Cabin Fever | ✓

(67) Heart

There's a saying: home is where the heart is. It's on a wooden plaque hung up in the living room of Marley's house. As cruel of a joke as it has been for years, Marley didn't have the will to remove it.

She didn't have a plan upon turning on Aiden's car and driving from the parking lot, just that she needed to get out as fast as possible. She had stopped crying, and the emotions she had felt in the apartment vanished into a comfortable numbness.

Because that's what happens when you don't know how to feel - you end up feeling nothing.

She found herself in her neighbourhood absentmindedly. Instinctively. Most of her mind was too frazzled to come up with a better plan than where she had gone to before Camp flipped her life on its axis. In every good way, but that doesn't mean she isn't suffering the whiplash.

It felt normal to pass by faded shingles. Unkempt lawns. Strewn garbage and beaten down cars. It felt normal to see cracked sidewalks and the flickering lamp posts that the city never bothered to fix.

She went to her house. She had nowhere else to go now, anyway. She ran out on her legal guardian and stole her boyfriend's car. Her best friend was hours away. Even her father was unreachable given he's behind bars for crashing her car.

Well, when you put it that way it sounds really freaking bad, Marley.

She trudged along the path, wincing at the melodic beep of Aiden's car as she locked it with the key. In this neighbourhood it stuck out like a sore thumb. Not only that but she had taken it without his permission when it was clearly something he valued.

Round of freaking applause, Marley.

The second stair on the front porch creaked and split. The screen door was rusted and yellowed. The key in the old, faded purple mailbox was no longer the silver it was when her mother and father bought it after they married. When Marley twisted the key in a familiar lock, she entered a musty house.

Filled with all the things that haunted her.

The hardwood was worn with age, the tile in the kitchen roughed up and dirty no matter how much she used to scrub at it. The living room was divided from the kitchen by the table, the one where her father and his friends would enjoy rowdy poker nights over sliced meats and beer.

Marley was sat on her father's chair at head of the table, her legs crossed beneath her. She turned every light in the room on.

She could see it all perfectly. The sliding back door — leading to a bare, square backyard — that is slammed open and shut by her fathers' friends heading outside for air, drunk and singing loudly.

The small, square TV where her father made her watch countless football games over the years. He'd sit on the chaise lounge, drinking a beer she hand-delivered while Marley sat on the stiff love seat.

Between the two grey pieces of furniture sits a brown, faded and marked up coffee table due to years of wear and abuse — one Marley has had to scrub dried beer off of on more than one occasion. Across from it a three person couch with a blanket where her father's friends would crash for the night, while suggesting that there's another bed in the house they'd rather warm up.

The coat rack — normally overflowing with an onslaught of jackets and outerwear. A mat for shoes that none of her father's friends had the curtesy to use.

The kitchen — a small corner of the open concept main floor composed of chipped brown cupboards, white aged and malfunctioning kitchen utilities, and ugly green, speckled countertops.

Marley had stayed over at Gabby's two nights before she had to go to camp, and Mr. Collins drove them to the school at 4am in October. Which meant her father had the house to his own devices for two nights where he more than likely had friends over for poker. Her father hadn't done the dishes before he was arrested for his DUI, and he never did them before, anyway.