The next morning, Fern wasn’t sure if she should be thrilled, or creeped out. There, laying innocently on her desk, was a small box. It was wrapped in an aqua, shiny and holographic wrapping paper tied with a silky blue ribbon. It had a silvery tag hanging off it that said in that now familiar calligraphy ‘A present for Fern~’ followed by a curly heart.

She stared at it for a moment more before carefully taking the lid off the box. Inside was a long silver chain with a crystalline blue tear drop on the end, encased in a fancy silver cage. It was simple, but beautifully elegant. And expensive looking. Fern frowned at the thing. Did her dad buy this to cheer her up? That didn’t seem like him. The last time she had asked him for something that cost more than ten dollars he’d told her to earn the money mowing lawns.

She shrugged and put pulled it over her neck, frowning while she tried to work the clasp. Then she had a rough time pulling her thick hair out and over the chain. She winced when some strands got snagged and ripped out. This is why she didn’t like to wear jewelry much, but this necklace was way too pretty to not wear at least once. After that she’d wear it on nice occasions. Like weddings. She was pretty sure she had a cousin that was getting married in a few months. But she’d have to get her dad to buy a matching dress and shoes for it, but she supposed that was inevitable anyways. She’d already outgrown her last set of ‘special occasion’ clothes.

After she’d dressed and went into the kitchen, she was a little surprised by the note on the table. Thankfully, it wasn’t another silver and blue letter, but a single sheet of lined notebook paper. She could see her dad’s blocky print on it. It read:

I have to be away on last minute business. I’ll be gone for the night and back around noon tomorrow. DON’T LEAVE THE HOUSE, AND DON’T ANSWER THE DOOR WHILE I’M GONE. Keep the blinds shut too. If anything happens, call 911. If the power goes out, then go into my room and flip any switches in the power box into the DOWN position. Also, there’s leftover mac n’ cheese in the fridge for dinner. DON’T TURN ON THE OVEN. I love you, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

P.S. Please do the dishes and vacuum.

Fern huffed and tossed the note into the trash. It was pretty standard affair. Her dad would occasionally have to pull all nighters or suddenly have to up and run for work. They couldn’t really afford to hire a babysitter, as they tended to need notices ahead of time and would charge high prices for last minute cases. When Fern was little there’d be occasions where she’d go to sleep in her own bed and wake up on her grandma’s couch, whisked away in the middle of the night for free emergency childcare.

Thankfully, Fern was old enough to watch after herself now, for the most part. Although she still wasn’t allowed to do things like answer doors or work the stove, she could at least be trusted to stay inside and not electrocute herself on the breaker box.

She made herself a bowl of cereal before looking over at the sink. It wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t like every dish in the house was dirty. She just wished she could actually use the dishwasher. But unfortunately for her, the house was over fifty years old and the plumbing wasn’t very well designed. The dishwasher had never been run for as long as she could remember, but her dad had told her that whenever they used it, it would back up the plumbing and make black, sludgy water come up the bathtub drain. Supposedly is smelled awful and took forever to get back into working order. So they didn’t run the dishwasher anymore. On the bright side, they kept it clean, so it wasn’t full of mold and make an excellent drying rack.

Once she’d finished her breakfast she put her bowl in the sink to join the other dishes before fetching the small stepstool. It was a rusty old thing, but it was necessary for her do dishes. Not that she was too short to reach it otherwise, but because she’d have to lean over the sink and put her whole body weight onto the side to reach the bottom. If she did that too much, the pressure would cause the pipes under the sink to bend out of alignment and leak. And one of the things her dad hated more than anything else was when those dang pipes leaked. He’d have to crawl under there and fix them while water squirted onto his face. So she had to use the stool.

Fern actually didn’t mind doing dishes so much. It was a monotonous task that she could zone out to and let her imagination run wild. Or think about things. Like Kim. Or not like Kim! Fern shook her head frantically, spitting her hair out of her mouth when it got stuck. Do not think about Kim! Thinking about Kim would only make her sad, and she still had work to do. Fern started thinking about the book she was reading. She had gotten it on a trip to Goodwill, but she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. It was about fairies, but not the kind she was used to seeing, like Tinkerbell.

These fairies were tall like people, and they swore and were at war, and there was a lot of killing and maiming. She was particularly horrified by the part where they ripped off one of the fairy’s wings…in excruciating detail. Fern hadn’t read much past that part. On the one hand, she liked the setting of the book. It was all very fantastical and mystic. On the other hand, she wasn’t too fond of…everything else. All the characters were old people that talked stiffly and yelled at each other without getting much done. The plot was some generic tripe about a missing princess, and nothing about what was going on seemed very magical at all. It was all spears in hearts and arrows in eyes, with lots of screaming in pain.

She supposed she’d pick it back up eventually, but probably not until she was older. Considering how teenagers all seemed to love mindless gore, she assumed she’d grow to like it too.

After the last fork had been rinsed, Fern dried her hands off on a sheet of paper towel and went over to the cupboard, where they kept the vacuum. Or as her dad called it, the ‘shotvac’. She hated the shotvac. It was a big, bulky thing that was quite heavy. It’s hose would always come loose from the compartment, the attachments would always get stuck, and it’s wheels were so clogged with hair and dust bunnies that it wouldn’t roll at all. It would just sink into the carpet and Fern would have use all of her comparatively tiny strength to lug it into the proper place.

After she’d struggled to get the right attachment onto the end of the hose, vacuuming was a smooth enough process, aside from having to move the shotvac and an incident with a sock. Their house was relatively small, so it didn’t take long to finish it. Once she had wrestled the shotvac back into it’s spot, she returned to the living room and plopped into her dad’s chair. She took a glance at the door to make sure it was locked before pulling herself up and setting up the PlayStation again.

It wasn’t like she had much else to do. They didn’t have any fancy channels like Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. All she had was PBS, and they didn’t play anything fun until Saturday morning. She had read all of her books, aside from the one about fairies, and she didn’t feel like playing with her stuffed animals. So…video games it was. The question, was which one? More Spyro? Some Kingdom Hearts? That copy of God of War that Kim didn’t have a chance to take back before she was ripped away? Fern plucked it out of the box and into the console. Her dad wasn’t exactly father of the year in every category, but at the very least he paid attention to the ratings of her games and movies. He wouldn’t buy her a game that was rated T or higher. So her only choice for more adult content was to borrow it from someone else and play it while he wasn’t home. Which was a lot.

As the game booted up, Fern pondered. Although her dad was careful about video games and movies, he didn’t seem to care as much about books. She wondered why that was. Some of the things she’d read were way more violent or obscene than things she’d see on a screen. Maybe he was just glad she was reading and didn’t care about the contents. Well, whatever.

The day was filled with white noise of mindless button mashing and running around with a screaming man. It was easy to zone out and before she knew it, hours had flown by.

Dinner was a bowl of the leftovers her dad’s note mentioned. She took the liberty of adding some cream to it to keep it from getting oily and old tasting. That was a trick she’d figured out herself, without her dad’s help.

After that she settled back into the living room with a bowl of ice cream, having not the usual two, but four scoops! Truly, she was living the life. She flipped over from the PlayStation to the usual channels, flipping until she found something tolerable. And by that, it was just barely. It was one of those infomercial things that sell nonsense. This one was particularly dull. It was a bunch of old ladies cooing and fawning over some fancy jewelry.

She shoved another spoon of vanilla in her mouth before she gently ran a finger over the jewel hanging from her neck. She really, really did like it. It was nice and elegant, not too gaudy like the pricy baubles they were showing off on the screen.

The night dragged on, but eventually Fern decided it was time to settle into bed. After she’d powered down the lights and TV, she shuffled into her room and changed into her pajamas. She felt a snag in the back of her neck and reached behind her head to take her necklace off. After yanking a few red hairs out of the clasp, she set it gently on her desk, making sure it wouldn’t get mixed up with the other junk.

She flipped off the light and crawled into bed, closing her eyes. Unbeknownst to her, the night had only just begun.