It was a wonderful Thursday evening at my house. I was just laying on the couch watching TV after a hard day of school. Then my dad came back from work and we decided to play chess. I have to admit that my dad isn’t the best at chess. A couple minutes went by and I yelled, “Checkmate!”
“You win again Emi, I give up.”
“Come on dad…just one more game, please”
“Okay then,” he sighed
“One last game, but this time I am not going to lose!” my dad said to me.
     We were playing until my mom interfered our game and said, “Time for dinner!” We both stood up and my dad said to me, “We didn’t finish this game, but next time for I’ll win for sure,”
     “I’m not so sure about that,” I said back. Then we sat down at the dinner table and started eating.
     We were eating and eating and my dad had a weird frown on his face. Then just randomly out of nowhere said, “I am going to be working at a very faraway place and I can only come back around once a month. I can’t come back for the weekends either,” he said. I looked up said, “Huh? That was really random dad.” Then I asked, “So where is this far away place?” I waited a couple of minutes and received no reply. “Then what will your new job be?” I asked. He still didn’t reply. All of a sudden his face brightened up “Wow, this food tastes really good!”  he said deciding to change the subject. I looked at him weirdly. “I am sure he is just messing around with us,” I said to myself. I just couldn’t bring myself to understand why he would tell this to us now. “Why today?” I asked myself. “This is just so weird!” I said to myself, filled with confusion.
     The next day in the morning, my dad went to his new work. “Have a good time in school Emi!” he said to me as he walked out the door. Then he went to his car and drove out of our neighborhood. I clenched my fist, eyes burning with anger. “What in the world is his problem?!” I asked myself.
     As each month passed, every time he came back home he would never talk to me anymore, or anyone. He would drag himself to his office, slump in his spinny chair, and do work on his computer. Whenever I asked him a question about his work, he would answer “Now is not the time to talk to me Emi, don’t disturb me right now.” The only time I ever see him leave his room was when he had to go to the bathroom or to get a snack, something like that. The next day, he left for work again. I simply couldn’t take this anymore. I thought of the idea to follow my dad. I sort of hesitated on this idea I thought of. “What would happen if he found out?” I followed him anyways.
     When he went in the car, I opened the other doors and sat in the back row of seats, waiting for him to notice me.  For some reason, he didn’t mind me getting into his car. Then he drove. I was hoping that he wouldn’t kick me out of his car. I just sat there and waited for his reaction, thinking about what he would do if he found out. My dad barely drove out of our neighborhood until my dad just suddenly stopped. Then my dad turned around and smiled, “Come on Emi, please get out of the car and go home.” he said. “Okay then,” I said to him. “I guess that didn’t work,” I said to myself. I walked back to my house, walked up the stairs, and threw myself on my bed. I thought and thought until I decided to find some answers, so I decided to ask some of my neighbors.
     I knew that a lot of my neighbors were good friends with him, so I knocked on their door. A man opened the door and asked,
“Are you Emi?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh, nice to meet you. What do you need?”
“Do you know anything about my dad’s new job?”
“Yes, I do. He said that it was an engineering job.”
“Oh okay, thank you.”
“No problem, Emi.”
    “Well that’s a start,” I said to myself. I asked all of my dad’s friends I could of think of around the neighborhood and I got a little information. Finally, one of them actually told me something useful, said, “Your dad did say something about working as a software engineer.”
     “So he is a software engineer huh?” I thought to myself. But I didn’t understand what was so bad about that. I still don’t know why he didn’t tell me that, or say anything about that. I still had so many more things to find out. I just had to wait another month until my dad came back.
      Another month went by and my dad finally came back home. As he walked through the door, I slid right in front of him, stopped and said,“Why wouldn’t you tell me that your new job was some software stuff? Is there something wrong with me knowing?” Then he stared at me, and said, “I’m so sorry Emi, I didn’t want you to be disappointed and worried. I thought you would be fine if you never knew. When I saw that you were really upset, I couldn’t bear to show my face to you. I felt so bad.” I never thought that he would say something like that. “He’s probably faking it. That’s probably just an excuse.” I said to myself. I started to walk away to my room and then my dad caught up to me and gave me a hug. A couple of months past and we decided to move closer to my dad’s work and we were a happy family once again.