Carly & The 5th Dimension

Sometimes she thought there would be nothing more wonderful than to just disappear.  To walk out the front door of her parents' cute little American-dream home with the white picket fence, walk down the block and just keep going. To leave behind all the responsibilities of school and home. To start fresh with no past and only the vast possibilities of the future ahead. She would take with her only what she could fit into her knapsack and enough money for food for a few days while she traveled by foot and survived otherwise on the kindness of strangers. How liberating it would be to break free from the weighty job of making sure her father was happy and taken care of. To be responsible only for herself and answer to no one but the same. Now she couldn't get the echoey, haunting sound of that song out of her head. "One    Less    Bell to answer. One   Less   Egg to fry....".  A month ago she had regularly let those lyrics carry her into a fantasy where the only one she answered to was herself. Now it sounded in her head, almost ghostly, and all it made her want to do was cry. She never wanted it to happen like this. She always envisioned it with her leaving - not him. Now her father, along with everyone else she had known, was dead. Now she couldn't help but remember the way the rest of the song went; the loneliness of it. "No more laughter. No more love." That about summed it up. Hungry, alone and defeated, Carly sat on the floor in her late father's kitchen and let the tears come for the last time.