Wanted

Chapter 1: Decrease

———L I A M———

I sat on the shaky wooden chair, the distinct sound of cracking when I shifted even slightly reminding me just how old the chair actually was.

My hands remained stuck under my thighs as I stared in front of me with a straight face, my feet planted on the dirty flooring.

Wind blew through my hair as a shiver eventually ran through me.

Despite the usually pleasant weather, the dark clouds above reminded us all that it was a chilly and distasteful morning here at SunnySide Playground.

My siblings and I were always brought here on our birthdays, no matter how old we came to be, my mother always set up a party under the same picnic pavilion. She would bring a basket filled to the brim with necessities, setting everything up on the same rickety wooden table surrounded by old- looking and cracked wooden chairs. It was 20 years ago today when she first set up every birthday decoration.

Things looked and sounded a lot different back then, the park was still open and you could still hear the screams and giggles of young children if you listened carefully. 20 years later, the park had been closed down due to the fact that parents stopped bringing their children to SunnySide playground, where the rust from some of the old rides and the old rides themselves could kill a young child or injure them severely.

My mother, however, didn't care that SunnySide shut down, she said throwing her children's birthday parties here was a tradition she was unwilling to throw away. Although, the reason as to why has always been a question. Even though I have an idea as to what has been causing her to throw the parties here, I'll never know if I'm right or just dreaming about my want for a normal put-together family. I like to think throwing parties here is just a way to remind her of our dad. I like to think she just likes to recall the happy memories she holds of him picking this place to hold our birthdays. After all, it's not just her waiting for him to come back and actually stay.

I was four, I think, and the memory is distant, but I remember him driving my mom and I down here for my Fourth Birthday. He was singing a song that was playing on the radio, all the windows rolled down as he yelled the words to the song. I remember all of our hair blowing in the wind as he sang terribly. My mom was singing with him, yet her voice was almost completely covered by his. It was the only happy memory I held of him, of the horrible man that keeps leaving and returning for a couple days at most. The reasons why he returned before packing bags that weren't his to pack were always very clear to me yet I still wait for his arrival. It's childish really, to wait for the man who's hurt me so much just because he's my father. After-all, he only comes back for Sex or Money, not because he wants to spend time with the family he threw away.

And from all of the times he has left my mother, left us, she never learned not to accept him back into our lives. I'm just waiting for the next "I missed you all" as he stands on our doorstep.

20 years after my happy memory of him actually being involved in my mom and I's life and the park he picked has become unusable to the humans who live around here, now it only gets used 3 times a year. It actually started to become funny that the one thing he did for me diminished, it reminded me of how unuseful my father actually was.

It wasn't just the idea of him that made today unbearable though, no, it was something else. Something more unique and important to me.

As I stood in the bathroom this morning, staring at myself through the mirror, my eyes welled with tears.

No matter how many times I told myself to pretend, to act like happiness was filling me to the brim at least until all this was over, I couldn't bring myself to smile for the happy people surrounding me.