I Am Not Afraid of Death! (26/73)

Jack and I drove away from the school. He was quiet and not saying much. I broke the silence by stating that I was getting help with my math to explain why I was late. He did not respond. I remained quiet for the rest of the drive back home. All the while thinking he knew and I was in trouble. I could tell he was angry by the stiffness of his body language. As we arrived at home and got out of the truck he even slammed the door. Which made me jump a few feet in the air and scream. In that moment my heart started to beat faster and faster, I was terrified to go inside with Jack. He knew, I knew it! I truly believed that as I slowly crept closer to the door of the house.

Once I was in the house I could see that my mother was home. She was laying on the living room sofa all covered up in a blanket. I immediately went over to her to see what was wrong. As I touched her cheek I could feel the heat radiating off of her. She had a pretty bad fever and an infection in her chest. A bad case of bronchiolar pneumonia. The doctor had told her she would need to take it easy for a couple of days until her fever broke.

A feeling of relief swept across my body. My Mother and Jack did not know about my visitors. I was in the clear. This made me begin to wonder why Jack was so angry then? It did not seem like my mother and him had been fighting, so why was he avoiding the both of us by hiding out in their bedroom. I hoped that he would stay hiding in there all weekend. Maybe my Mother and I would get to spend some time just the two of us. Even if she was sick, I would take care of her. For most of that night I stayed by her side in the living room. Making sure she was drinking lots of fluids and keeping a fresh cold cloth on her head. it was not long before we both fell asleep on the couches watching TV.

At some point in the middle of the night Jack woke me up and told me to go sleep in my room. Still half asleep I stumbled down the hallway to my room and crawled under the covers . As I started to drift off to sleep I heard the door to my room open. I was so tired that I thought it was my Mother checking in on me before she went back to sleep but I was wrong. I immediately knew it was not her when I could feel his cold hands touching my shoulder and I could hear him say in a low voice… wake up and move over. I was instantly awake! Reluctantly I moved over. Jack could tell by how slow I was moving that I wanted to be left alone. For a moment I thought maybe he would leave my room but instead he reached out and with great forced pushed me across the bed to make room for himself. I banged my head on the wall as he did.

I wished so much in that moment that I was dreaming. I hoped this was a nightmare and that I would wake up any moment and find myself safely alone in my room. But it was reality. I laid there in bed like a stone statue as Jack ran his hands all over my body. He could tell that something was different tonight. On some level I was fight back and making it known that I wanted to be left alone. . I just could not hide my hatred any longer and he could tell. I could see the anger becoming darker and darker in his eyes. In one swift swoop his hand was clamped around my neck as he asked me what the hell was wrong. He was squeezing so tightly I could not breathe. But I did not struggle to break loose. I just closed my eyes and thought to myself ‘squeeze a little harder! I am not afraid of death, I look forward to it.’