My name is Mia Beaumont and I’m seventeen years old now. By closing the entrance, I kept the Scary Man away, but also my only friends in the world. Over time, my worry over whether or not this had been a good decision faded... just like my memories of Mr. Optim, Sphinx, and even the Scary Man. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling as I waited for my mother and brother to stop this week’s shouting match. If they didn’t end soon, I’d be late for volunteering at the church soup kitchen. I grabbed my phone off the bedside table and checked the time.

5:55 p.m. stared back at me then slowly faded away.

I sighed as my brother Greg shouted something at my mother that I couldn’t make out. I had a million and one ways to block out my mother and Greg’s shouting matches which was quite useful when you needed to get things done. But hard as I tried, this particular fight was hard to block out. Rolling my eyes, I glanced to my right and stared down the length of my room. My room was longer than it was wide, with my bed at one end and my door at the other end. It was an attic room, but I never minded it.

I glanced back at the ceiling and sighed again.

My mother gave birth to Greg when she was my age. Neither of us knew who our father was and my mother never mentioned him. Greg wasn’t very talkative about his emotions. But judging from his behavior throughout the years, growing up without a paternal parent really affected him. Even though Greg lived with us, he usually found ways to avoid me and my mother, often staying with different girlfriends who would take him in now and then.

That always put my mother in better spirits. Greg took a toil out of my mother and it didn’t bother her in the slightest to see him go. As a young child, I attributed Greg’s absences to him being a brave knight, fighting to rid the world of evil. Or sometimes I imagined Greg to be a sheriff riding away on his mighty steed to catch some bandits. But as I grew up, even my imagination couldn’t sugarcoat the kind of man Greg really was.

I gave another long sigh as I heard my mother shout something back at my brother. I opened the drawer in my bedside table and took out my foam stress ball, squeezing it repeatedly. If there was one thing I hated, it was being late. I glanced once again down the length of my room towards my door and decided, maybe I could interrupt in just the right way so I could reach the soup kitchen on time?

I groaned as I sat up and glanced over all the debris on the floor: piles of books, papers with half written stories and doodles on them, little knick knacks I had collected over the years, and old plates with half- eaten food on them.

“I am a hermit,” I stated, “I must embrace my hermit status.” Since my mother thought I needed a better social life, she decided it would benefit me to volunteer at the soup kitchen in our local church. I didn’t mind working there. It was nice and I even made some friends. Granted, most of these friends were decades older than me, but our age differences didn’t matter much to either them or me.

With a deep breath, I decided it was time to venture out. After stepping gingerly over my carefully preserved museum, I made it to the door. I cracked it open a sliver and brought my ear to the opening.

“ … denying it! I know you took it from me!” I heard Greg shout. From the little I heard before I barricaded myself in my room, it sounded like Greg was accusing my mother of stealing money from him.

The very idea of my mother stealing money from Greg was absurd and laughable. The most likely option was that Greg had gone out drinking the night before and gotten so black-out drunk that he had forgotten how much money he had spent at the bar.

Usually my mother stayed passive when he said or did stupid things. Unlike Greg, my mother didn’t like fighting with him and would do whatever it took to avoid confrontation.

But not this time.

“How dare you accuse me of stealing!” I heard her yell and grinned, applauding her for being properly pissed off. “I work my butt off to provide enough for this family and I’m not going to be wrongfully accused of thievery in my own home. A home that I paid for with my own, hard-earned money.”

It was about time she stopped taking his crap.

Greg mumbled something I couldn’t hear and my mother countered with, “You know what would solve this Greg? Getting a decent job so you won’t have to worry about money so much. If you could just hold down a job, then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“Oh, you want to know why I can’t get a job?” Greg must have pounded the wall because I heard a bam! “It’s your fault, alright?”

My mother scoffed.

“Oh sure Greg, you’re always the victim.”

“Yeah that’s right,” he continued viciously. “It’s your fault I’m a deadbeat because you just had to be a stupid, teenage whore.”

I gasped and stepped back, balling my hands into fists so tight my nails cut into my palms. That was a low blow, even for Greg.

A chilling silence followed.

I was surprised my mother didn’t scream something back at Greg. The fact that she didn’t hurl an insult back meant Greg had cut her deeply.

The sound of footsteps cut into the silence, followed by the clicks and creak of the front door. I ran to my window, hopping over a tower of books, and saw my mother storming toward the car.

My jaw dropped. Would she take the car and leave?

Since my room was so high up, I couldn’t see my mother’s face, but from the way she was holding herself…

I watched her climb into the passenger seat and knew she wasn’t going to leave without me.

I imagined myself marching up to Greg and slapping him clear across the neighborhood for her. But instead, I grabbed my purse and waited until I heard him stomp up the stairs and slam the door to his room. Even then, I counted to five before tip-toeing out of the house.  

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