Why

            Sitting in the dark night staring up at Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, tears running down my cheeks, frozen with anger I yelled out, “I am so stupid!” The sound sliced into the piercing, freezing air. “You Amber Wichock are the stupidest person that ever lived!”  Standing, I looked around. There should have been nobody for miles, but then a figure lurking behind the trees caught my eye. Just as I was about to yell, it came out into the open. Only its outline was visible in the dark, but darkness doesn’t affect your hearing. “What is the matter?” It asked, it sounded like a girl. This person was a stranger to me, and you know, stranger danger. But I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I answered her with a squeaking voice, “I killed my parents.”
            I had expected her to shriek and then start criticizing me like crazy like everyone else, but instead she just looked at me. She looked at me like she was confused, scared, and just plain regretful. Probably for asking the question whose answer was now clouding her mind. “Why?” The girl asked me in a whisper, her hands now shaking slightly.
            “That’s just it!” Yelling, I suddenly lose it in front of this girl whose identity was unknown to me. “I have no idea! Absolutely, positively…” It was impossible to go on. Too hard, too painful, too terrible. Try as I may, I just couldn’t do it. Seeing this, the girl urged me on, no longer trembling, curiosity written all over her face.
            “Tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”
           “First tell me your name.” The last thing I wanted to do was tell this girl my story without even knowing her name.
            “No problem.” She said. “Hope.”
            “Ok Hope, here it goes. I was at a party with all my friends. This really cute and nice guy had invited everyone in our grade over to his house for a pool party. It was promised there would be pizza, snacks, and drinks. Sounds pretty fun right?” Pausing I waited for her to answer.
            “Yeah, seems like fun to me.”
            “You would think so, but you’re wrong. When he said he invited everyone, he meant everyone. The hobo living under the bridge, the guy from Dos Hardware, and oh, no one special except for ALL our parents! Yeah, Hope, you heard right, all of them. And mine came.”
            “They came!” Hope said. “If my parents went to one of my parties I would be pretty upset about it.”
            “That’s what I’m saying.” Relieved that someone finally understood, I was compelled to continue. “With one intention in mind, they showed up at my high school party.”
           “What was the intention?”
            “Well I was getting to that, it was teasing, and in my opinion, the worst kind.”  Looking down at my knees, I remembered the first in the series of horrifying events that day.
           “What did they do?” I couldn’t blame her for asking, but I had been trying to avoid saying it. Sucking it up, I did anyway.
            “They showed everyone at the party, so basically half the town, my baby pictures. And I was not a cute baby. 10.8 pounds, fat as an ogre, as bald as my 98 year old great grandpa, and darker skin than a roasted marshmallow gone bad. The whole town was laughing at me for it, giggling it up like a storm. And the wind blew hard, the rain fell hard, and the lightning struck hard." Knowing what part was next, I stopped, not wanting to recall the second horrifying, part accidental, moment of that day.
            “That’s when you did it isn’t it,” She said. Surprised, I looked up. “I can tell by your face.”
           “Oh.” I said. “Well yes, it is. You see, I was so mad at them, that I pushed them both as hard as I could into the pool and stormed away. Since I left so quickly, I didn’t see all of the water basketball hoops that were in the pool for our amusement.” This is it I thought; I have to say it now. No turning back. “As I am told, their bodies got intertwined with each other and the hoops, causing them to get into a twisted knot, unable to move. You can guess what happened next.”
            “They drowned.” She said.
             Looking at her, I said, “It was a rhetorical question, but yes that is correct.” I stifled a sob but then changed my mind. I let it all out. Hope came over and hugged me, tears in her own eyes. We sat there in silence until the morning light, and then I asked her. “Why did you take the time to listen?”
             “My parents are dead too.”