Won't Stay Down For Long

Chapter 20: Clumsy James

James and my mom circled around the kitchen area, grabbing different foods from the fridge and the counters. He also knew right where the plates and cups where. I wonder how many times he has actually came over without me knowing? I let it slip as I watched our dinner get set onto the table.

After the turkey was set in the middle of the table and all the appetizers were set in a circle around it, James and my mom sat back down in their original seats. We passed around all the dishes taking what we wanted of each.  "So James would you like to say the blessing?" my mom asked James. James already had a piece of turkey on his fork and was about to devoured the rest of the meal. 

James looked up from his meal and set the fork back down on his plate. "Yes I certainly will." 

Usually my mom and I never say a blessing for any meal when we are alone. This spiritual event only occurred when my mom had some clients over for dinner or she just wanted to impress someone.

Everyone bowed their heads and crossed their own fingers together. "God please bless this food and everyone around it that none of us will go hungry or in need. God, thank you for this food and for everything that we have. Amen." 

We all raised our heads and untangled our fingers. We all dung into our meal. James would occasionally comment about how good one of the appetizers was. I wish that my mom would cook like this more often, but usually we don't have time to make our own meals. Usually we go out to eat or it’s a bowl of macaroni and cheese in the microwave.

After our amazing meal, my mom and I stayed to do dishes and James went to watch TV. On the couch because my mom told him that he is our guest and shouldn't be any more helping. James agreed with her probably not wanting to get in an agreement with her and went to watch "He Almost Got Away with it". 

For me doing dishes was much more challenging than what I was expecting. I had to put one of the crutches on the table and rely on only one crutch to support me. My mom had me doing drying which was a long process because I would have to turn the dish around and then dry it off as it laid on the counter. After a long and annoying dish washing section, my mom and I went to relax on the couch. 

James and my mom sat together on one end of the couch, far enough away from each other so that they weren't touching each other. I sat on the other side of the coach trying just to concentrate on just the television; trying not to notice that my mother was inching closer and closer to her boyfriend’s side. 

After a while I felt like I was going to puke so i got up and announced," I'm going to go to the park for a while. I'll be back in about an hour. Okay?"

My mother looked from the TV. to my face and told me," Ya sure that's fine Abby. Just call us if something happens or you get too tired to walk back up the hill because I'll come and get you."

I nodded at my mom and turned myself around so I could slip on my flip flops which were right next to the couch. I slowly opened up the front door and disappeared outside. The early August humility hit right in the face making me start to sweat a little bit. I took a deep breath and started to walk down the big hill that I haven't notice how long the hill actually went on for before.

Making sure that I wasn't going too fast for my legs which mainly just started walking again today, I made it all the way to the park without any wobbles or any stubble at all. I wish Jessica could see me now.

Eric's POV

When I got home from gymnastics today, once again my house was empty except for the rude maid. I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and pressed it onto the side of my cheek where Brett had slammed his fist into this morning. I also scooped myself a bowl of ice cream which I'm not supposed to have because of gymnastics, but today I think I deserve a little bit of cookies and cream ice cream. 

I then flung myself onto our leather couch and started flipping through the channels. All I could find was stupid romantic movies and dramas. I ended up settling on the history channel with Morgan Freeman talking about some stupid aliens. After I had finished my ice cream I landed on the couch looking up at the ceiling thinking about how stupid I actually was.

After what seemed like an hour worth of moaning I decided to go sit in my tree at the park. The humility outside didn't really bother me at all because my new icepack seemed to make my whole body shiver. I made it to the park and found my tree were I always sat in the middle of the park right above one of the benches.

I had a little bit of trouble swinging myself onto one of the branches because of my bruised hand and the icepack that ended up getting stuffed in the waist band of my paints. I made it up to the perfect branch were my back could rest against the bark and my legs could extend with the branch. I closed my eyes and started coming up of ways that I should apologize to Abby. Every way that I came up with probably would end up getting smacked in the face.

I was interrupted in my thoughts when I could hear someone walking under me. I looked down at the girl that was walking towards the bench. I could tell it was Abby by her figure and also that was her favorite outfit. I smiled appeared on my face when I noticed that she wasn’t sitting in a wheelchair instead standing up straight with crutches attached onto her arms. Joy seemed to overflow me by just imagining how happy she was when she got them. I wish I could have been there to see it all go down.

Abby sat down on the bench and from what I could tell it looked like her face was covered in sweat. She looked like she was about to die from exhaustion. I moved my body around so I could get a better look at her which made a small piece of the bark fall hitting her right on the tip of her small nose.

She looked down at the bark and then looked straight up into my eyes. She didn’t smile. She really showed no emotion. She just kept on looking at me. I guess I’m going to have to apologize to her without a plan.