Page 38 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. III #10

she’d forgotten about that legend but that it was true.
“See?” I breathed out, feeling hot for the first time since I’d been outside.
“She said she has a date tonight.” Chase smiled when he said it, and I asked what he was so happy about. Normally he cried and threw up whenever she went out which was the opposite of what he did when she brought someone home after she thought we were asleep. Those nights, he wouldn’t move in his bed or say anything to me at all, so I would lie next to him and tell him made-up stories, and wonder why it mattered to him what she did and wondered why it didn’t matter to me.
“Ok....” I wanted him to tell me why he was so happy but knew I’d have to ask, so I did and when he told me that he thought the frog prince would kill whoever she brought home with her that night, I looked at the house behind us and wished with all I had that Dad would come through the door in the garage and call us inside or ask if he could check over the homework I hadn’t even started yet, but the house was quiet.
I looked back at Chase and said, “That isn’t how it works.”
Right then I wished that made-up stories could become real and that Robert would rise up and slay whoever knocked on the door to pick my mom up for their date that night. I wished that he would change from a frog into a prince without my mom having to kiss him, knowing that she would never kiss anything ugly and slimy. I closed my eyes and even as I wished, I knew that dreams didn’t come true and that frog princes were made up, and that I was a liar breaking my best friend’s heart.
“Maybe it is,” Chase said, before Dad came outside bouncing a basketball and asked me how my book was. I put the fat paperback inside my book bag on top of the stray papers that made up a new legend and I reminded myself to tell Chase the detailed version
I’d spent all day working on, before bed.
I looked at Dad and apologized. He laughed and reminded me that there were windows in the house, and that he could always read guilt on my face. I won- dered what guilt he read when he looked at me then.
We played a game of Horse, and I lost like I always lost to my dad and brother, then we ate pizza and watched John Wayne in the Green Beret for the hun- dredth time.
Dad kneeled down by my bed that night and we both said a prayer. He asked if anything was bothering me and I said yes, but I couldn’t talk about it.
“You know when you can, I’m here,” he said, and I nodded and wanted to cry.
“I have to go back to work tomorrow,” he said, and I knew that was the end of the fun for another week.
“Why?” I hoped I didn’t sound like I was whining, then asked if he had told Chase and if Mom knew to pick us up from school the next day.
“You know, you shouldn’t act like such an adult,” Dad said leaning over to kiss me goodnight. “You only get one childhood and you shouldn’t waste yours by worrying.”
I told him I’d try, and he said he loved me before shut- ting the door and leaving me to the half-darkness cov- ered in moonlight and the rattling of cicadas outside my window.
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