Breakfast

A writer once said, “All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.” I guess when you don’t have a good breakfast, your whole day goes downhill from there. Like mine did.

It was the Saturday after my episode at school. I woke up with an especially nasty headache. And if you’ve ever woken up like this, then you’d know that your attitude tends to be as nasty as your headache, especially, when you have a horribly annoying little brother. And as far as little brothers go, I probably had the worst. I sighed and got out of bed. Lounging out of my room, I walked down the hallway. “They’re here! There’s nothing to fear! Ultrabots! Ultrabots!” I gritted my teeth. My little brother was singing the stupid Ultrabots song again. “Matthew!!” I shouted. “Would you please stop singing that stupid song?!”

“What stupid song?” a voice shouted from downstairs.

“The Ultrabots song! And aren’t you too old to be watching that?”

“That’s not a stupid song!” came the angry reply. “And no, I’m not too old to be watching that show. Ultrabots! Ultrabots!” he continued signing. I sighed. I wondered how I was able to maintain my sanity with him around.

I walked into the bathroom and shed my night gown. Stepping into the shower, I let the warm water run over my skin. I stood there and thought about my episode, as I now called it. In my short lifetime, I had never experienced anything like that. I’ve nightmares about it ever since. What exactly was it that happened to me on that day? Just thinking about it made my body shiver, despite the warm water running over it. Since then, my headaches had become worse. My head had been spinning with weird thoughts and I was going through bottles of aspirin as if they were candy. I turned off the shower and reached for my bathrobe. I walked back to my room, mulling these thoughts over in my mind.

I got dressed and went downstairs to have breakfast. My parents and Matthew was already at the kitchen table. Matthew took a long stare at me and said. “Disheveled hair, red eyes and cranky attitude. Yup, it’s official.”

“What’s official?”

“You have a hangover.” Matthew said, with an evil grin spreading across his face. “You’ve been drinking haven’t you?”

“You’re old enough to know about hangovers, but young enough to watch Ultrabots.” I said. “You’re a weird kid. I bet you were adopted.” Matthew made a face.

“Now kids,” Mom intervened, “Let’s not fight.” Let’s try to have a meal like normal family for once.” I pulled up my chair and mom put some runny eggs on my plate.

“So,” Dad asked, pulling up a chair across from me, “How was everyone’s week?”

“I came first in my spelling test.” Matthew boasted. “Mrs. Eccles said that I was the best.”

“What about you?” Dad asked me. I stared at my plate, moving the eggs around with a spoon. “I had a Physics Lab which my idiot partner screwed up. And now that we have to do it over, he stops coming to school.”

My Das sighed. “Well, what can you expect from the black sheep in the family. Every cent we spend on Matthew though seems to be well spent.”

I dropped my spoon. “Well, that’s rather encouraging!” I said angrily to him. “It’s wonderful to know that I’m the black sheep in the family and that I live in the shadow of my brainiac brother.”

Dad looked at me with a mixture of shock and anger. “Allison, I said such thing! You know that we don’t value any of our children above the other.”

“No I don’t!”

“What on earth is she talking about?” my mom said.

I turned to face her. “And why are you siding with him? Didn’t you just hear what he said?” I could feel the blood rushing to my face. “Well, forgive me for being the dumb kid! I’m just trying to do the most I can with the genes a certain pair of people gave to me!”

“Allison Kimberly Dagger! Stop this foolishness this instant!” I stopped. Mom just used my middle name. And she never uses my middle name. I stared down at my plate, trying to fight back my emotions.

“I take it back.” Matthew said. “It’s not alcohol. It’s probably cocaine.”

“Matthew!!” Mom shouted. I took up my plate and walked up to my room. “Allison, get back down here this instant!” I didn’t care. I kept walking. I opened my room door and flung the plate with the eggs across room. The plate shattered and the eggs splattered on the wall. I threw myself onto the bed and cried. It’s not something that I did very often, but it’s the only thing that I felt like doing. I lay there for a while, contemplating the injustice of life. Then I began happening. It started slowly, like the far away sound of TV static. It grew louder and louder, until it drowned out everything. Imagines and thoughts that were not my mine flew through my mind. I tried to stop them but to no avail. My head was like a massive antenna, sucking in the radio waves of humanity. I don’t know how long I lay there. Thoughts crashed over me like a raging river.

The sudden ringing of my phone snapped me out of it. As suddenly as they came, they all disappeared. The silence they left in my mind seemed almost deafening. I reached out absent-mindedly and answered the phone. “Hello?” a panicked woman’s voice asked. “Is this Allison Dagger?”

“Yes.” I replied. “Who is this?”

“I’m Mrs. Peterson, Alex’s mother. Have you seen Alex or spoken to him recently?”

“No, I haven’t seen Alex since he left school on Wednesday. Why? Is something wrong?”

I could hear the woman whimper. “Alex’s is missing. He didn’t come home on Wednesday and no one has seen him since. He’s not answering his phone and no one has any idea where he is.”

“What?!” I felt by blood run cold.

“Could you please call us if you hear anything?” Mrs. Peterson asked.

“Sure.” I replied. I heard the line go dead as she hung up. Alex was missing? He wasn’t my most favorite person, but I would hate for something to happen to him. He was a nice guy after all. What happened to me a minute ago also bothered me greatly. What in one earth was that? Why was it happening? And more importantly, how do I stop it from happening again?