Secret Keepers by Teddie Peacock

Author:Teddie Peacock [Peacock, Teddie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

22

Jason (2016)

Mom and Kelly (formerly known as Dad) are getting a divorce. It’s about time! Probably about 10 years too late, if you ask me. Why do parents think they need to stay together for the children? I bet if more parents asked what their kids really thought, there would be more divorces and more happy kids.

Yeah, yeah, people are always saying it’s better for the kids if Mom and Dad work out their issues and stay together. Bull, that only works if Mom and Dad don’t hate each other. Or in my case, Mom is stupidly in love with Dad, and Dad could care less.

Maybe Kelly was different before, and they really loved each other. But I wouldn’t know. All my memories are of the other Kelly, after Aunt Tessa’s lake house burned. Then it all went to hell.

Aunt Mindy got burned and Kelly got hurt trying to put the fire out in the boathouse. My nightmares started, after that weekend. Something about that fire messed me up. I started dreaming about red-headed monsters with fire faces and started wetting the bed again. Everything, even my favorite foods, made my stomach hurt. I got paranoid about sleeping in the dark and begged Mom to let me sleep with her every night. Some mornings I would wake up curled up in a ball outside of Mom and Kelly’s bedroom door.

The worse I got, the more the parents fought. Kelly thought I was just acting out for attention. Mom started taking me to a lot of different doctors. Later, I ended up going to a head doctor because none of the other doctors could find anything really wrong with me.

The more Mom worried, the madder Kelly got. He yelled a lot! Sometimes he would get in these crazy moods that just being in the same room set him off. It was worse, way worse when he was drinking. Kelly was a world champion drinker, probably the best in the world. The more he drank, the louder he got. Sometimes, I was sure the neighbors down the street could hear him. When he got crazy like this, I hid in my closet. He scared me so bad. A few times, I would wake up the next day wondering why I had slept in the closet. Then, I remembered.

Mom tried hard not to set yelling Kelly off. If she saw that he was in one of his moods, we usually left the house for a while. If he was drunk when we came back, we would go to Grampa and Grandma Maynard’s house. If it was a school day, Mom would send me to my room and tell me to lock the door. We had a secret code word for when I could come out. I learned how to call 911, very young.

When he totally lost it, he would break things and scream. He would get so worked up, I hoped he would fall over dead with a heart attack or stroke out. Usually, he would slam the front door so hard it rattled, heading out to the detached garage.

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