Summary Of ' Wood Polish ' By Kristen

She would turn off the electricity to my room so that there was no TV, curling irons, games, or

I screamed in tears, “Dad! Mom,” at the top of my lungs as I was laying on the hard,cold basement floor.

My mom spoke very little to each of us and seemed to be gone longer and longer each day until Saturday, which was moving day. That Saturday I had a band concert for relay for life at my local park. As the performance came to an end my best friend and I hop in the backseat of her mom's sweltering car and crank up the radio. We listen to our favorite throwbacks as her mom speeds down the streets rushing to get me home. As we pull in the drive, an unfamiliar vehicle idles in my driveway. Inside my house lays all of my moms belongings neatly piled up by the door waiting to be taken. My mom greets me at the door and introduces me to her boyfriend. He is much taller than me and talks down to me as if I'm a child. I cut the conversation short and sit on the couch with my dog Casey as they continue moving her things. After the last item is hauled away, my mom looks at me through the glass of the front door and says “I'll pick up Casey later.” and vanishes without another

The drugs started to take effect in the worst possible moment. My knees bunched over with every step I took, and no matter how many times I gasped for air I couldn't breath. It was useless, it felt like I was running under water. My heart was pounding in my throat, threatening to breakout of its cage and leave my mouth in the form of bile. It wasn't raining, but my cheeks were damp. Just like a river the tears flowed down my face and blurred my vision.

“Mommy?” I called out, walking into my parents’ room and seeing my mom crying on her knees.

As I impatiently waited on my mother to come back home, she instantly rushed into the house. At that moment, I knew something was terribly wrong.

We looked at each other, stood up, and headed down the big hallway and around the corner to find my mom gasping at the fact that her water had broken. This was a surprise seeing as she was not due to give birth to my little sister for another two weeks. Once again, we were out the door and in the car. My grandmother did not put me in my car seat right and I remember struggling to free my arms the entire ride. My mom sat in the front seat yelling and muttering words under her breath. I was afraid because my mom was in such a strange state but I soon realized that she was yelling more at my grandmother than at her painful stomach. Every time we approached traffic, she gasped and turned behind her with her hand on my car seat, as to secure me from some ejecting force. It was not until years later that I was told all of the stories about what a terrible driver my grandmother was and how many cars she destroyed in various "incidents," as my grandfather calls them. We reached the hospital in plenty of time, but with one problem remaining, my grandfather and dad remained uninformed and unreachable as the resided among thousands of intoxicated football fans. They arrived in just enough time to see my mom before she had my sister, but not without strategic methods to get a hold of them. They first had to be paged over the intercom and when that seized to succeed, event staff members were sent to find them standing

I heard her coming so I quickly ran back to my room before she noticed. When I got to my room I started to sob quietly but I had to keep it together because I needed to remember to get Lulu back and to do whatever I could to keep my dog. After I pulled it together I called my friend and she told me she could come over tomorrow so we could make a plan to find my dog and keep her. Then once we got off the phone I went into my mom’s room and sat on the bed.

Until about 6 months ago, I lived in a house with 2 other roommates over a period of almost 2 years. We all had jobs that had different hours; therefore we were usually home at different times. After the newness of living away from home with other people than my parents or on a campus, I realized I was the one usually picking up everybody else’s mess. I would often go home and find dishes in the sink, the stove covered with dirty pots and pans, clothes throughout the house. Some of the time I would just go ahead and do the dishes, clean the stove and put their clothes in their rooms, but other times I would just get mad ignore the mess for a few days until it got to the point where I had to clean up.

When we pulled up to the hospital, my mom guided me down the long hall I would normally go down for a check-up. However, this

As I sat in my car, I watched, through teary eyes, into the door of an apartment while my parents tried to calm my older brother down. At the time, I did not have any idea why he was acting the way he was, but later at the hospital I figured out it was an overdose of LSD that was causing the irrational behavior. Looking back on that day now, I still remember the frigid air and the silence when I walked into the hospital room where my brother, Brandon, was laying with an endotracheal tube down his throat.

Why is my sister so quiet? I was very confused. I was looking around the house, my room, her room, outside, EVERYWHERE!!!! I still couldn’t find her… I finally her in my mom’s bathroom. My mom’s bathroom was sparkling white, white rugs and towels, the smell of lavender… I felt an immense sense of relief when I saw her big green eyes on her beautiful, smooth, olive skin. Behind her head, she had long, light brown hair. That relief didn’t last a single second.

I woke up. Feeling groggy, I went to take my pills. Being the way my brain was, I needed pills to function. I see things, but others don’t see them. These things, they are right in front of my face, but they are not visible to other people. I could not find my pills, I looked everywhere, even in my drug stash. They were not there. Wait, I sold them to Angelo. Well, remembering this, I need to go to the drug store.

“A deep breath is all it takes to enter a room. Or to scream. Or both”(Longshore1). This is one first things Anne Boylen is thinking when she returns to the English Court for the first time in ages. She has finally rejoined the English Court after being sent away because of the scandal she’s committed and now is more than ready to fit in and steer clear of gossip. Tarnish, is a book written by Katherine Longshore about love, heartbreak and power. The theme comes across strongly through all these attributes of the book. Tarnish’s theme is to not allow society’s expectations get in the way of your true self.

It was a bone chilling January night; my mom received a call at about 11:15 PM, a call that changed my life forever. My Aunt June was on the other line. She was crying so hard my mother could barely understand her. Through the sobbing my mom finally understood that Brian, my cousin, had been in a horrible accident and she didn’t know how bad it was. My mother jumped out of the bed after she hung up the phone. She screamed up the stairs at my sister and me; it was a nerve shrilling scream. I could hear fear in her voice. My mom was always yelling at us growing up if we forgot to do something. She would even get us out of bed to finish something that wasn’t done completely. This particular