The Check Checklist |SSC|

1.

𝐎𝐍𝐄

【Ｐｅｅｋ－ａ－ｂｏｏ】

▾

    "I got a call from Mr. Castner, why did you skip PE for a whole week?"

    "I was hurt. Very hurt. It hurts still."

    "What hurts? Did you get an ouchie?"

    "When my ouchie heals I can go back." The toddler boy crawls to the other side of the couch to reach his mother, she turns her head and stares off at the flatscreen TV intently, the blurs of light reflecting in her eyes. 

     "Why is that lady sad?" The boy asks with a twinge of innocent curiosity in his words.

    "It's a funeral sweetheart." The mother sighs sadly, patting her son's head as she watches the news play out on the screen.

    "Fu-funeral?" He toys with one strand of her hair while turning his head to the television as well. "What's that? Is it like a birthday? I like birthdays. Why is the lady sad on her birthday?"

    "No, Maxy." She lets out a somber laugh, in awe of her son's innocence, his cluelessness about presence of bad in this world. "Think of a funeral like a sad birthday. Instead of celebrating the birth of someone, you go to a funeral to be sad about someone's death."

    "Ooh." The son nods. "But why would you want to make yourself sad? Wouldn't being at a sad birthday make you more sad?"

     The screen switches to a female news reporter.

     "Gathered around the funeral, the friends and family members of Mr. Solis beg for justice to be brought forward. There is now a charity event going on to help with the Solis Case, and what is believed to have occurred around eleven AM to ten PM—"

     The television stops emitting noise after Estrella mutes the TV and places the remote back down on her lap. She turns her head to her son and looks him in his round adorable eyes that glinted with a certain sparkle. His world is all sunshine and rainbows, and what a mother could only hope for is to keep that going on for their children, forever. 

    But she knows that it is inevitable, and her job is to prepare Max for all the sorrows the world forcibly offers everyone.

     "Sometimes, you can't help but to be sad about someone you love being gone forever. It's like peek-a-boo, you see them one moment but they never come back, Maxy. Sometimes attending a sad birthday will help you acknowledge—I mean understand, that they will never come back, so you can move on, and wish them well on their next journey, wherever that may be."

    Max let's his head down a bit, in contemplation.

    "I know you don't understand most of it right now, but..." Her body slightly turns towards the television again. "One day you will understand, just like everyone else. Sometimes bad things happen, just like that."

    She gestures towards the silent TV.

    "But mama, what if I don't want to play peek-a-boo? I want to come back all the time."

     "Life is peek-a-boo, Maxy. You don't have an option in playing, once you're in the game, it's only a matter of how you spend your time until you never come out to say peek-a-boo again."

▾