Squish

Squish
By: Jenna S.
It was all an accident. I didn’t mean to discover it, but good thing I did.
It was a school night, I had to go to bed in half an hour. I wanted to squeeze in a little episode of “Survivor.” So I went over to the T.V. in the living room. I analyzed the recorded list, not there. I had to go downstairs. I did not want to go downstairs by myself. So I almost went to bed. But then I decided I wasn’t tired yet. I ran downstairs. With my first step, I hadn’t realized it. But then it hit me. My feet were icy cold and so was the carpet. EEEEEEP!!!!!!!!!!

I took a few more steps and I realized this wasn’t just a little, fixable leak in the ceiling, this was a flood!! The carpet didn’t have standing water so it looked completely normal. The carpet was soaking wet underneath! My feet were numb they were so cold so I raced to dry land and screamed for my mother. Thoughts were scrambling around in my brain. I couldn’t think straight!

“Mom!!!” I screamed.
She came down examining the situation. She was quiet for a moment. I froze for what she would say next. “She may be mad,” I thought looking at the options. She finally said, “Well………” I could tell she didn’t know how to react.
“Maybe we should call Dad,” I suggested bravely.
“No, he’s coaching.”
“But he’d know what to do!” I urged.
“Well, I can handle this too. We’ll just call some friends to see if they have more fans, okay Jenna?” She said, seeing the doubt in my eyes.
“Okay,” I said quietly, still thinking Dad should know about this. I was thinking, “How will I ever get to bed on time? I had Map Testing the next day!”

Well, my mom finally called my dad. Of course, he didn’t answer because he was currently coaching my brother’s baseball team. So we called our neighbors, Bryce and Michelle. They were having their baby, Ryan, the next day so we didn’t want to bother them too much. They had some fans for us which really helped! They wanted to help more, but we told them no, they needed to get their rest. So next we called our friends who live 15 minutes away. They had two shop-vacs, which we really needed, so we drove over there. On our way there my dad called back, but my mom couldn’t answer because she was driving. So I answered.
I told him all about it, and then he said, “How mad do you think Mom is on a scale of one to ten?”
“Well, 4 or 3, I’d say she’s not mad, but she doesn’t know what to do next, you know?”
“Yeah, alright I’ll meet you at home.”
“Okay, love you, bye.”

When we got home, people were swarming our driveway. They had fans and dehumidifiers. So we quickly said goodnight to our neighbors and brought the equipment downstairs.
Once we had turned on all the fans, shop-vacs, and dehumidifiers, it was as loud as a show of fireworks that never ended.
I was so pooped out, I couldn’t fall a sleep because of that noise!

My mom finally said I had to go to bed. I had Map Testing the next day, and she saw me drifting off a bit, so off to bed I went. The noise was so hectic, when I went upstairs my ears went crazy. However with the door shut tightly, I could only hear the equipment faintly in my bedroom.
I went straight to bed. I didn’t brush my teeth or change into pajamas, just walked straight to bed. I had a review of the day in my mind. I realized I never got to watch that episode of “Survivor” that I had wanted to squeeze in. But I guess if I hadn’t followed my conscience, I never would have discovered this. “Boy,” I thought, “That would have been a huge surprise for the next person that went down there!”