finally got the plastic bag out of the hole. I put the bag down for a minute, and made my way downstairs to give the flashlights to my mom. When I came back upstairs, I picked up the bag again. There was something in the bag that looked as if it was a picture. I removed it from the bag and took a closer look at it.