1Her parents were arguing again downstairs in the living room. She sat on her bed, playing with a doll, or at least she had been, and their raised angry voices seemed to seep through the floor. They vibrated the walls, the floors with their yells, and she'd stopped. She could never ignore their yelling matches, no matter how hard she would try; it was like they wanted her to hear.
Courtney didn't understand what they argued about all of the time. Nearly every day when her father came home, before Courtney could even run downstairs to give him a hug, her mother would come out from the kitchen or her bedroom, and the yelling would start. Janine would point at envelopes piled on the table, the ones Courtney had gotten out of the mailbox earlier that day, and yell about money. That was one word she could understand out of all the fighting, but everything else just sounded foreign to her.
The door slammed downstairs and the little blonde jumped. More often than not, the arguments ended this way. When she would gather the will to go downstairs, she would find her mother in the living room, putting on her shoes and jacket. She would tell her she was going to work and leave once the babysitter got there.
The babysitter was nice and she would play dolls with her, something her parents never would do. Courtney could tell that the babysitter knew her parents argued a lot, how could anyone not know? Her parents were loud. When the five year old tired of her dolls, Eryne, the babysitter, would make her something to eat. Sometimes it was macaroni and cheese, the kind shaped like dinosaurs, or ramen noodles. On special occasional, or the days that her parents arguing was really bad, she'd order pizza and Courtney got to choose what kind they got. It was always the same, cheese with pineapple. Just pineapple. She knew Eryne didn't like it, even though she acted like she did, but it was her choice.
Tonight, as they ate macaroni and cheese, they sat on the couch and watched t.v Courtney just used her fork to move around the dinosaur shaped noodles. Eryne asked her what was wrong, although the little girl was fairly certain that Eryne knew already.
"My daddy left again today without saying goodbye. I think mommy made him leave and he won't come back this time. She does it all the time."
Eryne frowned, clearly not sure of what to say to her. She didn't like the way her parents acted. But, she knew they loved her daughter, and she didn't think Mike would leave Courtney. "I'm sure he'll be back. He loves you too much to not come back."
Courtney looked up at her with her innocent blue eyes, questioningly. "Do you promise?"
The brown haired babysitter frowned for a moment, unsure of whether she should make such a promise to a little girl like Courtney. She waited a moment before responding, and looking into the girl's eyes, she said "Yes, I promise"