Someone Save Me: Chapter 1 Continued

He told us that he was going to be gone for about two weeks. He just told us that so we wouldn’t worry. A month passed. Then a year. It’s not fair. First monthly calls, then birthday cards, then nothing. That’s when I knew he wouldn’t come back. My sister was devastated. She loved him. He hasn’t called her in a year and a half. When he called last year, she started to cry. She was so happy. He has no idea about the damage that he has caused without even being here. He makes my sister cry 11 times each month, and he isn’t even here! That’s how much she misses him. He’s made me cry too, just looking at how he hurts her on the inside. It eats her up. She can’t stand it, and neither can I. Whenever I see her I always feel tense or tight because I can tell it’s hurting her. I can see it in her eyes. She hates it and doesn’t know how to make that icky feeling go away. Last night was especially tough. I couldn’t sleep, so I was reading and when I got up to get a snack, I heard Nat (short for Natalia) crying. I dropped the Oreo I had in my hand and rushed to her room to see her holding her favorite stuffed animal that our dad had given her and sobbing. I rushed to the side of her bed. I knew what was wrong, but I asked anyway. 

“He’s gone, he’s gone! I can’t believe he’s gone!” she was screaming at me when she said this, but I didn’t care.

“No, Nat, he’s not completely gone. Sure, he’s not here physically, but he’s still in your heart, right? And it’s not like he’s dead or anything, so there’s nothing to worry about,” I reassured her, trying to calm her down.

“I-I guess…” she stammered helplessly. I brought her a cookie, but after I gave it to her, I tripped, and that woke Jack up and he ran in her room with his blanket toppled over his head yelling, “What has happened,  for I am here!” and we cracked up laughing.

***

The next day I woke up in Nat’s room. I didn’t know why I was in there, until I saw the Oreo crumbs. “Ohhhh, yeah!” I said aloud. I was about to wake Nat up, but then I realized she wasn’t in the room. Must be eating breakfast, I thought to myself. Slowly, I got up and went downstairs to the kitchen. Sure enough, Nat was sitting at the kitchen table, all alone, eating her toads in a hole (Her favorite meal in the morning, toast with a hole in the middle with two poached eggs in the middle hole.).

“Morning,” I said.

Weirdly, she didn’t answer.

“Morning,” I said a little louder.

“Oh. Mor- morning,” she said as she snapped back into reality.

“You good?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she told me. “Just a little drowsy, that’s all. What do you want to do today? Mom is meeting Stacy for lunch around 11:30, and Jack has karate, so it’ll just be you and me. I was thinking maybe Sara could pick us up and we all could go to this museum in town? I heard it’s really cool and it’s interactive, so there’s a bunch of stuff you can do. Do you wanna go?” 

“Sure, that sounds like a blast! When should we have Sara pick us up?”

“I was thinking around noon, that way we have a little bit of time just to ourselves, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. That way we also have time to get ready!”

“That’s what I was thinking!”