“Cellaaa!” I hear my dad yell. I don’t feel like going downstairs. My painting is almost finished and I don’t want to come downstairs.
“Cella! Get down here please!”
Sighing, I set down my paintbrush and leave my room. Over the balcony I see Dad facing up at me. “I have my appointment with Dr. Kasper, can you handle the boys?”
Is that all? “Sure,” I say. “Where’s Mom?”
“She's working today, remember?”
“Oh,” Right. I forgot. “Okay then.”
“Bye,” he says. “Be good!” he shouts to my brothers. When the car leaves the driveway, I bedraggle down the stairs and can hear Teo and Nathaniel on the computer playing some game. On my left is Nicholas watching Thomas. James is upstairs working on one of his trains that broke the other day and I? I plop myself down next to Nichol thinking the day will be laid-back and easy. After maybe a few seconds of relaxation I hear shouts. Uh Oh, I hear fighting… “No! Stop it! Ow, stop it Thaniel! Don’t CALL me that! I didn’t! It’s MY TURN! UnHHH! AAGHH!”
Why must they argue? It’s just a stupid computer game. I walk toward the office. “Hey!”
Nobody pays attention.
“Guys! Hey!”
Still no notice.
“FERMATI!”
Finally, Nathaniel looks up and Teo sees his chance to get away. He darts past me all the way upstairs. Nathaniel just shrugs his shoulders and goes back to his game.
“Okay, what just happened?” I ask him. “Why did Teo run upstairs crying?”
Ignore once again.
So I shout to Teo, “What did he do to you?”
“Go away!”
“Can you at least tell me why?”
“Leave me ALONE!”
“Teo—“
‘NUUHH!”
“Nathaniel! Is it your turn on the computer?”
No answer.
“That’s what I thought. Get off it, Nathaniel.”
First it was nothing, then a grunt.
“Nathaniel…”
Another grunt.
“Fine. You asked for it,” I say, not pleased at all that I have to deal with this stupidity. I start pulling the chair away from the desk as he tries to hold on. Once I pull him away completely, he jerks out of the chair and is angered so much I swear there was steam coming from his red face. He starts hitting and kicking ferociously so I say, “Stop.” He doesn’t, obviously so I hold him down so he cant hurt me and it takes quite an effort since he’s doing his best to wriggle out. Later I discovered the easiest way to do this was to sit on him. Through this whole process he is screaming and trying to hurt me as much as possible thinking I will get off if he hits hard enough. But I tell him that his plan is not working. It could never work. “Just say you're sorry and I’ll let you go. Easy as that.”
More of his wrath unravels and it is somehow extremely difficult to apologize. Surprisingly, tears trickle down my face and at last I give up and let him go. He runs upstairs, heaving. Nichol glances my way to see what happened then goes back to Thomas. I get up, then sit back down with Nicholas. Thank God that’s over—SLAM. Oh my God. The front door slammed. That means someone is outside. That means…
“Nathaniel!” I shout, getting no reply. I run outside, and see him pouting by the garage door. “Nathaniel—“
“Go away!”
“Just—“
“Go away!!”
“Fine! Just—“
“GO—“
“Fine! Just don’t go anywhere!”
Again, I fall back onto the couch, exhausted. James comes downstairs, oblivious to what’s going on. “Where’s Nathaniel?”
“Outside,” my voice wearies.
He decides to go check for himself, the idiot. Before I can stop him, he’s already back inside telling me, “He’s running! He’s already at the corner…”
Oh God. No, no, no! this can NOT be happening. “Go after him,” I tell James, so he goes back out. Now for whatever reason, I am really crying and it seems to worry Nicholas a bit. Teo is kind of confused by my emotion too. I walk over to the phone and call Dad. He could tell in my voice I was crying and I could tell in his that he was worried. He says he will be back as soon as he can, but he doesn’t arrive for almost an hour. Later, James comes back out of breath, “I can’t keep up with him! He’s too fast! He just keeps running! and running!” he gets all constipated and runs upstairs. Why, Nathaniel, why? Then he comes back down and runs back out again to go find his little brother.
Eventually Dad comes back home with James, since they did not find the runaway just yet. Dad goes out to search for him. When he brought him home, we learned it was Nathaniel’s turn on the computer. Teo didn’t say anything and neither did the kid himself! Stupid, stupid computer game. After that was dealt with, thank the Lord it was over, I went to sleep.