It was in the middle of winter on a dark, smoggy night. Chills were running through the house, in and out of my room like a quiet ghost, silently coming and silently going. As I lay awake in my bed, thinking of what the next day should bring, my eyes start to grow heavy as I doze off. In the distance, I hear a faint booming sound. Soon it starts getting louder and louder, and still louder until I can hear nothing but the noise. Unpleasantly startled, I hurry over to my window. As I look out, I can see nothing but smoke and fire. Caught by surprise, I run to my little brother’s room, finding no one.
Then, in the distance, I could hear faint voices of terror calling my name. It sounded as if it was coming from outside, so I ran as fast as my Nike slippers could carry me down the stairs and outside into my front yard. I found the rest of my family there, along with my neighbors and their son, my best friend. I just stood there in horror with the rest of my family and friends.
We had no idea what had happened. The next morning, I don’t remember very clearly, but what I did was read the newspaper and come across an article about a house burning down not too far from mine. I really didn’t know what to think at that time until it all clicked upstairs. The noise the night before had been the house burning down and the natural gas line exploding. Later in the article, it said that our block of houses wouldn’t have any natural gas heating until the line was repaired. The first thing I did was run to the kitchen, finding my mother and father there fixing breakfast.
I started talking so fast that I really don’t even know what came out. My mom told me to calm down and sit at the table. Doing so, she gave me a glass of milk. Seeing that I was distressed, she sat down next to me and asked me what was on my mind. Taking full advantage of her attention, I told her as slowly and detailed as possible at the time. As soon as I had finished my frantic attempt to spill all that out, she didn’t laugh at me but just got that look in her eyes where you know that she didn’t believe a word of it.
The first thing she said in response was, Where did you hear about this?” I answered her as fast as possible, “In the newspaper.” Stunned at my quick answer, she told me to bring her the article. So, I ran back up the stairs and snatched the paper from my red race car-shaped bed. When I got downstairs, I laid the article out flat in front of my mother’s face. A subtle but shocked look arose on my mother’s face as she sank deeper into her chair. Shutting off the radio, I sat down next to my dad and asked him what we were going to do for heat. He just answered, “I don’t know, I just don’t know,” shaking his head in resistance.
Later that day, I was at a friend’s house who had heat. We played a video game and ate chips in his living room. The walls were adorned with many game heads, including a whole stuffed mountain lion that his dad had hunted with a special tag. Throughout my visit, I brainstormed ways to get heat in our house. Soon, I found myself in the back seat of our extended cab black GMC pickup. My little brother sat on my mom’s lap, and my dad began to drive onto the onramp.
It’s not easy on a daily basis when you live in New York. We hit a huge traffic jam as soon as we got close to the freeway. I think we were stuck there for about an hour and a half, but I don’t really remember because I was trying to go to sleep. When I woke up, we were finally on the freeway and driving about 40 miles.
PH because there were so many cars, but soon we were back in my neighborhood.
We stopped at the local McDonald’s to get some lunch. Luckily, my dad had received his paycheck.
