What is That?

“Arwen,” I wake up to my mom nudging me “Don’t panic, alright? But we… we think someone is in our attic.” I get out of my bed but wonder how I am supposed to stay calm? I try my best to be attentive and, well, somehow calm, but it is unsurprisingly hard to do that at twelve in the morning.

I follow her to my parent’s small walk-in closet She tells me to get behind some of my dad’s clothes. “Stay here, and stay quiet. I’m going to get your sister.” she says and leaves the closet. I’m alone in here, unprotected, vulnerable. Why would she leave me? Why didn’t she get my sister up while she got me up too? I am shivering and shaking but I tell myself I will be fine. As I fidget with the white carpet, the rest of my mind still tries to process this.

Adrenaline is pumping in my veins and I jump when my mom swiftly comes in with my sister, Tauriel. Still in her banana pajamas, my one-and-a-half year old sister’s hands are filled with sour gummy worms to keep her quiet. I pull her from my mom’s arms and she scooches next to me. After no more than thirty seconds of munching on her gummy worms she tells me,

“I have gummy worms!”

“Shhhhhhh!” I say as quietly as possible.

“They’re good!”

“Shut up shut up shut uuupp…!” I panic. I suddenly look down to see my brother, Dash under my mom’s low hanging clothes. I did not realize that my mom had already got him out of bed. I had completely forgotten about him in this huge mess. I stare at him a little longer and he starts fussing. Please don’t cry please don’t cry please don’t cry please don’t cry! I think fiercely.

After a minute or two, my dad comes in and tells me to hold my sister’s hand and follow him. As I get up, my mom comes in and picks my brother up off the ground and follows me, my sister, and my dad out to the front door. Bright lights of red, white, and blue blind me as I walk outside timidly. A wave of relief rushes over me seeing the police here, but the fear creeps in still.

My dad talks to them while me, my mom, and my siblings start walking on the sidewalk to get away just in case. The warm breeze flows through my hair as I walk in bare feet on the sparkly moonlit sidewalk. As pretty as the scene is, I can hear my heart pumping so loud, China must have heard it. My legs feel like jelly and a shiver runs down my spine. We turn the corner of our street and stop a few houses down. We hear shouting coming from our house and our heads whip in that direction. My mom puts down my sister and starts texting one of our neighbors.

“Mom?”

“Shhh. Hold on. I’m seeing if Courtney will let us come over.”

“Do you want me to hold Dash?” I ask anyway.

“No, I’m fine.” She shakes her head without looking up.

I wait a while and look up at the full moon and the sparkling stars in the deep, black sky. It really is a pretty warm night for spring, but it feels nice. I start to feel calm and forget about everything, but it all comes back to me. My heart starts pounding again and I start shaking all over.

What if Courtney is asleep and doesn’t hear our text? Or if her phone is on silent? What if the man comes out of the attic and chases us. What if he has a gun? Or a knife? Or something that he could kill us with? What if he kills us? My thoughts spiral into all the worst case scenarios. What if? What if? What if? What if?

“OK, Courtney’s going to let us into her house.” My mom luckily interrupts my thoughts, “Luckily, her house is only across the street and down one house, so it isn’t too much of a walk.”

We walk up to the doorstep where she is waiting and she welcomes us in. She leads us to the living room and makes sure we’re comfortable.

“So, what happened? How did you hear the noise?”

“Me and Nathan were sitting in the office.” My mom explains, “We were talking and we kept getting interrupted by thumps coming from above us. Thumps that sounded like someone was crawling in our attic.”

“Wow, that sounds crazy. The police came right?”

“Yes they did. They’re actually checking it out now.”

“That’s good. I’m sure you feel somewhat relived by knowing the police are here.”

“Yeah, but it still scares me because who wants some creep living in their house for who knows how long?” My mom sighs, “I guess I just want to know about everything right now so we can prevent it in the future.”

“You know everything will turn right in the end.” Courtney encourages.

Her beautiful caramel colored dog comes up to me and lets me pet her as they chat. Tauriel comes up to the dog and instantly shies away. The dog, being almost twice her height, would naturally scare her.

What if there was a giant dog that was twice my size? I Think dreamily, But of course, that wouldn’t be very tall, considering that I’m not even five foot. I’m frikin four foot eleven!

Almost as soon as we got there, we left. Walking back to the house I feel no better even though my dad said we could come back now. By the time we got back to the house, the last police car was driving away.

“You guys OK?” my dad asks

“We’re all good.” my mom sighs. My tiny brother has no idea what is going on. I wish I was him. No need to be scared or worried. Others protect you and you have no knowledge of anything else in the world. So sweet and innocent. My dad sees the worried look on my face and says, “Well, it turns out it uh… it wasn’t someone. It was an opossum or something like that.” How was that supposed to make me feel better? So now we have a large rodent in our attic? Oh yeah, thanks that clears things up a bit. Sweet dreams! I think sarcastically.

We all head inside and my parents put my siblings to bed as I put myself to bed. What luck is it that out of the two attic entries in our house, one of them is directly in front of mine! Naturally, because of that, I am not able to fall asleep easily.

I walk out of my room and tiptoe over into the living room where my parents are sitting. We talk for a bit, and I tell them that I am worried that someday someone might actually be in our attic. Or that the nasty little grimy rodent might fins its way out of the attic and come down from it into the house by my bedroom or into the garage where the other attic entrance was. They reassured me, as parents do, that if any of that happened, they would know what to do.

So I went off to bed still feeling a little bit nervous, but feeling safe enough that I would be able to finally fall asleep.