FicWad

At home in the clouds. I rested my head on the window. My ears ached and my head was groggy. I tried not to think, because this plan was dumb and dangerous and would get me in so much trouble. Tears prickled at the back of my eyes. I didn't dare to blink, I didn't want to blink. I didn't want these tears to fall. Not here. The rock in my throat held tight. I focused my thoughts off in the milky grayness that mixed with the navy of night. The stars flecked brightly here and there. I closed my eyes, picturing the place I was going. How beautiful and perfect it'd be. Yes I running away from my fears, but I was going to run until my feet didn't touch the ground.

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When I opened my eyes again, the sun was moving over the clouds. Bright and yellow. I stretched and yawned. God this was a long flight. I snaked my arm down my leg and reached into my purse, 10:47 my phone read in bright blue letters too eager for my tired eyes. I'd been on this god damn plane for six hours. I fidgeted and tried to focus on things like the English subtitle rolling across the screen. I was in the front row with no one by me. There was a women sitting in the row across from me, doodling on her lap top. The flight attendant suddenly appeared in front of me. "Excuse me" her words polite and well rehearsed "Can I help you?" she asked her words high pitched and her eyes brightly gleaming. "Um water?" I croaked, my throat crusted and raw, from being unused for so many hours. She disappeared as I rubbed my aching temples. My head hurt so badly. She came back and handed me a bottle of water. "Umm aspirin?" I asked, my voice edging towards a rude irritated edge. She nodded and then left. It wasn't a second and she returned with a couple aspirin. I took them all too eagerly, swallowing both of them in one gulp of my water. She smiled and turned on her heels to leave, leaving me feeling even more alone than usual. I closed my eyes; they burned with a stunning blinding stinging. The cold glass made my head sizzle, I was burning up. I was trying to go back to sleep, and trying to ignore all the thoughts spinning around in my brain. Right when I had drifted to a place I was comfortable with, my phone buzzed me awake, ripping me ruthlessly from the dreamless state I loved. I looked at the shiny screen as it read "dad calling". I immediately pushed the "ignore" button and rested my head. Waiting for it to buzz again to say "new voice message" but it didn't and I fell back asleep.

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Lydia was a beautiful woman, and she was also my mother. Her and my father had been together for eight years. She, a young beautiful socialite who could speak out in front of any crowd. She was short, like me with a warm and kind face. She had always had huge dreams. Finishing high school, becoming a doctor, but was always held captive, resorting to being a bartender. My dad was twenty-four when he met my mother. She was young and dumb, at the age of sixteen. She was very smart and still indeed had a bright future ahead of her. But she fell in love with this older man, who provided everything she had ever wanted in life. She had fallen, and luckily he had caught her. He was successful and from old money. He hadn't gone to college but ran his family’s business. A rose nursery that seemed to make their love life appeal that much sweeter. She had gotten pregnant, and in the end both of them where so prideful and believed in the old traditional ways they immediately got married. After this event had taken place, it wasn't until after that my mother learned they had lost the baby. It was a devastating blow for my mother, and her self esteem. My mother was then confined to the house with by her limited education. Mean while my father worked every day. Sooner she got pregnant again, with twins. When the day came they brought two beautiful boys into the world. It kept her busy I guess, the boys I mean. But my father was getting bored with my mother. This little inexperienced girl. He committed adultery time and time again. We all knew it and that was what stung the most, even she did. It hurt, like he didn't even try to hide it. When I was born, my mother still young and native as ever raising three children with a husband who was emotionally unaware and physically NOT available. Yes the true fact of the matter was that he always had provided for us. We always lived in the huge Victorian house on Peach Street; it was well taken care of and beautiful in its own ways. My mother finally took a stand, she was at the age of twenty-four and decided she had, had enough. She moved out, taking us with her. We suddenly lived in a filthy apartment downtown. Where my mother worked every day, and every night. It was the pure impediment of a double life. At my fathers, I had my own room, and was spoiled by my remorseful father who saw so much of my broken mother in me. He tried to please my mother, he was trying to win us back. At my mothers, I cooked and clean from a young and tender age of six and up. I cleaned and did all the laundry, being an adult while my childhood wasted away. The boys where my protectors, they always looked out for me, truth be told we were all very close. Every second of everyday I might not have lived if my brothers hadn't been by my side. My mother worked her tail off trying to make it seem like we weren’t struggling but it was too obvious to any ones naked eye. And then it happened: I was ten years old and I realized just how desperate we where. Families would bring us money for meals and my mother often went to a mission for canned goods. It didn't help that my father didn't have to pay a single dime of child support to my mother either. It had been a long week of her not being home, constantly working. She finally came home, her once bright eyes dulled to an expressionless stare. Her eyes used to be bright sapphires somehow now looked grey and washed out. Her words had come out in a sob, "Things are going to get easier". I personally didn't know what she meant and truth be told I just thought fewer chores!
It wasn't until six months later when my brothers and I had just returned from a long and tire some week with father. The thing was that we loved out father’s house. It was our home, it always had been, and probably always will be. Warm and clean. But we loved mother, she was our most important value as children. We loved being by her side, just being with her. Dad was good to us but... it was like he hadn't quiet comprehended the idea of love. He didn't know how to show it, nor express it. Besides material items he was distant and far away. What we lacked at our mothers, our father possessed and vice versa. We walked through the door, my mother was sitting still as a granite statue. Her body tension was visible, her movement cold and hard. Her legs where crossed tightly and she was sitting at an angle, away from us. She was only dressed in a robe that framed her pale freckled face. A man in a suit, buzzed past us, out the door. Not only was his hair a messy lump of dried gel on his head but, his shirt was ruffled, his pants wrinkled. He was nervosa beyond belief. He walked past us, leaving a certain edge to the room, my stomach rolled, my mother sat still, so still. Her eyes anxious and worried. He fumbled with the lock on the door, and then left slamming it behind him. No one moved an inch. Mom never once had men in the house, it was awkward, and it filled every one of my senses. I tried to look to her for comfort, for reassurance but it failed. She was sobbing breathlessly into her hands. Her pale cheeks pink. We adverted our eyes. There was an emotional link between mother and child and if we watched her cry, we all would start balling. When my mind had wrapped its self around the concept I accepted it. My mother was selling her own body to provide for us, her children.

My life trudged on, I knew things no other child my age should know. My mother was takeing classes and going to work, a regular job, with regular hours. It allowed her to be what she wanted. She didn't worry about money any more, but it was a silent secret that clung to our bodies and set a thick layer of intensity around her, when she took her money out. But then...it happend. Sudden and quick, ripeing her away from us before we could blink, and make sense of it. She got sick, very sick. Before we knew it mom had been infected with HIV, that rapidly turned into AIDS. My world was spirling into a darkness that I couldn't handle. We slowly began spending more and more time with our father. It was hard, and difficult to see our own mother in pain. So we decided to slowly slink away. She was so beautifull before, her bright blue eyes and strawberry blond hair seemed to be worth less, as the weeks wizzed by. She was gorguse, and we watched her deterate to nothingness. Month followed, her skin pale and translusent, her eyes weak, it seemed like death was so close to her. The grim reaper himself could have been sitting by her bedside, slowly guideing her away from us. Her eyes where so dull, she was in pain, and so depressed. She knew it was the end, and that was the worst part. There was nothing to look forward to. She was on a path that lead stright to a grave stone and there wasn't a single detour she could take. She couldn't even pretend like she could "get better" because that was impossible. She would die.

It was sweltering outside, but the cool breeze from the vent made the room chill. I hated hospitals ever since that day. I shived and clutched the sheets on the side of her bed. I couldn't help the tears running down my cheeks. The pain that was stabbing me deeper every second. I could hardly breath. Us three stood in front of her, I was staring down into her eyes, waitng for her to tell us, to make it all better, but she was the one in pain, not us. All our lives we had always had that comfort from her, but when she needed it we couldn't give it to her. Dannys arms where wrapped around my sholders, and I bent my head down, sheilding my face in the crook of his arm. Our pain was mutual, all three of us stood sobbing. She opened her eyes, and stared at us. Tears on the brim of her eye lids. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but she had to stop and regain control. The boys where nineteen, and I was six-teen. She pused the corners of her mouth up into a ghost of a smile, she was trying so hard. Her eyes where those of a stranger, wet dull and lifeless. The ones we had grown up with had faded over the last few months. The sparkling bright eyes that promised us so much where dieing with her. "Baby, don't do what I did, follow your heart" she breathed. Her voice wet with emotion, wimsical and just barely a breath long. Even the sing song warmth in her voice was fadeing. I wanted to bottle up all those memorys to keep them fresh and remember them, the bright eyes, the kind voice. Not these ones. I didn't want to remeber her this way, this corpse verson of her. Then she closed her eyes, and was gone. It was like a dream, too unreal. Too much like a scene from a movie. This was me breaking down. Danny held me tightly to his chest, and Eric held her limp pale hand in his. Erics face was stained with tears, they where falling down his cheeks leaving long riviets, his bright green eyes bright and lively with something that i couldn't put my finger on. His blond hair was tossled and messy, very unlike his usual combed back hair do. He was good looking, it made this scene look like a movie, he resembed a actor, and it was so odd that his emotions where real, he wasn't reading from a script. He looked like he had just walked out of a Abercrombie and Fitch magazine. Girls fell for him, and he mostly kept his mind on sports and was quite talented at them. Danny was built exactly the same way, tall and muscular, but his shaggy red mop of hair make him look like that "skater boy". He had bright blue eyes, that at this moment where filled with tears unlike Eric's green ones. He was in love with music and played the guitar and yes, was a skate border. He was a clown, always getting other people to laugh, but right now none of his joke could lift the sullen mood that spread threw ever single ounce of my being. Danny also was the "smart one" who graduated highschool with a few years of college done because he had taken so many AP classes. They where so diffrent, but yet also alike. Both so sensitve and aware that they could pin point every feeling and emotion I had. But they couldn't fix this one, like they had everything else. Like when I was a small child putting a band aid on my scraped knee.

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When I woke up it was noon. I got up and walked to the lavatory. I shoved my phone out of my pocket and read the text message from Emmitt. My lips stretched into a uncontiose smile, as I comprehended the words on the screen "Babe, hows your flight?" I replied quickly and looked into the mirror. My long strawberry blond hair hung perfectly stright, frameing my heart shaped face. My eyes where a strange blueish green, a mix of Dannys and Erics. I was a mix of the twins, except female. I was 5'3, very short like my mother. I looked almost exactly like mom, but her and Danny had frekles, something I lacked. I went back to my seat, with a new aloofness. "15 minutes untill we land" the flight attendant said cherrily as she strolled down the aisle. Butterflier spun in wild circles in my stomach, about what this ment, who I was seeing and just how nervose I was.

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Emmitt was someone I'd known since I was a small child. We had lived right next door to each other as three year olds. It just so happend we where best friends. Since the dawn of time we had denied the sterotypes that said boys and girls can't be friends. We where inceprable, closer than any one could be. I told him everything. How terrified I was, when my mother had gotten sick. But then it seemed the timeing had been perfect, it crushed me like a ton of bricks, just when life had gotten so horribe he had moved. I was 13 and very attatched to this boy I'd been friends with for ten years. I hadn't relized how much I loved him. He was my best friend who then suddently in a brief relixation I relized I was in love with. I loved him more than any one. I kissed him the day he left, it was ironic and strange the way we had always proved the other children at schools that we where just friends, and now look at us. But I talked to him about everything, and in my life it was the only thing that made any sense. It was second nature, and easy to be with him. I think some where between the hour phone calls every day and the pages of emails and text, we really fell in love, distance hadn't done a thing to us. We missed each other brutitly, it was shredding me to peices that we couldn't see each other. When my mother died, he was there, listening to me sob on the phone. He was apart of my family, the words "Emmitts calling" where fresh on my father and mothers toungs. Our fathers where collegues and our mothers were sort of friends. Those last words "follow your heart" drug me to the airport, sobbing the day after my mother had died. My heart was in Ontario Canada and I was going to follow it. I was running away.

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I pulled my bags out from under the seat, and strode out of the plane. My ears popped violently. My legs seemed to want to buckle. I was tired and the butterflies where struggeling deep within me to break free. I kept my eyes low, makeing sure I didn't make eye contact. I didn't want to be known, or remembered. Suddenly I was out amongst a huge crowd of people. But my eyes knew exactly who I was looking for and I soon found him. He was so tall, around 6'4. And built, way bigger than both my brothers. His shaggy black hair didn't match his light blue eyes and pale complextion. He had one ear bud in and was searching the crowd intensly. His eyes suddently brightened, a huge grin across slipping across his lips. "Elliot!!!" he bellowed jogging towards the gate. My butterflies stoped churning and suddenly had flewn the coup. I felt comfortable. "Ell!" he said again when he got to me, I dropped my bags and he wrapped me in his huge arms. I wrapped my arms around his waist. We just stood there for a few minutes. Soaking it in, feeling each other for the first time in years. He released me and smiled, I couldn't help but smile, his same goofy grin. He scooped up my bags and we where walking through threw the airport at a quick pace. "Your dads still in the dark about all this?" he asked still keelping a chirpy lightness in his voice. "Uh huh" I answered, breathlessly. We where walking a little to fastly for my short legs, as we fought the foot trafic. We finally reached the lugage area. I chased my bag down the convader belt before finaly catching it. Emmitt just chuckled. We walked together now, slowly, quietly now enjoying each others presence. Then we were in the parking garage. He pointed his key ring at the car, and the car chirped back at us, and we got in. It was an '06 bug, silver convertable. The wind outside the car wiped at the car windows as we blurred threw the city. "So where exactly am I staying?" I asked playfully. "With us" he replied smileing. "Its just me and mom now, dads in Africa doing some big dig. And Sandy and Lauren are both in college." he informed me. That was other thing we had in common, both the youngest with twins as older siblings. Sandy and Lauren had always had always had huge crushes on Eric and Danny. It was something we joked about, how we all might end up married. Emmitt took his eyes off the emty road for a quick moment to look at me. He was still smileing, it seemed like it was glued there, but as was mine too. I had a sudden impulse, and slid across the seat and leaned over and peck his cheek. He laughded, and a pale shade of pink swept under his ivory skin. "I've missed you" I said leaning on his shoulder. "Me too" he said. I was so tired, jet lag was a bitch and I must have drifted off as the silent woosh of air, slid across the car, and the bright light turned to night.