All That Glitters

January 5 2021

My hair is like the sun.

That’s what Dad always tells me. “Like the sun on a wheat field. Warm and bright. Just like you Sammie.” He’s the only one I let call me Sammie. I pretend to be embarrassed but it makes me happy when he says it. Then he rubs my head to mess up my hair and pretends he burns his fingers and makes a big deal of blowing on them. I roll my eyes but he laughs at his own jokes all the time anyway, eyes scrunched up with a big crooked smile, so he’s gonna keep doing it. But I don’t really mind.

January 15 2021

I’m in love with Deloris. A lot of people will say that you can’t really be in love if you’re only thirteen, but those people definitely never read any old books. People fall madly in love for real all the time in old books and everyone thinks it’s so serious and tragic, but if a teenager is in love now it’s a joke. I’ve loved Deloris since the second grade. That’s almost 6 years. If I wasn’t really in love with her would it last 6 years? No way.

February 2 2021

Dad was super tired today. More than he usually is when he gets back from the doctor. We don’t play catch anymore, but he always sits in the livingroom and we watch Supernatural and I sit close to him on the couch because even though I’m a teenager that show is seriously scary sometimes! But today he went straight to bed. It’s fine I guess. I tried to watch by myself but I got freaked out and turned it off and now I’m writing this so I don’t have to turn off the lights. Not that I’m scared of the dark. Just, like, uncomfortable with it.

February 15 2021

We haven’t watched TV for two weeks. Every time Mom brings Dad back from the doctor now he goes straight to bed. He smiles when he sees my worried look and still pretends my hair burns his hand but he moves slow and his smile is kind of only halfway. I’m gonna make him something really cool on Saturday while he’s napping to cheer him up. Like a giant sandwich.

February 17 2021

Mom and I got into a fight. Like a bad one. Really bad. She said I have to do more because she’s busy taking care of Dad and she doesn’t have time to babysit me and I’m almost an adult anyway for christ sakes. I was crying a little in my room afterward when Dad knocked on the door. “Hey Sammie, you still alive in there?” I said yeah and he opened the door and sat on my bed and we talked for a while. He said he knows it’s tough for Mom. Since he’s been sick so long and she has to take care of him. But she loves me anyway. She’s just stressed. I said OK. And he asked me to try to be patient with her and I said OK. We went downstairs and watched TV together and he fell asleep halfway through which he never does, but it was fine. Since he was asleep and wouldn’t notice, I cuddled into his side like I used to when I was little. Dad’s super warm and when he sleeps he snores and it’s so loud it’s terrible like a literal chainsaw, but after a while it was kind of like ocean sounds and I fell asleep next to him. I woke up in my bed but I don’t know how he picked me up because he’s not very strong since he got sick.

February 24 2021

I was drawing on my hand with Sharpie today in Math and at lunch Deloris said it looked cool. I tried to be chill but my heart was going so hard. She’s so beautiful. I’m thinking about asking her to be my girlfriend but I might wait a little while instead so I don’t freak her out. I told Dad. He smiled one of his old smiles and shook his head. “Ayayay...you’re growing up too fast buddy.” Then he got quiet and did the smile where you keep your mouth smiling to try to hide that your eyes are sad. I think he feels old sometimes. He looks old now sometimes too.

April 2 2021

I haven’t written for a while because of everything that happened but basically the funeral was awful and I had to stand there with Mom and shake people’s hands and I couldn’t leave until we were all done and I wanted to cry and scream the whole time but I couldn't. And then there was lawyer stuff and Mom was pissed at the lawyer and screamed at him about “What am I supposed to live on now?”

April 3 2021

I didn’t tell Mom but Dad left me a letter, I guess because he could tell he didn’t have a lot of time. It was tucked into one of my comics in my closet. He was always worried about what if the power went out or an EMP or if everyone started looting, so he stockpiled beans and food and water purifiers and stuff like that. Well, his letter says that he bought gold when it was a little cheaper and saved it up in case the world ended and that I should have it now and to save it for college. He didn’t say anything about Mom but I guess I’ll probably give her some. So she can pay bills and groceries and stuff. The letter says it’s eleven and a half ounces and I looked that up and it’s like twenty thousand dollars which is insane. He told me where to dig for it when I need it.

April 8 2021

Mom’s been really nasty since she yelled at the lawyer. I heard her on the phone when I got home from school. She was saying, “-didn’t even leave anything for me. Just the brat. I don’t even know where it is.” I guess I’m the brat.

April 21 2021

It’s gotten worse. The school counselor said that sometimes grief makes people go into shock or go a little bit crazy but Mom is going off the deep end. We were at a restaurant and she started crying and rocking on her chair and saying “I’m disappearing,” over and over again until I dragged her out to the car. Everyone was staring at us and I was so embarrassed I wanted to puke. As soon as she snapped out of it she screamed at me to leave her alone and pushed me away. I think she was embarrassed that I had to help her. She won’t look me in the eyes now but sometimes I feel like she’s spying on me.

May 5 2021

Sometimes I see her watching me when she thinks I’m not looking. It’s really creepy. It looks like she’s measuring me or trying to see inside my head. She’s been really nice the last two days and she was asking how I’m doing since everything and did Dad leave me anything. I pretended like I didn’t know what she meant. Today I got home from school and my room had stuff moved around in it and I'm really freaked out. I’m hiding my journal now just in case.

May 6 2021

Deloris sat next to me at lunch today and tried to talk but I couldn’t stop thinking about my room and how Mom must have been looking through my things. I keep Dad’s letter with me all the time in my pocket, but I think that’s what she wanted. This is getting scary.

May 8 2021

That’s it. I can’t stay here anymore. I got a shovel and when Mom went to the store this afternoon I found the spot Dad told me in the letter and I dug it up. It’s a bag of coins and it’s seriously heavy. This weekend I’m gonna run away. It sounds stupid but I’m seriously worried that Mom is gonna do something really crazy. She wanted to talk to me again about if Dad left me anything and when I said no and went to my room she followed me and stuck herself in the door so I couldn’t close it and was laughing and looking at me all crazy and telling me it’s my fault anyway that he got sick and that she feels sorry for me. "Poor little Sammie," she said over and over. I could barely keep her from pushing into the room until she gave up and left. As soon as she left I sat down and cried. I don’t cry a lot but like my stomach was so messed up and my chest and I couldn’t help it.

May 10 2021

Two more days. It’s Thursday now and I’m gonna leave Saturday when she goes to the mall. I buried all my stuff in Dad's hiding spot so Mom can't find it even if she looks through my room again. I've got clothes, food, my phone charger, and Dad’s coins. I’m gonna go to the pawn shop and sell one coin and then buy a bus ticket for somewhere where it’s warm all year like Florida and then I’ll figure out what to do next.

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The entries above were discovered in a small black notebook that had been hidden underneath a pair of loose floorboard in the boy’s bedroom. We initially went to the house after the boy’s teacher called CPS again. The first call was after she saw finger shaped bruises on his arms, and this time it was when he had been absent for three days in a row. We went over the scene, but the house was empty and there was no sign of a struggle. There was a spot in the yard with recently disturbed earth as if it had been dug up recently. Maybe where the kid stashed his supplies. We’ve put out an APB for both the boy and his mother but I don’t think it’s likely we'll find the boy. It didn't sound like he would have told her where to dig unless his life depended on it.

Detective Fischer, MPD, 1st Precinct, May 16 2021