All Chapters of Dad, No One Will Laugh at You Anymore: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

8 Chapters

Chapter 1

The moment the chair went over, the back of my head cracked against the floor.Everything went dark for a few seconds. I lay facedown and did not dare move. It was not because the fall had stunned me.I was afraid that if I got up too quickly, it would look like the fall had not hurt that badly, and Dad would decide I was putting on an act.The relatives’ whispers reached me in fragments.“That poor kid. It was just an extra piece of meat.”“Was that really necessary? On a holiday, no less.”Only my cousin Brady Avery grinned and helped himself to another piece of pot roast. “He had it coming. He knows Uncle Phil cannot stand being laughed at, and he still acts out like that. Of course he needed to be put in his place.”I did not say a word. I pushed myself off the floor, righted the chair, and sat back down.Dad looked pleased. He raised his voice so the whole table could hear. “Kids need discipline. If you do not set them straight now, they will embarrass you in public later,

Chapter 2

“Your parents did not even want you, but you had the nerve to call someone else dead weight?”The color drained from Brady’s face.His parents had divorced when he was little. Neither one had kept him, and both had started new families without him. He had been raised by his grandparents, and no one in the family ever dared bring it up around him.He shoved me. “You really just said that to me? I am going straight to Uncle Phil. I will make sure you humiliate yourself in front of everyone. They will all laugh at you.”“Go ahead.”My voice came out flat, but my fingertips shook harder than ever. It felt like there was always going to be one last thing that broke me, and someone was always going to be the one to put it there.The relatives finally left, and I followed Dad home.The house felt too quiet. Dad spoke first.“Does the back of your head still hurt?”I lowered my eyes and shook my head. Every small movement sent pain shooting through the nerves at the base of my skull.

Chapter 3

Then I did not want that kind of good.Dad finished yelling, dragged a hand down his face, and stood up. The anger settled back into its usual exhaustion.“That is enough. Go to bed. We are visiting family again tomorrow, and I do not need you embarrassing me and giving people something to laugh about.”There it was again.I lowered my head and went to my room without a word. Tears hit the floor with every step.My fists hung at my sides, and my fingers traced the raw lines on my palms.I could not do this anymore. I was done living like this.We went to Uncle Ray’s the next day.The living room was packed. People picked at snack bowls, chatted, and bounced kids on their knees. The noise filled every corner.I pressed myself into the edge of the couch, too afraid to speak or move. All I could think about was not giving Dad a reason to feel humiliated, not hearing those words again.Soon enough, it was time for Uncle Ray to hand out gift cards. He passed them to each of the ki

Chapter 4

I was left in the freezing hallway.Wind howled through the gaps and cut straight down my collar. My teeth chattered so hard my jaw ached.The pain in my arm, the throbbing at the back of my skull, and the hollow ache in my chest did not compare to the physical revulsion those two words triggered. The response had been carved so deep into me that it had become part of my body.I pounded on the door and sobbed through apologies. “Dad, I am sorry. I will not do it again. Please let me back in.“I will never embarrass you again. No one will ever laugh at you because of me.”Dad did not make a sound.I crumpled into a ball against the cold wall and listened to his voice drifting out from inside.“I am sorry, Ray. I have not done a good job with this kid. He is greedy and he lies. I have embarrassed everyone.”Uncle Ray objected right away. “The gift card was in my coat pocket the whole time. I never put it in my bag. Brady must have been mistaken. This had nothing to do with Kellen

Chapter 5

The moment my body left the bridge, cold air flooded my nose and throat, and the ice-cold water swallowed me whole.Yet all I felt was relief. For the first time in my life, I felt light.The wind screamed past my ears, and it sounded like it scattered every time I had ever heard those words. The last thought that crossed my mind was the sentence I had never said out loud.“Dad, this time, no one will really laugh at you anymore.”I did not know how much time had passed before I drifted up from the bottom of the frozen river. I floated slowly into the air above it.Near the bridge, Brady was slumped in the snow. He wailed so hard the sound barely came out human. His voice shook apart between sobs as he called my name over and over, choking on the words “I am sorry.”I drifted closer. I looked at his ashen face, the tears and snot smeared together, and I wondered if he would carry that guilt for the rest of his life the same way I had spent mine trapped by those two words.Before

Chapter 6

Those whispers drifted into Dad’s ears, but he did not snap back the way he always had before. He sat with his head down, both hands pressed over his face, his shoulders shaking.The thing he feared most in his life was being laughed at and being talked about behind his back. He had become exactly that. He was the man everyone whispered about, the father whose obsession with appearances had cost him his son.It was probably the cruelest punishment he could have received, being destroyed by the very thing he cared about most.Brady sat in a corner and gripped the hem of his shirt with both hands. Tears streamed down his face in silence. Uncle Ray sat beside him, sighed, and did not scold him. He patted the boy’s back gently.I knew Uncle Ray understood. If Brady had not made that accusation, I might never have been pushed this far. But it was too late now. Blame would not change anything.Dad stayed at Uncle Ray’s house for a long time, until the sky began to lighten. He rose slowl

Chapter 7

He could not accept that it was his own fault, that his obsession with appearances and his terror of being laughed at had driven his own son to death.The day of the funeral, snow fell thick and heavy and blanketed everything in white. Not many people came. Only Uncle Ray’s family and a small group of relatives attended.Dad wore black and sat at the front while he held my photograph in both hands. In the picture, I was ten years old and grinning with my eyes crinkled as I clutched a lollipop. It had been taken the year before Mom died, at a park Dad had brought me to. It was the happiest photo ever taken of me.He stared at it while tears ran down his face and murmured under his breath. “Kellen, Dad’s taking you home. No one will ever laugh at you again. No one will ever hurt you again.”His voice was barely there, soft and gentle, like he was soothing a sleeping child.After the funeral, Dad brought my ashes home and placed the urn in my room, on the desk. Every day he wiped the

Chapter 8

"Kellen, you were such a good kid. You did so well in school, always top of your class. Dad was so proud of you back then."He ran his fingers gently over the photograph on the diploma. “It was all my fault. I ground all that pride out of you. I stole every bit of your happiness.”He sat there for a long time, until the sun dipped low and the last of its light came through the window and fell across his shoulders and across my photograph.He stood slowly, walked to the desk, and picked up my urn. He held it against his chest, carried it to the window, and looked out at the lights glowing in every house across the neighborhood.“Kellen, Dad’s going to take you to see the stars. You used to love watching the stars when you were little.”That night, Dad sat by the window with my urn in his arms and watched the stars until morning. He hummed the lullaby he used to sing when I was small, the one he murmured until I fell asleep. I had not heard it in years.The familiar melody and the

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