9:52 P.M, Wednesday, July 23, 2008:

Bleep-- Bleep-- Bleep--

My father turned slightly on the bed. "Did you hear that?" he said to me, with his eyes still fixed on his laptop. "I think it was our alarm system. Go check it out,"

I stopped reading the Sonic page on Giant Bomb, looked to him, got up and said, "Yeah. Yeah, okay." I scanned my desk for a blunt weapon and took up my cat's hair brush. With it in hand, I started out the door, when suddenly I collided with my husky cousin.

"Did you hear that, Aaghaaz?" he said very quickly. I looked at him for a few seconds and then turned back into my dad's room, who's door I had left half-open.

"Mony (husky cousin) and his mom heard it, too." I said, approaching my desk. "What should we do?"

"Ah, it's probably nothing." he mumbled to me while watching a trailer for a movie on iTunes.

"Hell no, dude!" I exclaimed, with tongue-firmly-in-cheek. "Mony and I are afraid. What if someone broke into the house?!"

My dad laughed and continued to watch his trailer. "Dad, you need to handle the situation", I said, approaching him. He mumbled something to shrug me off, which is when I started to shut his laptop.

"Alright, alright!" he said and pushed off of his bed. He followed Mony and I through our hallway, into our kitchen, past our stove, our knives, our oven, our toaster and our microwave to the very end of the dining table, where there was a rectangle-shaped alarm system, slightly concealed by a reddish-brown cabinet. Father walked to it drowsily while I comforted my dog, Rocky, who'd been barking throughout this perdicament. My dad examined the machine for a while when we heard the mysterious beep again.

I watched my Dad as he punched a few keys, immediatley unarming the system. He turned around and started to walk back. At first a bit a startled, I recollected and caught up to him as he walked forward, towards his room. "What just happened?" I asked him.

"Nothing. The alarm was on. I unarmed it." He stated matter-of-factly. I turned to Mony, who was standing in front of his room.

"That scared me." Mony said, and I nodded as I entered my dad's room. He got onto his bed and continued to watch his trailer. I fell into my chair and watched him.

"So what'd you do, Dad?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, like, did you turn the alarm off?"

"Yes, I did."

"Yeah, but it was on."

"I know. And I turned it off."

"Yeah, okay, but dude. It was on."

"I am aware of this, because I turned it off."

I finally realized what I was trying to say: "Yeah, but why was it on?"

Father paused for a moment. "I turned it off," he said again.

"You turned it off because it was on, yeah, I know. But why did it go off?"

"I dunno."

"What?!" I exclaimed.

"Huh." He shrugged.

"Someone must've broken in, Dad."

"Nah."

"Dude, someone must've broken in."

He mumbled something.

"Dad, give me your attention! I'm scared, dude."

He stopped watching the trailer and looked at me. "Alright, it was probably a mistake made by the system," he said. "You know, wind or something." I believed him, but still denied it, in my state of paranoia. "Okay, whatever. But can you please take care of Rocky?"

I agreed to that, and went outside to inquire as to why he had been barking. When I came, he sat down for me and looked at me with his infamous puppy-dog eyes. I went to my room and called for him to follow me, but when he didn't, I assumed that the baloon outside my room was frightening him. I grabbed the baloon and ran outside. I looked to Rocky, who'd followed me outside, and said, "Look!" And let go of the baloon. "See, all better-" For some reason, I hadn't expected the baloon to float away. But it did. Watching it, I remembered what happened earlier in the day:

My dad and I went to Fry's Electronics to pick up a new hard drive. The one in my computer was corrupted, and my dad wanted to wipe the drive clean, because it was nearly impossible to remove it from the system. I didn't want to lose whatever memories I had collected on it in the past 7 months I'd had it, so I dilligently refused. When at Fry's, we found the process of disassembling the computer and buying special screwdrivers to be much too difficult, and went home empty-handed. At the time, I didn't understand why it didn't matter to my dad whether or not those memories were there. I always had a very bad feeling whenever I lost memories or things that represented them.

I had this very same feeling when the baloon drifted away. I think it had been in the house for a couple of weeks, and while I didn't pay much attention to it, I wanted to watch it "live" and "die", or deflate. I continued to stare into the sky, until it completely disappeared from my sight. I sighed and turned to my dog, who started to wag his tail when he saw me looking at him. I smiled at him and trudged back into the house. In the kitchen, I prepared some hot cocoa. I took a sip or two and began walking back to my room, when I called for Rocky to follow. When he didn't, I walked back into the kitchen, where he was sitting, waiting for me. His tail wagged at the sight of me. In that instant, I realized why clearing my hard disk didn't matter to my dad. In that instant, I realized why Rocky had been barking throughout the night. In that instant, I realized why I was afraid of a burgalar that I knew probably didn't exist. In that instant, I realized, in Rocky's eyes... nothing but love.