“Shush! Lay down!” I whisper screamed, running down the short hallway. I’d barely opened my door and toed her body back when another door clicked open behind me.
“Mom?”
I sighed; at this rate I was never going to finish my assignment. “Sorry, bud, I know we’re making a racket. I’ll keep her quiet, I promise. Go back to bed.”
“What’s all over your shirt? Is someone here?” he asked, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Besides the creature under your bed? Nope.”
He dropped his hands, glaring at me. “He’s not there anymore, I checked.” His voice was raspy with sleep.
The effort of keeping a smile off my face was a battle. “Oh? Where do you think he went? Maybe to find a kid with a little more meat on his bones?”
“No,” he said, stepping through his doorway. “I’m pretty sure I saw the clown in your shower drain eat him.”
Speechless, I stared at his closed door a moment longer. That was a visual that would stick with me for a while. Thank God I hadn’t planned on sleeping for a few more hours.
I’d made the mistake of telling him about the first horror film I’d ever watched and how I’d been at a sleepover and had to lay in a pitch-black room while the TV screen was off but the surround sound was on. I’d been forced to fall asleep listening to the sounds of kids screaming and dying. Fifteen years later, I still had nightmares about it.
Shuddering, I made my way back to my room, grabbing a t-shirt from my closet and replacing my nasty top. The remainder of my coffee was ice cold at this point, not to mention I’d have to study in silence now. Great.
I propped my pillows against the wall and snuggled back in, shaking my head when Rugsy instantly re-burrowed under the comforter at my feet. How she breathed way down there, I’d never know.
This was our routine every night, or at least every night Monday through Thursday. I’d enrolled in a local community college when I was around twenty, thinking I’d stay two years and come out with something to help me get a job. I’d received enough federal assistance to pay for it, so it could only help, right?
Three years and four associate degrees later, I was still waiting for it to help me land a full-time job rather than the part-time ones I currently had. My dream was to work directly with delinquent teens in a youth correctional facility, but instead I was stuck earning minimum wage making copies and serving food.
I’d graduated with a 4.0 GPA and had been so proud until the moment I’d realized no one else cared. If it wasn’t at least a bachelor’s, my GPA didn’t matter to employers. Period.
So, I’d applied for a few scholarships and transferred to the university in the next city over. I was currently in my last year of full-time, online courses for Criminal Justice, and I was starting to run on empty.
Research results and court rulings were boring to read during the day, but at night it was giant, face-altering-yawn-level boring. But I was pushing through anyway, determined to finish and determined to maintain my GPA.
The thing was, getting pregnant at sixteen meant the world had stopped expecting anything of me. I probably sat at home with my seven baby daddies, milking the system while I refused to get a real job. I mean, that’s what all single moms did, right?
My neighbor had only further proved that narrow viewpoint by his comment insinuating I wasn’t an “adult with a job.”
I’d been a single mom for years; I was used to it. I was going to graduate summa cum laude if it killed me. Not because I had anything to prove to the world—society’s views on teenage moms were never going to change—but because I was determined to prove it to myself.
Three hours and a few more assignments later, I was dead. I was head bobbing harder than an emo at a concert and had nearly face planted into the screen. I closed the computer and glanced at my alarm clock, internally crying.