A Call In The Night

I never thought this would happen.

Dad kept crying all night and it was getting to me. Oh! I see I'm depriving you the honors of formality. Sorry, I'll start over from the top.

Hi. My name is Tess Clifford. I'm 16, I'm a girl (which u already know from the name, I guess), also the only child of my parents, Barry and Katherine Clifford. My favorite hobbies are singing, playing the electric guitar, and kung fu, which is because my parents think it's best for their "little girl" to be able to defend herself from any idiot that might wanna take advantage of her. At first, I thought it was torture, but… I'm actually starting to like it… okay, I love it. My parents and I are a pretty tight force, like the Bermuda Triangle or something, but I have a stronger connection with my dad, kinda like Percy Jackson is with his mom. Dad and I train almost every morning, which obviously doesn't tire him out, despite the fact that he's …well, a father.

My dad isn't like your normal kind of dad. He's trained himself in martial arts since before he met mom, and she loves him for that because no matter what happens, if he wants to achieve something, he'll never give up even after failing countless times. He's like my Batman, with an amazingly awesome six-pack and cool biceps, and I'm his little Batgirl. Like father, like daughter, I guess.

I go to a school that's close to some spooky warehouse for cars and stuff. I'm kinda the youngest girl in my class, which means a lot of guys always try to hit on me and man, it's annoying.

Whenever I don't understand something in school, my dad and I train for a while, and then we look into the issue. Dad's the reason why I'm doing great at school, 'cause he always finds a way to relate it with kungfu just to help me.

But there's just one problem; people get jumped and jacked almost every week in my neighborhood, and dad doesn't want us to move again 'cause we just moved in last summer; plus he knows his little batgirl's gonna kick some butt if stopped along the way home or to school by suspicious thugs. And he always protects mom, so I'm ok with the neighborhood… but I'm concerned about mom. I told her to join me and dad in training, but she always says" I have your father, so I'm good".

My favorite superhero is Spiderman,'cuase he's tough, strong, super flexible, and he never gives up even while facing failure, so in the end, he ends up winning. I want to be engineer someday, you know, build my own machine and stuff. I'm also a member of our school's chess team, and I'm the all time champion.

Our basement is my favorite part of the house. When you walk in, it's like you just stepped into Batman's gym, and batman's gym has everything. It's a pretty big basement, and there's a big space for our martial arts training, so anytime I feel unenthusiastic, I just go down to the "Batcave" to train (I'm the one who named it the batcave). I train every night before I go to bed, and my dad doesn't mind. He's always smiling, but if there's a serious problem, you would easily know, 'cause he would do that upbeat "Everything's fine" smile where he chuckles for like, 2 seconds and tries not to look you in the eye, but like I said, he's always happy…until it happened…

It was a hot sunny afternoon, I got home from school, but I couldn't find mom. I went up to the attic hoping to see her, but instead I saw dad punching his closet punching bag, which he only does when he's really really mad, and I didn't know what was going on so I just asked "Dad, where's mom? I can't find her in the house."(Unfortunately, I tend to blurt stuff out sometimes) Dad then stopped punching the punching bag and looked at me. His eyes were sore from crying, but he just smiled at me, and he chuckled, trying to keep his gaze off from my face. It was at that moment that I knew something was wrong, but dad knew what I was thinking somehow and said "No, no, no. It's ok, Tess. Everything's alright. Your mom probably just went out to stay with some friends for the night." And mom does that sometimes, so I said "ok, dad." and went up to my room. One problem though… I couldn't sleep. Just the idea that something horrible had happened to mom kept me up till about 12:46am. The telephone in the living room was ringing, and dad went to answer it. I followed him downstairs and hid behind the kitchen door. I know it's wrong to spy on parents, but I had to figure out what was going on.

Dad picked up the phone and after a few seconds, he was yelling at the caller.

"You good for nothing weasel! If you so much as touch her, I'll make sure you're handicapped for life, you hear me?!, and then he banged the phone right back into its holder.

"Dad, what's going on?"

He turned around, surprised. He knew he couldn't hide the pain anymore.

" Tess… Your mother's been abducted. But don't worry. I'll find her. Now go to bed. You have school tomorrow."

It was up to a week and no one had seen or heard from mom, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I had to save mom.

My mom and I were close, so not having her around hurt a lot.

I made the choice to make a move to save mom, because u can only have one biological mom, and I wasn't ready to lose mine. The next day after school, I got home to see dad doing push-ups in the living room (which he only does when he's incredibly emotionally stressed). The moment he saw me, he quickly got up and sniffled hard.

"You're home early." He pointed out.

"Yeah… There was a problem that had to be dealt with in the teacher's lounge."

Dad raised an eyebrow "The teacher's lounge?"

"It's a big lounge, almost like a basketball court."

"Oh."

"So… what you doing?"

"Nothing much. Boring in here. C'mon, let's go train."

"Kk. Just let me take a bath first, 'cuz I'm very hot and sticky."

Dad chuckled at the sound of `hot and sticky'

"Hot and sticky", he said to himself.

After I took a cold bath, I put on a black jersey, with the name "BATGIRL" imprinted onto the back, and elastic short shorts. I went straight to the batcave, and I saw dad playing one of those VR pro-boxing video games. He was seriously crushing the opponent, who was too broken and pained to parry the incoming attacks. Finally dad gave the knockout punch, which slowed everything down for him to make as many punch combos as he could, and he gave an unbeatable 13-punch combo that made the other guy crash to the floor with his neck, legs and arms completely dislocated and destroyed. It was so scary that even I was afraid of what would happen if that was an actual person. Dad was real pissed at the fact that he still couldn't find mom, and I could see the pain in his eyes as he took out his anger on his digital opponent.

Once he was done with the video game, he turned around and saw me standing by the barbell stands.

"Well, that was a quick bath you took there."

"Aw, c'mon dad. It felt like forever in there trying to get all that dirt off me!"

Dad laughed hard at the fact that, despite my age, sometimes I still complain like that little diaper baby he used to carry everywhere.

"Hot and sticky."

"Yeah dad. It's sweat. And I'm a girl, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure thing. Now… you ready for training, rookie?"

"Rookie? Sure thing. Bring it, old man."

Dad started with the good old fashioned fast-paced POWER RANGERS type of punching, and I deflected all of his attacks except one, which was a direct sweep kick to my right leg when I was focusing more on blocking and trying to parry his punches, so I fell with my back landing on the wooden floor.

Dad laughed again.

"Yup. Still a rookie." He helped me up.

"But that's not fair. It was just a sweep!"

"Yeah. A sweep that took you down. Guess being an 'Old man' has its benefits, huh?"

"Next time, I'm gonna beat you, and you'll be the one falling like a mighty oak."

Dad smiled as he walked towards the towels near the door."Ok. But till then, you're the rookie and I'm the master."

"Alright, old man."

As I walked to the stairs, dad called me back into the batcave.

"Sit down, Tess. We need to talk."

At that point I was scared. "Fine, I admit it! I was the one who took the cookies from the counter last week. They just tasted so good."

Dad gave me a confused look."What?"

"The missing cookies in the kitchen. I thought you were mad that…"

Dad chuckled for a while and then said "No. I already know about that. This is about something else."

I gave a relieved sigh, which made dad burst into laughter immediately.

"Well, that's good to hear. So what do you wanna talk about?"

"Well..." dad shifted his chair closer to mine. From his facial expression, I could tell that he was completely nervous about the question he was going to ask.

"Dad… what is it?"

"Well… you know you're 15, right?" "I'm 16, dad." I pointed out to him.

"Right, 16. Ok. Well, I just uh… wanna know if there's any guy you like or have a crush on…"

"No, dad. I'm not like the other girls. All makeup and weird clothes and stuff. Bleh." I gagged at the mere thought of it.

" Oh. Ok then." Dad looked at my face and said "Wow!"

"What?"I became nervous and started checking my shirt for anything that looks weird, and that made dad laugh.

"I mean your face. You look… you look just like your mother."

"Aw, dad. It's gonna be alright."

Dad started crying, but slowly. When a martial artist cries, you know something's serious.

"C'mon, dad. We're gonna find her."

"But how? Where do we even start? What if…"

"Nothing bad's gonna happen to mom."

"How do you know that?" "Because…" I breathed hard."I'm gonna go save her."

Dad looked surprised."What? No! Your school…"

"It's alright, dad. There's always next year. Plus no one knows me there anyway."

Dad turned around to face the barbells.

"No."

I sighed."Ok, fine." I got up and went to the stairs.

"Tess…"

"Yeah ,dad?"

"Just know that… I love you , little batgirl. I love you and your mother so much."

"Yeah. Love you too, dad. Good night."

Let me be honest… I didn't go to bed that night. I was too busy hatching a full proof plan to save mom and I had to leave that night or dad would know, but I had to wait for him to enter sleep mode. That was the bad news. The good news is, I know exactly when he sleeps. Dad always snoozes off exactly 40 minutes after he goes into their bedroom. Now it was an hour after he went in. It was go-time.

Before I jumped out my room widow, I left a note for dad.

`Dear dad,

I'm very sorry about this, but I have to go. I can't bear to see you go through all this stress on your own, so I've decided that I'm gonna be the one to find and save mom. Oh, and don't worry about my safety, dad. I know how to take care of myself, plus I'll be staying in Melissa's house.

P.s, I took some weapons from the batcave. Hope you're ok with it. Take care of yourself, old man. Stay safe.

With a Boatload of kungfu love,

Your little batgirl, Tess.'

I had packed all the things I needed; my half- finger gloves, along with some money for cab fare and a bunch of other reasons, and my favorite weapon in the batcave; the katana; really really sharp, and ready to make someone's life (and skin) full of shitty pain. I kinda felt a little bad for leaving dad alone at home without his permission, but then I knew that if I had told him, he'd keep telling me "no" all the time.

My best friend Melissa's a technical genius. There's nothing that girl can't do. If you give her a bunch of metal or wooden scraps, she's gonna make you something that's definitely gonna leave your mouth open like an airplane door. Plus... she's my best friend, so when I had the thought of setting off to save mom, she had to be the first to be told.

When I got to her house, I rang the doorbell. Melissa came to open it, and when she did, she saw a 16 yr old girl standing on their front porch, eyes red from crying, with tears still trickling down her face.

"Aw, Tess. Come in. We have a lot to talk about. "