hey, dad...

June 2083 - Ryanne Phoenix is 12, Hayden is 33.

"Hey, Dad," Ryanne says, stopping her father in the living room. "Summer and Tyler, you wanna know why they were really fighting?" She doesn't wait for him to ask, why? "He had sex with another girl."

"What?" Hayden says. "Who - where did you hear that?"

"Oh..." She stammers a bit as she realizes she can't exactly admit that she had her ear pressed to the window that morning.

"You know that's none of your business," he says.

"Yeah," she says. "I guess. Hey, Dad?"

"Hey what?"

"Do we have any of that insurance money left?"

"No," he says. "We bought the house with it. Why?"

"Oh, cause I kind of want a cell phone."

He laughs. "I think I can manage to buy you a cell phone."

"Okay," she says. "Hey, Dad?"

"What?"

"Do you remember when Mom died?"

He doesn't speak at first. Her eyes wander, to some vague place on the floor. "Yeah," he says. "I do."

"That kind of sucked," she says.

"Hey, Dad?" she says, springing back to life. "You wanna come play catch?"

*******

notes: I didn't know what to do with this one after everything that happened with my dad. As the oddness of the universe would have it, this was actually the last thing I shot and wrote, in its entirety, just a day or so before I got The Call.

So it took some time before I was able to come back to it, and I think I wanted to slot it into June for the story anyway. And it's here, it's written, you might as well read it, right?

These Phoenix girls are very dear to my heart.

And lol, Ryanne, and the bizarre things this girl talks about! There were speech bubbles for all of it, but I preferred to recreate the story pictures for more creative freedom. She said every bit of that though, lol!

Weird girl!