Cold Summer

Chapter One

Kansas

Charlie

"It was crippling and twisting and loving and hurting. It was shock and disappointment. It was shattering everything before and after us. It was everything we thought of and everything we spoke about. It was long nights on rooftops under the ceilings of stars. It was the early mornings in the sand and before the rising sun and in the arms of a good friend. It was whatever we had seen and whatever we had known. It was us. And them. And the world. It was the summer with breeze and warmth and shiver and color in souls. It was everything we could speak of and everything we'd rather keep to ourselves. It was the summer of curiosity. It was past and memories and secrets waiting behind locked doors. It was the summer of new beginnings and better friendships and bitter endings. It was the summer of building ones' futures and destructing others'. Yet it was after all, a climb on a never ending hill. It was us three sisters and a single mother. It was summer in Florida."

We are the Belle sisters. We live in Kansas, and we'd never left altogether before, not since my father has left. My sisters have gone all the way to Alaska before, but I never went with them. I dislike the cold. I would've loved to travel with my sisters, but I'd like to go to somewhere where there's a beach and sun or trees and forests or mountains and animals of the wild. I like nature, but I also like it when nature is being kind to your skin and body. When it's being appreciative and colorful and not depressing and harsh and white. When my sisters told me they were going to Alaska and that I should come along, it felt uncomfortably agonizing to go there, besides hating the chills and shivers of the cold; my father has left us in the creeps of winter. He left us with no explanation and no made up excuse and not even and inconvenient reason.

I was not curious about where he was going, nor was I eager to know why he was going there. Yet I believed and still believe that we deserve to know why he was leaving us, I was well aware of the troubles between him and my mother, and although they seemed to have no reason and no core, they caused his departure. I believe we deserve to know why he left and not why he was going to that other place, but my pride kept my mouth shut and my tears behind walls. Because if I had asked, the strongest among my siblings would've been showing weakness right there and then. If I ever ask, I would burn and shatter the last crumbs of hope ever left inside my sisters' heart, and in my mother's imagination. Although she shows no pain and no hurt and hasn't spoken my father's name since three years, I do know that somewhere deep inside of her heart she hopes he comes back and somewhere lost within her mind she sees him coming back.

I don't wish for any of us to ever hold the knowledge of his whereabouts, because it would either be heartbreaking and victorious how miserable he is without us, or it would be heart aching and catastrophic how happy he is without us. The knowledge of his whereabouts would bring nothing but mixed emotions and pain. And mostly pain.

I don't wish my family to be in pain.

I know this information will forever be unknown, but I can't act heartless and face them with such facts, I will not act as the breeze that puts off the little flame of the candle which lights his memory in their hearts. On the other hand, he's already dimmed inside of me, that chapter of my story has already been read, I don't reread chapters that have been read out loud, and I don't rewind memories that bring me agony and pain and a sense of weakness. Because every time I get a flashback of that memory, I figure he's monstrous in more ways than one.

He looked me in the eye. He was hesitant, but not hesitant enough. "Where are you going?" my mother asked in a fading whisper, she was a wreck that day and had no energy to call out for him although he was a few inches away from the door and she was on the top of the stairs. She is sweet and at that moment she was even sweeter and she was broken, she looked like someone was holding her spleen and waiting for just the right moment to rip it out. They had been fighting for months, arguing and shouting on daily basis, she looked sick and the more they fought the sicker she looked. She would always be apologizing, she would always be the one who tried ending the arguments and he seemed to be the one who brought them up. I loved Jack; he used to be a good father, until that moment, that moment when he drained the last sips of love I had left inside of me for him. I hadn't seen a crime around our house that earned his departure, but it happened. He looked me in the eye. A second passed and his eyes were glowing tears. Two seconds passed and he drank back the salt. Three seconds passed and he closed his eyes as if telling himself there's no going back now, as if reminding himself of something I had done wrong, as if I had done anything wrong to him. Four seconds pass and his eyes were burning fire. Five seconds pass and he was out the door. He looked me in the eye and drained me of all the love I had for him, he erased every good memory I had of him.