Short Story: A Narrative Fiction

Tom was nice. One night at dinner, he promised to explain the joke to me.
“I’ll tell you all about it one day.”
“Oh, goodness, no. I want my baby to be a baby for as long as possible,” my mom had said; she even laughed a little.
“Don’t worry, son. You’ll understand it when you’re older,” my dad said. “Honey, can you get me some spaghetti?” The spaghetti was between Cade and me. Mom was sitting across from us, and Dad and Tom were sitting on the ends of the table. There were some rolls on Mom’s side, and a bowl of lettuce next to Tom.
“You have hands, sweetheart, and they aren’t too short to reach that bowl, last I checked.”
“Bet that was forever ago,” Cade whispered to me, but Dad heard and kicked him under the table. That made me laugh, …show more content…

Then he said, “He wasn’t after my baseball…” But he sounded like he didn’t believe it. “He wasn’t looking for a baseball in a thirteen year old’s underwear drawer, Dad! How could you guys not see that?” I hated when they would fight and scream at each other, so I went to my room. They didn’t stop for a long time. And Cade kept screaming the word “pedo”. I figured out it was a bad word because I heard things slamming and breaking every time he said it. I still didn’t understand why he didn’t like Tom. Everyone else did, even me – I mean, I used to. I think it was around 11 o’clock when Cade came to my room and the house got really …show more content…

I don’t know why, but the moment she pulled my body into hers, I wanted to cry, too.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so, so, so sorry. I’m sorry, my sweet baby boy. I’m sorry,” she said. I almost couldn’t understand her; her voice was shaking so bad.
“Come on, honey,” Dad said, pulling Mom away from me. “You’re scaring the poor boy.”
“Fuck off, James!” she screamed and yanked herself back onto me.
Dad didn’t say anything for a while, then he sat down next to Cade and apologized to everyone – but he stared me right in the eye when he did. Mom finally let me go, but then she picked me up, sat me on her lap and held on even tighter. She was shivering. “Cade told us what happened, but…can you explain it to us,” Dad said.
I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what Cade told them. I looked at Cade desperately until he spoke.
“I don’t think he understands, dad. I don’t think he was…there, y’know?” Mom started crying again, even harder.
Dad looked at Cade, then at me. “Why were you at Tom’s?
I looked down into my lap. “Tom said he could teach me something, so I started going over there every day after school.”
“Every day – Jesus. Why? Since when? What was he teaching