A/N:
I had this idea after seeing Disturbia and decided to run with it. Be kind. My first time writing for suspense genre :)
Read/Review, please! It makes writing a whole lot more fun.
italics flashbacks
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Danielle put her hand over her mouth to try and keep the Kool-Aid from spewing out everywhere. Her laugh settled and it was taking all of her strength not to start again. "Mom, stop! You know I can't stop when you make that face. It's unreal how much you look like him."
Julie lifted the knife from the cutting board and made the face again. Danielle shook her head in exasperation, looking away. Her mother was always imitating her brother Kale's 'emo expression', as Julie liked to call it. He wore it all too often. "Okay, seriously. You're embarrassing me now."
Julie gives her daughter a small eye roll. "There's no one here to embarrass you in front of, Dani. I save that for when we're in public, remember?"
Danielle peers back down at her text book on the kitchen table, trying to remember where she left off. Math was her worst subject, which is why she always saved her homework for Sundays, because it was the one day when there was nothing to do but study. None of her friends were at the mall or the movies, so she usually just stayed home with her parents and Kale, and occasionally Ronnie when he graced them with his annoying prescence.
The phone rang. Danielle reaches for it across from her. "I've got it. Hello?"
A smile emerges on Julie's lips. "Is it that boy you won't stop talking about?"
Her eyes dart up at Julie in warning. Julie's hands go up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Sheesh."
"Hey Daddy. No, she didn't say anything. Dad, stop it. Yeah, well maybe if I got some privacy once in awhile I wouldn't have to worry about certain people listening in on my phone calls. I'm not being mean, I'm cranky. Okay. Why? Okay, whatever. Hey idiot. Bullshit! Seriously? You actually caught something?"
"Don't say bullshit." says Julie, scraping the chopped celery into a pot.
Danielle couldn't help but smile. Her mother didn't care about cursing on any other day but Sunday. She never understood this since no one in the Brecht household had attended church since she was five. "Huh? Oh, she said not to say bullshit. Ew, no she's cooking-- something. Thank God. I'd never eat it anyway. That water's disgusting. You're gross. I say. Okay. I'll see you guys when you get here. Hold on a sec."
She holds up the phone. "Kale wants to brag. They actually caught a living, breathing fish."
Julie grabs the phone and starts talking to her son and then to Daniel. They'd be home in an hour. That was the last thing she said before her jaw tightened and the knife she was holding dropped to the ground. Danielle stood up and hovered over Julie, who was now sitting against the counter on the floor. "Mom? What's going on? What happend? Mom?"
She just shook her head, hand on her forehead, with the phone still pressed to her ear. "Daniel? Daniel?" she repeated over and over.
When Julie began to cry, Danielle was mentally preparing for the worst. She leaned down slowly and wrapped her arms around her sobbing mother. She barely realized that her whole body was shaking involentarily. Before the police contacted them two hours later, Julie assumed they were both dead.
Panting and sweating, Danielle Brecht shot up in her bed. Her eyes closed tightly. She could hear her heartbeat getting faster by the second as she ran both hands through her long, blonde hair that was now matted with percipitation. She was all too accustomed to the nightmares. They had been happening less and less, but when they came back, they did so with a vengeance.
For the first month after her father died, she would wake up screaming at the top of her lungs and shoving away anyone in her path. When she'd finally look around her to see what was what, her mother would be sitting beside her trying to calm her down, and Kale would be standing at attention in the doorway. Sometimes with his bat still clutched in both hands out of fear that someone had broken into the house. After a few weeks, her mother made her see a psychiatrist. That lasted for about two months until Danielle guilted her into not making her go anymore. The sessions never helped anyway. Most of the time she'd just sit there in silence. Danielle saw it as a waste of money that the three of them needed to live on. Their mother was working two jobs as it is.
Julie takes a deep breath and silently counts to ten. The one tactic that she took from the therepy sessions. She closes her eyes again and pulls her knees to her chest. "Seven.. eight.. nine.. ten. Slow, deep breaths. Remember where you are. You're not back there. You're in the present. You're in the present.." she mumbles.
"D, you okay?"
Her eyes open. Kale was standing in the doorway in his Led Zepplin t-shirt and boxers. "What are you doing?" she asked him.
He leans in the doorway. "Going to take a leak. I heard something."
"I'm fine, Kale." He continues to stand there, staring at her. "Really, I'm okay."
He looks down at the floor and turns to leave. She quickly adds, "Don't tell Mom."
But he was already out of sight. She didn't even know why she'd said that. He wouldn't tell her. He hadn't even talked about the accident once since it happend.
She lays back down on her pillow, trying to fall back asleep.
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