“Mom!” Chris called as he stuck his head out of the door that was usually closed and concealing the stairs to the attic. He’d decided to come home and look through the attic for his old stuffed bear, Brownie, in the strange hopes that the company of the old bear would somehow help him sleep better.

A teasing voice in the back of his mind reminded him that he was eighteen, almost nineteen, and that he needed to get over it and just accept that he had a bad case of insomnia. It must have to do with being out at night, running around the city and fighting monsters. He was clearly just restless and was screwing up his sleeping schedule.

“Mom, I can’t find it! Where’s the box with all my old stuff in it?” he called again, hoping that she was in the vicinity of where he was, and that he wasn’t just talking to himself in an empty part of the large house. It wasn’t as though Chris disliked being home; it was just… something he was trying to grow out of. Going home every time mom made lasagna was okay, right? But he was in college now and needed to be out on his own. Or at least as much on his own as he could be.

“Whacha looking for?” a voice chirped, and Chris glanced down the other end of the hall to see his younger brother watching him curiously, before looking back down at the phone in his hand.

“Nothing,” Chris responded stiffly, not really wanting his baby brother to know he was looking for his old stuffed animal because he wasn’t sleeping well. Yeah, like that would end well. “What are you doing? Don’t you have homework?”

A raised eyebrow was the momentary response from the ten-year-old. “It’s summer vacation.”

Oh, right… Apparently his lack of sleep was keeping him from remembering the time of the year… great…

“Whatever. Shouldn’t you be playing outside or something?” he tried, hoping to cover up his moment of stupidity, but his brother was still giving him a look as if he was clearly mental.

“It’s raining, Chris,” the brat child pointed out, and Chris scowled at him. “Honestly,” Peter began, shaking his head and turning to make his way back down the hall, apparently fed up with his other brother already.

That was fine for Chris, though. He was still trying to figure out where the box was.

He would find out a few hours later that his mother had given the bear and a bunch of is old things away to either charities or to his younger cousins. The bear had been lost over the years, which disappointed Chris at first, but then he figured it was probably for the best. He didn’t need to start relying on stuffed animals to sleep. He should really just try and get his sleep schedule back to normal.


Word Count — 490