Sitting on the bench in the front yard of her house, the professor slipped out of her heels and stretched out her legs. She let the chilly breeze shake her up from the mild dizziness. She didn't want her parents to see her arriving home in that condition. It was okay but it was not. First, she didn't inform them she would be coming home drunk. Second, she was driven back by a cab that was highly unsafe for a half-knocked-out girl.
After some minutes of getting back her clear vision, she picked the heels from the ground and made her way to the backdoor of the house. She had installed a digital lock there to help her when she was coming home late and didn't have keys.
Entering the passcode, she stepped inside and surreptitiously walked up the stairs to her room. Luckily, her parents didn't catch on to her like the last time. She didn't bother to change but slipped under the covers right after entering the room. Good thing that it was the weekend. She could sleep until the alcoholic effect was gone.
The first thing that the professor woke up to in the morning was the screeching sound of coils rolling around the rod when the curtains were drawn off the window. The effort to open the eyes went wasted when the blinding sunlight made them fall shut again following by pushing the covers over the head. It was the weekend.
Why her mom was waking her up in the morning when she didn't have classes to attend? She was the one always talking about the cons of not taking adequate sleep. Now that when the professor was on it, her mom was there to wake her up.
She disliked it will all the passion if someone interrupt her morning sleep.
"Scarlett baby, I am going to prepare dinner. Do you want me to make something for you to eat?", she heard her mom's footsteps walking towards the second window of the room, pulling out the curtains and opening the balcony door.
There were two windows in the professor's room, designed on adjacent walls. One of them lead to the beautiful spacious, balcony area that had the backyard and swimming pool view of her house. The front road could be seen while standing on the other window frame as her room was upstairs.
"I will have my breakfast when I wake up, mom", she huffed, growing more unnerving at the annoying noise of guitar chords playing in the neighbourhood. She could listen to those ugly notes clearly now because her mom had opened the door.
"You mean dinner, baby, since it's already evening", evening? Did she sleep the whole day?
"Get up now. Your dad is also at home today. Shall we all go out on an outing?", when the girl was little, her mom and dad would take her to distant areas of the country since she had airsickness and because of it, she didn't like travelling in planes. To attend conferences, she would have no choice but to travel with the team. At those times, she would pray to not throw up in front of her team members. To prevent it, she would sleep most of the time during the flight.
She was very fascinated with the road trips. Visiting new places always intrigued her. Once they joined a camping group in the south of California. Her parents packed all the necessities for their little baby.
She was six at that time. And just as to her parents' hunch, the girl hurt her knees while chasing a Bambi in the forest on the backside of the camp house they were staying at with the groups. She would still smile when the memory crossed her mind. Her parents had instructed her to not step out of the boundaries of the house without them. How she put all that on the little Bambi.
"Mommy, I was trying to be friends with a Bambi. I saved my muffin from the last night to give it to him. But he doesn't like me. When I approached him, he gave me those meanie eyes as if he was telling me he would never be my friend."
Well, that was not the whole story but a part of the whole. The little girl did not eat her muffin because her stomach was filled with chicken mull she had in the evening. When she woke up in the morning and walked to the balcony, she saw a young fawn, his head buried in the bushes.
The little professor quickly left the room with hushed steps to not wake up her parents sleeping in the bed and stop her from exploring the new creature she was seeing for the first time. She had seen Bambi in the books and TV shows, never saw one for real.
Having a scientist's brain, she was always eager and curious to explore new things. When she opened the front door, to her dismay, it was locked. Of course, they would not have left it unlocked when they had a little, daredevil girl in the house.
The locked door could not lessen her enthusiasm to meet the Bambi. She snapped her head in all the directions, a smile, the naughty, playful one, however still innocent, formed on her lips when she saw a window in the kitchen. She rushed into the kitchen, afraid that the young fawn might run off back in the forest.
She opened the refrigerator door, her heels raised while the balls of the feet supported her weight as she grabbed her muffin from the plate. Dragging a chair from the round table in the kitchen, she stood on it and inclined forward to open the window. The happiness of the little girl knew no boundaries. She got up on the shelf and sat in the open window, her legs dangling off the end.
The window was a little higher from the ground, but that didn't shrink the brave and daring spirits of the little girl. Without a second thought, she jumped. She aimed to land on her feet but pain shot in her legs when she touched the ground, making her lose the balance and fell on her knees that got bruised but she didn't drop the piece of the sweet in her hands.
Hissing, she got up and ran to the backside. The young fawn ducked out his head when his ears picked up on the sound of steps walking in his direction.
"Hello, little Bambi. I'm Scarlett. Do you have no friends? I can be your friend. I'll protect you from hungry animals out there", taking baby steps forward, she pointed her empty hand towards the forest. For goodness sake, if there was anyone who needed protection, it was the six-year-old girl herself standing some feet away from the thick forest that had an enormous variety of wild animals inhabiting.
"I'll give you this muffin if you let me touch your fur", she stopped a few inches from the animal and held out her hand that had the muffin laid on the palm. When she was reached out her other hand to place it on the area between the doe eyes of Bambi, he sensed the danger and sprinted on his feet back to his family.
"Stupid, Bambi." The little girl muttered and made her way back towards the window.
"I just wanted to feel his feathers. In return, I was offering him a delicious meal. Whatever. He deserves eating those green leaves only", the little girl continued talking to herself. Nobody had come out looking for her.
It means her parents were sleeping with the rest group members in their rooms. She rushed to the window, picturing climbing her way back inside the house in her mind but when she stood there, she realized that the window was too far for her little arms to reach.
While climbing down, she was too excited to get to the Bambi that she didn't think of a way to get back in the house. She looked around for anything she could use to reach the window. There, she saw a wooden log near the back wall of the house.
The girl could pull it if she put some force as it wasn't too big. She hurried and started dragging it after putting the muffin on the ground. Pushing and shoving it towards the window, she finally propelled it against the wall, right down the window.
"Phew, that was not easy but not something I couldn't do", catching on to her unsteady breathing, she rushed back to the muffin, picked it up from the ground and strode back to the log. When she was about to stand up on it, her peripheral vision caught some feet. The little girl slowly rotated her head and meet the tensed and relieved faces of her parents. Tensed that how she ignored their instructions and made it out of the house and relieved that she was alright.
"Mommy, daddy, isn't this log handcrafted in a perfect shape. We can use it as a sitting bench for our front yard. What do you think?", she sheepishly smiled in their direction as her mom sighed in disapproval and her dad took her inside.
However, when her dad picked her up and was walking back into the house, she saw a pair of large, glowing red-coloured eyes in the bushes.