Trouble & Breakfast

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, wishing that my bedroom door would hurry up and open and everything would be over with. Not that my bedroom door could open itself or nothing, but I wished that someone would come through, maybe ma or pa, or even Susie clutching the crumpled paper in her hand and howling like a madman about how I was a lousy good for nothing thief. But the fact of the matter was I wasn't a thief, they had it all wrong, everyone did.

I hadn't stolen the handbag, I'd just found it lying on the street, the way I'd found everything else lying on the street. It wasn't my fault that the old lady who'd dropped was too blind to see that.

But that's how it was, no one believed a thing I said, no sir, no one did. They all said it was a phase I was going through, that I'd grow out of it eventually and all, and all they had to do was keep me out of trouble until I did. Some job that was. Trouble just seems to gravitate towards me like I'm the largest body in the area -- though I'm really quite skinny-- and just couldn't leave my orbit. It just circled around me night and day, only it wasn't constant like the moon or nothing. It was more like one of those comets, the ones that drop by every so often and then disappear for another month or two before coming back closer than ever.

My stomach rumbled and I realized I sure was hungry, I get hungry a lot you see, having grown some six inches in the last four months alone, but I didn't wanna go down, cause everyone would already know by now, and I figured if I was gonna get in trouble i might as well make em come to me, why put in any work myself? But my stomach kept on rumbling like a thundercloud so I got up out of bed and started chewing on some bread crusts that were sitting on my desk. They weren't too bad, a little stale sure, but none too bad. they softened up soon as you let 'em sit in your saliva for a little.

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and thought that was it for sure, Suzie, or ma or pa or somebody was gonna come bursting in just to wave that little scrap of paper around and yell at me about being an honest boy, and how'd they'd tried to raise me with good morals and what have you. But the footsteps just kept on going right on past my room. I wondered if the postman was late today, it had snowed a lot last night and maybe the road ways were backed up or the snowplows hadn't come by yet or some such thing.

I wished it would hurry up and get here. I hate postponing bad things, if it was gonna happen why not just get it over with? The sooner the badness was out and done with, the quicker you could get back to good times, and the quicker I could stop worrying.

At this point my stomach was really growling like a madman, and I was out of bread scraps so I figured it would be worth it, going downstairs and all. If I got yelled at I'd at least get some food too, getting yelled at is a lot more pleasant on a full stomach than an empty one I find. So thinking about eggs and toast, and what kind of juice we had left I made my way downstairs, to the kitchen to get yelled at and breakfast.

Photo by Eiliv Aceron on Unsplash