Excerpt
"I woke up, and I heard a door slam piercingly. It sounded like the door to the front of the house slamming. Nervous that I would wake up my parents, I crept out of bed and tip toed as silently as I could to see what was going on. I looked into my mother’s room, only to discover that my father was gone. My mother was snoring mildly, as she was fast asleep and unaware of the fact that her husband [my father] had left.
“Calm down Shelly, you are overthinking everything! Maybe dad left a note downstairs, explaining that he had to go to the store.” I thought silently.
“Wait a minute, who in the hell would leave at almost 1:00 in the morning in Dallas to go to the store, unless it was during the holiday season?” was my next thought.
Fearing what surprises could come next, I inaudibly tip toed downstairs. No one was in the living room, and the TV wasn’t on. I turned the living room light on, and I didn’t see any note or anything in the room. As panicky as I was, I curled up on the couch and began to watch TV. There were late night reruns of M.A.S.H., infomercials, and reruns of the 10:00 news. I sauntered upstairs after about an hour, not wanting to disturb my mother.
I closed the door like a ghost, yet, I still couldn’t sleep. I turned my TV on, I turned the volume down quite a bit, but I still couldn’t fall asleep. I was way too fretful to fall asleep. Besides, I just wanted to believe that this whole situation was an awful nightmare.
Summer had just begun about 6 days before, and I didn’t want summer to be ruined before it ever really started. I suddenly fell asleep, and I have no idea what the exact time was. When I awoke, it was around 9:30 in the morning.
The only reason that I woke up at that time was because I heard a thunderous pounding at my door. Was it my father telling me why he was gone? Was it my mother, bawling, asking me apprehensively why dad was gone? I had no idea. What I did know, however, was that the pounding on the door had something to do with me."