The Ending Of Two Stories

Farren had always been a fairly bright child. She wasn’t a child prodigy, but she was definitely smart. Farren knew this, as did her parents, Leo and Kristin. It was for this reason, that she didn’t understand why they thought she wouldn’t realize. All those rude looks across the room, the angry tension she could feel in the air sometimes, those late nights when she could hear whispered arguments, or her mom crying softly upstairs. It was hard to miss, even for a seven-year-old. Her parents didn’t love each other anymore. It upset Farren that they weren’t happy, so she wasn’t happy, although she still acted like she was for their sake. She kept up her acting for a couple of years before she realized that she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She needed to express how she felt in some way. That was when she discovered writing.

Farren had never really written for pleasure. She had done a bit of writing in school of course, and her teachers had all said that she was an exceptional writer for her age, but she never really had a diary, journal, or anything of that sort, and had never really considered writing for pleasure. She got the idea of turning her feelings into a story from a movie in which a girl had gone through heartbreak, and used writing as an outlet.

The child got an old notebook out of her desk and thought about how to begin her story. She wondered what to write about. Until the idea came to her on that dark, rainy night when her parents were radiating unhappiness. She would write about herself, almost like a journal, except she would turn it into more of a fictional story, as though it weren’t really happening to her. As though it were happening in some alternate universe to some other very unfortunate girl.

The constant writing had been going on for about a year or so when a very bad fight broke out between her parents. Farren was now eight and had written about many terrible experiences in her notebook, some fictional, others not, all involving her parents who loved her very much but could not love each other the same. It was a bright, sunny, midwinter day outside and Farren was out raking the leaves, only so she could jump into them and repeat the process. She had done this about two or three times now and was starting to get tired so she decided to go in for a few minutes to get some water and cool off.

She walked in the front door and went to the kitchen, assuming that her parents were upstairs as usual, but instead she heard voices ahead of her before she rounded the corner to get into the living room and kitchen area. Knowing it was her parents, she decided to stay unseen for the moment and listen to what they were saying. 

“Leo, I can’t do this anymore! I know we’re doing this for Farren’s sake but this has to end.” She heard her mom plead.

“Why is this such a big deal for you?! I’ve bought you a big house, a nice car, stayed with you while knowing you were cheating, allowing you to see other people.” Her father shot back. This information was new to her. She didn’t know that her mom was unfaithful, and that meant that her father probably was as well.

“I know, you’ve done a lot and given me a lot of freedom, but you must agree, this is not how we should be spending our lives.”

“No, it isn’t, but with Farren, the most we can do is to at least pretend to be a loving family unit. Don’t you understand that? This is all for Farren. Why do you have to be so selfish all of the time? We both know that the only reason you truly want to leave me is so that you can go out with whomever you want, whenever you want.” Leo replied angrily.

Kristin spoke softly this time, “That isn’t true.” 

“Well if that isn’t it, what is it then? Spit it out.”

“I may have been selfish before, by putting my own wants before my own child, but this time is different. Leo, I-I’m pregnant. And it isn’t yours.” Farren held in a gasp.

There was stunned silence for a long time until her father finally spoke. “How far along are you?”

Kristen replied in an even tone, “About two and a half months. I’ve been wanting another kid for a while now, and I truly love Glen. I think he’s who I want to spend the rest of my life with, Leo.”

“So you did this on purpose? You got pregnant with some random guys baby just so you had an excuse to leave me?” Her dad sounded mad now. “You aren’t leaving me! You have to get rid of the baby or I’ll raise it as my own.”

“NO! I am not giving up this baby and I am not letting them grow up in this toxic household! You don’t care about whether or not Farren’s happy. All you care about is having control. You don’t want me to leave because that would mean that you’ve lost control.”

Farren left before she heard anything else she wanted to hear and ran to her treehouse in the backyard. She climbed up the ladder and shut the trapdoor, locking it. Was her mom right? Did her dad really just want them to stay because he wanted to have control? Did he not truly care about her? Or was her dad right? Was her mom being selfish by running off with another man and getting pregnant? Did her mom just not want her or her dad anymore? Or was it possible that they were both right?

There were so many thoughts and questions running through her head all at once so she decided to do what she always did whenever her parents had a fight or her thoughts were too much to make sense of. She grabbed her notebook from between the two boards where she hid it, pulled a pen out of her pocket, and began writing. She wrote for the longest consecutive time than she ever had before. She wrote about the fight and her questions. She used writing as a way to sort out her thoughts and make sense of it all. She wrote about different outcomes that could happen due to this fight. She feared that the end of her parents’ relationship was coming to an end, whether that be due to a physical fight, a verbal fight, or her mom packing her bags and leaving with the unborn baby in the middle of the night. She was scared that her mom would leave her. Even though she loved her dad so much, she hated the feeling of not being loved, especially by the person she loved most. Farren wrote down all of her fears, questions, and thoughts in her notebook, turning them into a story. It was only because the sun was setting and the treehouse was getting dark that she realized that it was late and she needed to go to bed.

Farren climbed down from the treehouse, leaving her notebook in a safe place where she knew it was protected from the weather and other people. She went through the back door, finding her dinner of Macaroni & Cheese, broccoli, and pork chops waiting for her on the kitchen table. She sat down quietly and pondered what had happened in the last couple of hours, realizing that a lot of the fear she had previously felt was now lifted, at least for now. After finishing her cold dinner, she went to her bedroom that was the only bedroom on the first floor. Her parents’ bedroom and the guest bedroom were both on the second floor. Farren got ready for bed and laid down.

Her notebook of stories basing solely around her parents and their unhealthy relationship was almost full after a year and a half of writing. She reckoned she needed to figure out how to end the story soon. After that thought popped into her head, she had another idea. What if she were able to end the story in real life too? If she could figure out how to get her dad to let her mom go, and get her mom to finally leave and quit succumbing to Leo’s overbearing personality, everyone would be happy again. If her parents finally got divorced, she could stay with her mom during the week, visit her dad on the weekends and some holidays, and still spend time with both sides of the family, including her possible step-dad and half-sibling. She just needed a plan, and fast, before anything got worse. A plan that could end both her fictional story and real-life story.

It had been about three months since the big fight happened between Farren’s parents. Kristen was starting to show more throughout her pregnancy and the fights between her and Leo were getting louder, more frequent, and lengthier. Farren still didn’t have a plan. She was terrified to confront her parents, even if she did come up with a solid plan. After all, she was only eight. The days went by slowly and Farren began spending more and more time in her treehouse until she eventually stayed up there all-day either reading, writing, and doing schoolwork, only coming out to eat meals and go to school on the weekdays. She was doing well in school still since she used the work to keep her busy and distracted.

Farren spent any and all free time that she had, devising a plan to end this nightmare of a story and was eventually down to the last ten pages in her notebook. Deciding not to add any more to the story until she could come up with a resolution, she got a new journal to write fictional stories in and enjoyed it. They kept her occupied for the next couple of months.

It was spring break and Kristin had told Farren that she was going to be a sister and that Leo and she were having a boy. Although Farren knew that it wasn’t really her dad’s child, she acted obliviously. Her parents also surprised her by telling her that they were going to Arizona for a family get together and vacation. Farren’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents would be there, an overall gathering of fourteen people at her grandparents’ large ranch. At this time, her mom was about eight months pregnant and Farren was now nine. No one was really happy. Only pretending.

They packed the car on an early Sunday morning and set off for Arizona. About three hours into the drive, Farren noticed that she forgot to pack her two notebooks. Upset, she covered herself with a blanket and tried to sleep.

“Farren, wake up! We’re almost there!” Her mom woke her up suddenly.

“Hm?” Farren mumbled, still half asleep.

Her dad replied, “We’re only 5 minutes away hun. You need to wake up.”

“Mkay,” Farren answered, slowly getting up and gathering her things in the back of the minivan. The thought of seeing her cousins boosted her mood and made her thoughts about the forgotten notebooks disappear.

Pulling into the driveway, Farren saw three of her favorite cousins, Zakk who’s 10, Maddie who is 11, and the oldest of all her cousins, 14-year-old Sydney. It was apparent that only half of the family had arrived so far. As soon as the car stopped, Farren grabbed her bag, jumped out, and ran over to hug her family. She loved her family a lot and it was so nice to see them again.

While waiting for the rest of the family to get to the ranch, Farren and her cousins went to the “clubhouse” that was in the woods behind the house. The “clubhouse” wasn’t really a clubhouse, it was more of a little shed that their grandparents had made into a cute hangout for kids over the years. It had a little loft, a couple of chairs, a wooden table, and a bunch of board/card games. It had a very homey feel to it and the kids often brought sleeping bags and slept out there instead of their rooms in the actual house.

“So how is everyone?” Maddie asked.

After catching up for a couple of minutes, Zakk opened up about a problem he had and asked for advice from the older girls in the room. “Guys, I really like this girl in my grade and I don’t know what to do. I think she might like me back but I have no idea.”

“I’m single as heck so don’t ask me for advice,” Maddie replied jokingly.

Sydney, the more experienced one of the group, answered instead, “Tell her! If you feel strongly about her then you should just tell her how you feel. If you don’t, you never know what could’ve happened and sometimes it’s just better to get things off of your chest. If you never speak up about what you want, you might never get it.” 

At these words, something clicked in Farren’s mind. She paid no attention to the rest of the conversation and when it was time for dinner, she walked back with her cousins in silence. How could she not have seen it before? It was so blatantly obvious that she just wanted to smack herself for it. All she really needed to do was tell her parents that she knew they weren’t happy and that the baby wasn’t really her dad’s. The only thing she had to figure out was how to convince them that it was okay to split up as long as they were both happy. Farren finally found the ending to her story.