I ran down the slippery steps two at a time, craning my neck at the last step to double check that I had locked the door behind me, causing me to almost trip as the sound of my flip-flops on the cement floor echoed in the large basement.
Safe, I assured myself, as I relaxed my death-grip on the small notebook and rickety tape recorder in my hands, I’m safe.
For now.
But I wasn’t going to think like that. Not now that I had locked myself in this moldering sorry-excuse-for-a-basement yet again. Not now that I had homework that was due tomorrow.
Not now that I was forced to hide from the monsters upstairs.
I took a deep breath to steady myself and sat down with my knees crossed on the cold, hard floor. Normally, I would bring a blanket or a towel or a pillow down here with me but not tonight – there was no time. What with the slamming and the shaking and the broken glass –
And his blood and her hair and their screams and-
No. I couldn’t think about that. I took another steadying breath – this one a little shakier than the last – and opened my notebook to where I had folded the corner of the page over a few hours earlier in French class.
I owned one small notebook to my name so I made sure that I made it last between all of my classes for the entire school year by writing small and by writing only what I needed to remember.
Which wasn’t much for today’s French class, apparently. The page before me was only a quarter of the way filled with my minuscule, cramped handwriting. To me, the writing was perfectly legible but I’m sure that if I had shown it to anyone else, it would seem as illegible as chicken scratch.
Not that I ever needed or would ever need to show it to anyone else.
It read: “Very good – très bien. Good – bien. Bad – mauvais. Very bad – très mauvais. Ex. Je suis bien. Record yourself describing yourself as all four of these. Complete Oral Recording 6 assignment by tomorrow.”
I turned the flimsy-looking tape recorder in my hands and studied the buttons on the side of it. One button was for “Play”, one was for “Stop”, one was for “Pause” and then there were two buttons to rewind and fast forward and one to delete an audio clip. Simple enough. I just had to record myself saying four phrases and then hand this back to my French teacher at tomorrow’s class. I could do this. I could-
Crash! The noises upstairs started to get louder. When I ran down here with my hands clamped over my ears and my head bowed and tucked – as if I was in a freaking air raid - the noises were only threatening. I could easily tune them out. But now I was starting to hear crashes, the sounds of things breaking and, worst of all, screaming and shouting. Worse still is if I concentrated hard enough I could actually hear what they were yelling about.
But I could only hear it. Never understand it. I’d never understand what they argued about.
Nonetheless, when things got to this point I would usually just wait it out by forcing myself to go to sleep – a task that I was getting progressively better at as the lonely days and fitful nights went by. But tonight I knew – knew with a sinking feeling of dread in my gut – that I had to get this homework done tonight and turned in tomorrow. I knew I couldn’t afford to skip another Oral Recording assignment. My teacher would freak. She’d be forced to give me an F again and I knew that would not sit well with my parents.
