5:37 AM

I woke up screaming.

I laid heart thumping like a rabbit, in complete silence for what felt like fifteen minutes, although I'm sure it was more like five seconds.

My hand darted up from the bed and hit the base of my lamp, where the switch is. I gasped.

My closet shelf and clothes rod, had collapsed. In the middle of me having a nightmare.

The reason is fairly obvious for one reason, and one alone. I don't have any bookshelves, so all my books went on there, the ones I have from before we moved here are in boxes still.

I sat up slowly and when I swung my feet to the floor I found "Frog" under my feet. A novel by Stephen Dixon. Sinking to my knees I slowly started collecting the mangled bodies of my precious books. My all time loves. Every one of my darlings hurled to the floor, their defenseless covers and bindings, their pages now bent and a few mildly torn covers.

Gingerly pulling them up and smoothing their feathers of paper, I began to stack them. I cooed over my favorites, gave little whimpers seeing them bent and abused.

My father finally made his way upstairs and said, "What happened?"

"The shelf broke."

"Oh... guess we need to get you proper bookshelves huh?"

I just glared at him. He's been promising to build bookshelves for me since we moved into this house. That's three years. This question was, to me, incredibly thick.

He mumbled something about thinking it was thunder.

"I screamed, too," I said, picking up a novel by Alice Hoffman.

"Oh..." Apparently 'oh' sums up everything. He turned and went back to bed, on the couch.

My mother never even woke.

When I was done recovering my books and other little oddball items I had on the shelf, I inspected the wall. The PLASTIC clip (here is where I let out a little growl of frustration) had shattered, and the BRACE that was supposed to hold it up in case that happened, and punched a hole through my wall.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

I took all the clothes off the bar and stacked them on my hope chest where they are now in process of wrinkling and needing to be rewashed later just to be suitable to wear.

Dad said he'd fix it. But I know him. He won't. Or he'll take about a month to do it and I'm not waiting a month to have a place to hang my clothes up. I know how to mud and tape and I can definitely paint, I'll fix the baseball sized hole myself. The hanging rack however will be difficult. I don't know if I can find a replacement for the clip, and I'm going to have to bend the metal back into shape. Maybe I'll just see if they have a new one with those measurements at Menards. And a bookshelf somewhere while I'm at it.

Needless to say, my day started out very very badly. I'm glad to have had to stay home by myself. I really don't want to be around anyone today.