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「故事·听力」My Family Left Me All Alone On Christmas Eve

LearnAndRecord 2022-07-26

My Family Left Me All Alone On Christmas Eve

Hello everybody! Yeah, I know, what lunatic would go live here on Christmas eve, right. Well, I thought that some of you might also feel alone during the holidays. Just like me. I’m Nina and I’m 14. And I’m about to celebrate this Christmas on my own in an empty house, choking down frozen pizza and tears, and hoping for a Christmas miracle. You’re probably asking how all this happened, well…


As far as I remember, my mom and dad were never all that sweet to each other in public, but I still never doubted that they cared about each other. For example, dad always loaded the dishwasher, because he wanted to be helpful, since mom was tired after cooking dinner. Or mom would wake up early to make dad’s favorite breakfast if she knew that he was going to have a tough day.


But then one day mom announced that the firm where she was working at had made a few cuts and that she had to take on several positions and work more. Gradually, I started noticing that mom no longer decorated dad’s plate when she served dinner. She no longer argued with him about his scientific conclusions. And it really looked like she wished she was somewhere else, other than at home with us. And dad, well, whenever he was at home, he normally locked himself in his study and spent hours in there, staring at his computer, instead of at least trying to bond with me or Nicky – my older brother.


In addition to that, Nicky had apparently entered his rebellious stage as a teenager. Every time I saw him, he was moody and unfriendly, so to speak. He no longer wanted to play video games with me, like he used to, and he was constantly rude when talking to Mom, I mean, during those rare moments when we were all together at home. So, by autumn, I began feeling so lonely, despite the fact that there were three people aside from me living in our house, and I started talking to my granny more frequently. She and grandpa were living in another city, and she was just getting used to using social media, so it was also kinda helpful for her when I would call her on Skype.


Anyway, Christmas was coming and I really wanted it to be the best of the best, you know, just to keep the family together. So, I decided to learn how to cook to be able to bake something special and extraordinary for everyone. I made some nice brownies, as they seemed to me, and I decided to give my dad a piece to try. So I brought a cup of tea and the treats I had just baked to his study and I thought he’d be surprised that I had made them myself. But Dad wasn’t there and I decided to just leave the tray and leave him a sticky note on his computer.


But when I accidentally touched the mouse, the screen turned on and I saw an awkward tab open in the browser. It turned out it was a dating site, and my dad actually had an enormously huge chat in there with a woman nicknamed “cherry_66.” Oh my god! I had found out that my dad was having an online affair. I just looked through it and saw, like, a million messages there and I got scared, I dunno, that I’d get caught. So I just switched everything back to sleep mode again, left my tray with the tea and treats, and rushed out of dad’s study.


I had no doubt about whether I should tell my mom about that or not. I imagined for a moment that dad might leave us for that “cherry_66” woman, and I definitely didn’t want him to do that. So I assumed that if mom was aware of this possibility, she would do something to prevent it, or at least have a chance to prevent it. She looked a little bit upset, but there was no surprise on her face.


Since then, I was praying for a Christmas miracle every day, that my parents’ relationship was going to become normal, while every night I would go to bed nervous because I was expecting that I’d hear my parents arguing about it. I strained my ears trying to hear at least something, and every inch of my skin resembled a nerve ending when I heard someone’s footsteps, or how somebody was opening and closing doors and all that stuff. But nothing ever happened. Everything just went on as usual.


The feeling of anxiety was gradually growing inside me and I was sure that I had to do something with my newfound knowledge, to you know, force the miracle or whatever, so I decided to tell Nicky about what I saw back then on our dad’s computer. Nicky looked pretty puzzled and dejected, and, honestly, I thought that he would tell me to keep my nose out of it or something like that, but he suddenly said there was something that he also wanted to tell me. A couple of minutes later, I found out the reason why he had been so mean to our mom lately...

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