The Break In (Part Two)

~Jennifer~

It’s nighttime and it’s dark outside. Again I’m at home; alone. I’m about fourteen or fifteen now, and my parents were at the high school for one of Elizabeth’s volleyball games. This time I was hanging out upstairs in the guest room playing on the computer. The telephone rang and I let the answering machine pick it up (Yes, our family screens). It was my mom so I ran downstairs and picked up the phone. She told me (or at least I thought she told me…) that they had left the sliding glass door open, and I should close it. This glass door looks out onto the backyard from the family room. I turned to look at the door, and sure enough, it was wide open. Without a thought, I slid it closed and locked it.


About twenty minutes later, over the “ping, ping” of my instant messenger, I heard my parents come home. I could hear them rustling through some things downstairs, so I jumped up and yelled “hello!” as I ran down the stairs. When I reached the living room, the lights were still out and there was no one there. “That’s odd,” I thought to myself. I turned to go into the garage thinking maybe they had to get some things out of the car. Again, there was no one there. However, the garage door was open. I immediately thought that what my mom was really telling me was that they left the garage door open, and I needed to close it. Whoops, no biggie. I closed the garage door and walked back into the living room.

I begin to walk towards the kitchen for a snack. As I walk by the sliding glass door I notice that it is wide open. Nothing but fear is going through my head at this point. All I could think was “I closed that, I closed that, oh my god I closed that!” At this point I am stiffened with the realization that there really was someone in the house…and they could still be inside.

I could feel his eyes burning a hole in the back of my head. I swear my heart was going to jump out of my chest (you know that scene in Dumb and Dumber where Jim Carrey punches his hand through the waiter’s chest and pulls out his heart? Yeah, it felt kinda like that). “Deep breath, it’s now or never.” I thought to myself. I slowly turned around, expecting a man with half a face, holding a knife and ready to pounce.

Nope, nobody there…whew!

Well I wasn’t about to wait there like a sitting duck so I grabbed the phone and ran back upstairs and locked myself in my parents bathroom. Instead of calling the police, I called my parents. I tried to explain to them what had happened and told my dad he needed to come home immediately. They didn’t really understand the magnitude of the situation, but lucky for me Elizabeth’s game was over anyways. They were home about ten minutes later. I made sure it was my family I heard downstairs before running down to explain to them that there really was someone in the house this time.

I frantically began to tell them how I thought they told me to close the glass door, and how I heard someone who I thought was them downstairs, and that’s when I realized the garage door was open. When I told them how the glass door had been opened after I had closed and locked it, they gave me those looks they usually gave when I thought there was someone in the house. That look that says, “Crazy child.” They tried to tell me that I probably just thought I closed the glass door, but somehow got distracted and forgot to actually do it. Okay, I understand they weren’t the “proud parents of an honor roll student” or anything, but to suggest that I couldn’t even remember if I had closed a door or not was a little offensive.

At this point I am desperately screaming at them that I had closed the door, and someone in the house opened it again. This was when my amazing big sister jumped in to my defense. She actually believed me and tried to get my parents to believe as well. She tried to tell them that I would have remembered if I didn’t close the door, and she pointed out to them that our garage door opener had been “lost” a few weeks before this, so it was not crazy to think someone had gotten into the house. I was never more grateful to have an older sister than at this moment.

When I think back, I guess it’s a little understandable that my parents didn’t believe me, considering my past history of “The Girl Who Cried Killer.” I guess next time I’ll just have to wait until the killer with a knife has me pinned to the bed before I call for help. Maybe I could even snap a photo…for proof.