Dad, No One Will Laugh at You Anymore chapter 04
Author: Lynn Green
I was left in the freezing hallway.
Wind howled through the gaps and cut straight down my collar. My teeth chattered so hard my jaw ached.
The pain in my arm, the throbbing at the back of my skull, and the hollow ache in my chest did not compare to the physical revulsion those two words triggered. The response had been carved so deep into me that it had become part of my body.
I pounded on the door and sobbed through apologies. “Dad, I am sorry. I will not do it again. Please let me back in.
“I will never embarrass you again. No one will ever laugh at you because of me.”
Dad did not make a sound.
I crumpled into a ball against the cold wall and listened to his voice drifting out from inside.
“I am sorry, Ray. I have not done a good job with this kid. He is greedy and he lies. I have embarrassed everyone.”
Uncle Ray objected right away. “The gift card was in my coat pocket the whole time. I never put it in my bag. Brady must have been mistaken. This had nothing to do with Kellen.”
Dad waved it off. “It is fine. This is a good chance to teach him a lesson. If I do not, he will keep acting like this out there and give people something to laugh about.”
Those words again. This time, there was no trembling. No suffocating. No clawing at the wounds on my hands.
Every response had gone quiet. All that remained was a numbness so vast it swallowed everything.
I straightened up slowly. I walked out through the building entrance.
Fine snow drifted down outside. The neighborhood was empty, nothing but the sound of wind. I looked at the dark bridge not far away. A thin layer of ice covered the river below it.
A voice rose from somewhere deep inside me.
“Jump. Then you will never hear those words again.
“Jump, and no one will ever laugh at Dad because of you.”
I walked toward the bridge, one step at a time.
Back in Uncle Ray’s living room, Dad still smiled apologetically at the relatives.
“This punishment will help him remember. It will set an example for the other kids. You cannot act up in front of people and make your family look bad. That is how you get laughed at.”
Uncle Ray frowned and shook his head. “This was not the kid’s fault. I miscounted the gift cards, and Kellen was the one who got punished for it.”
He stood up. “I am going to bring him back inside. It is freezing out there.”
The smile on Dad’s face stiffened before he caught himself. He stepped in front of Uncle Ray. “No, it is fine. A little cold will not hurt him. It is a good lesson. If I do not toughen him up now, he will keep embarrassing me out there and giving people something to laugh about.
“He is spoiled. Once he is cold enough, he will come around and apologize on his own.”
Uncle Ray’s frown deepened. He looked at Dad. “Listen. He is your son. Your own flesh and blood. Since when is saving face more important than your child?
“You need to stop saying ‘laughed at’ in front of him all the time. Think about what that does to a kid. Do not wait until it is too late to regret it.”
Something flickered across Dad’s face, but his certainty did not waver. “You do not understand, Ray. Everything I do is for his own good. If I am strict with him now, nobody will have reason to laugh at him when he is older. He will understand when he grows up. He will appreciate what I did.”
His eyes still shone with the self-satisfied conviction of a father who believed he was doing right by his son.
He had no idea that the words he tossed around so carelessly had already become a trigger seared into my bones, the final weight on a scale that had been tipping for years. He would never know that the pride he valued more than anything had driven his son away.
Uncle Ray opened his mouth to speak, but Brady burst through the front door before he could say anything. The boy’s face was white as paper, and his voice cracked and shook.
“Uncle Phil. Uncle Ray. Something happened.
“Kellen, he… he jumped off the bridge by the neighborhood.”
