Alone

Grief

I pulled into my driveway and into my side of the garage, I didn't want my mom to see what they did to my car. I stepped out and slammed the door shut. I ran into my house and straught to my room. I flung the door shut and collapsed in my chair. Tears fell out of my eyes like rain in a tropical forest. I kept thinking, Why me?

I woke up, with my head on my desk. I must have fallen asleep during my breakdown, I thought. I looked at my clock and it read 5:00. I got up and emptied my backpack out on my counter, I took a paper towel and wiped down my almost ruined books. After I got most of it off, I grabbed my hair drier and dried the book's separate pages. This took about an hour, but in the middle of my drying I took out my ipod and joined the world of music. I not only had todays hits, but I also had Bach, Mozart, and Debussy. I sang at the top of my lungs, belching out the words. I used to be the best soloist in my school chorus, but after the incident, I decided to quit all school activities.

I heard a door open, and close in the foyer. My mom came into the kitchen carrying grocery bags.

"Hi honey!" she said," Glad you're awake! You can help me make dinner now!" She dropped the bags onto the counter. I liked to cook with my mom, so I nodded my head, took out my headphones, and removed the books from the table. I washed my hands and started taking the food out of the bags.

"What happened to your books?" my mom asked.

"I dropped them in a puddle, it's alright thtey're dry now," I told her. She stared at me for a moment and went on unloading the bags.

"How was school today?" she asked me.

"It was okay." What I said was a lie, but I didn't want my mother to worry about me. She and I have gone through too much, it would be a shame to burden her with this. We made seaweed wraps with shrimp and lobster, with white rice. We set the table with cloth napkins and beautiful cups and plates.

"Honey can you go fetch your father from his office?"

"Alright." I made my way down the long hall and turned into his office. He was on the phone yelling at one of his employees.

"What do you mean the stock is down?! Bring it up or else you'll be fired!" He slammed his cell phone down on the desk and cursed at his unresponsible employee.

"H-Hey dad?" I asked.

"What honey?" He said very stressed.

"Dinner's done and mom said she wanted us to eat together."

"Tell her that I have work that needs to be done by midnight, maybe next week." I turned to go out he door when dad stopped me.

"Wren? I love you a lot, it's just that work comes before family dinners." I gave him a look of disappointment and walked out the door. I walked back to the kitchen where I saw mom folding the napkins in swans. She looked at me and saw it in my eyes that dad was not coming. She looked down at the floor and slowly removed his place setting and put them away. I sat down at the table and started eating,a dn so did mom. Dinner was mute and dismal, not only did I feel alone, but I think mom felt the same way.

The next day was a little better, nobody at school threw anything at me and I wasn't harrassed. I also got an A on my history test. When I got home after school mom and I went dress shopping for our cousin Alli's wedding. My mom got a bright yellow and pink sundress with srappy heels and I got a dark blue halter dress and white pumps. We went out to eat at Sunny's Cafe and then we went back home. I went inside and hung up my dress in my closet. I sat down in my twirly chair and flipped open my laptop. I logged onto Facebook to see that I had over 30 notifications. That's when I saw that Cassie tagged me in one of her posts. I clicked on it and it said " Maybe the reason why Wren's so messed up is because her disturbed parents dropped her when she was a baby." 251 people liked that post and there was 87 comments. I decided not to read them, it would hurt too much. They have said worse so to me it doesn't even matter. I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt a little bit. I took a deep breathe, stood up and flattened out my shirt. I walked into my kitchen and sat at my counter, that's when I heard a knock at my door. I walked over and opened it. Standing at my doorstep was Steve with a little boy clinging to his legs.

"Hey Wren!' Steve said enthusiastically.

"Hi," I gulped.

"This is my little brother and we're doing a bottle drive for boyscouts."

"I'll go and check if we have anything, I'll be right back." I rummaged through all of our cans and shoved them all into a bag. I jogged to the door and passed them over to the little kid.

"Thanks Wren! I'll see you tomorrow at school!"

"Okay." I sighed. I closed the door and went back to sulking in my kitchen. Steve made me realize that I have to face everyone at school tomorrow. I don't think I'm ready for that. I grabbed my ipod and turned it on high. I decided that music could cure the hole in my heart. Michael Buble and Disney are my only friends, and possibley my family. Music is the only thing that I can turn to for help, it's my getaway. I was exausted so I dragged myself to my room and layed down. I set my alarm clock for 4:30 and soon, I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up the clock read 5:00 a.m. Great. I stood up and stretched, but something was different. My alarm clock was supposed to go off. I checked the clock and it said it had been going off. That's odd, I thought. I walked out of my bedroom to see my mom in the kitchen making her breakfast. I looked at her and she was talking, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. She was just mouthing her words.

"Mom! I can't hear you!" I think I said. She walked over to me and started to talk again but I still couldn't hear her.

"I can't hear you!" I cried. I coul tell she was starting to panic because she grabbed her keys and shooed me out the door. We ran to the car and we went straight to the hospital. We went straight to the emergancy room and the doctor started to look me over. He did many tests, but the whole time I couldn't hear a single word he was saying. Then he started to talk to my mom. Then she started to cry, which made me cry. I had no clue what was going on. The doctor wrote something down on a piece of paper and he raised it up to me. It said "I am so very sorry, but you have a rare case of Ménière's disease, which is when there's too much fluid in your ear, causing permenant hearing loss. Usually only people 40-60 year olds get this, and it is very odd for a junior in High School to get it. I'm so sorry. There's nothing we can do for you."

The world around me slowed down, everything turned blurry and dull. Everything had changed for me. I'd have to learn sign language, have captions on the t.v., I wont be able to hear the sound of my mom's voice, and worst of all no more music. I have nothing anymore.