"Damn it, Mel. I'm not going to fight about it!"
"I hate to tell you this." Mel returned shortly, pushing back from the table. "But you are fighting about it."
Henry glared at her as she crossed the room, for once in his life too furious to even speak.
Suddenly, there was a crash from the living room.
"Shawn…." Henry muttered, rolling his eyes as he went to investigate.
Mel was right behind him.
"Shawn!" He snapped the moment he stepped foot in the living room. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Nothing." Shawn replied too quickly, kicking something under the couch and grinning innocently up at his parents, who were both glaring at him now instead of at each other.
Henry's eyes quickly swept the room, looking for anything that was out of place.
"Don't give me that!" Henry growled, spotting an empty place on the mantle where a picture frame should have been.
He stalked over to the couch and reached under, pulling out the missing frame.
The glass had a large crack across it.
"What happened, Shawn?" Mel demanded, examining the broken frame over Henry's shoulders. "That was my favorite picture frame!"
"It fell off the mantle." Shawn admitted, looking down at his feet.
"Things don't just fall, Shawn." Henry informed him. "They get knocked over."
He handed Mel the frame and leaned over the fireplace, reaching in and grabbing a baseball out of the ashes.
"They get knocked over by things like flying baseballs." He added, tossing the ball up and catching again.
"Oh."
Shawn cleared his throat, but didn't bother denying it anymore.
There was no point.
"Go to your room, Kid." Henry sighed when Shawn didn't say anything else, pocketing the wayward ball.
"Okay…"
Shawn slowly made his way up the stairs. As he shut the door to his room, he could hear his parents downstairs talking.
"I can fix it." Henry was saying. "I have some glass around somewhere…it shouldn't be too hard to cut a piece to fit…"
Shawn grinned to himself and flopped onto the bed, resting his arms behind his head.
It worked.
It always worked.
If he could just get his parents to pay attention to him, they always stopped fighting…at least for a little while.
If I can just get them to pay attention to me all the time, maybe they'll stop yelling at each other…
Even if that means they're yelling at me…