Crossfire

4 || grave mistakes

MONROE liked to think she was strong. 

 She knew, rationally, that she was. At least physically, anyway. She could throw a punch like the best of guys, take one just as well, and even carry the brunt of the groceries each week, using just her arms and one trip between her house and the car.

 Monroe had been able to climb that stupid rope in middle school gym class, after being taught by her brother, and she could stand the usual tear in her skin or bruise that formed as a result of her knee becoming too familiar with the table in her dining room. 

 She, however, wasn't too sure where she stood mentally when it came to strength. She could watch those sad romantic movies and only shed a tear or so - she was human, after all - and she could watch with clenched fists as her mother got worse each passing day, her sanity being dragged into a constant state of righting disorder that she saw, fighting to make things just so.

 But place her at the grave of her late twin brother, the only thing surrounding her a mass of other dirty tombstones, and she felt every part of her weaken, down to the very molecules that made up each part of her. Monroe tried to be strong each time she came, but sometimes, it seemed a simpler thought than it was an actual task.

 It was the third year anniversary of Max's death, an entire three years since he'd taken his life and left a deep lesion in each and every one of the King family members.

 Monroe skipped school to go visit him, a ritual she had been doing since her very first year without him. It was hard to muster the strength - there was that word again - to bring herself to visit a place that held the remains of her brother, without him really being there. She couldn't speak to him, couldn't hug him, couldn't ask him what he thought about the latest video game she had ordered just because she knew he would like it. 

 It was so hard that Monroe often only got herself out to visit him on the anniversary of his death, their birthday, and Christmas Eve, which had always been his favorite. Sitting there, among the sad looking grass and crumbling tombstones, heavy with the words carved into them, demanding for their meaning to be recognized, Monroe felt as though she could sink into the earth and become one with the soil. 

 Maybe it would be easier that way, she wondered.

 Monroe scooped a hand through her hair, bits of the grass that she'd been pulling at and rolling between her fingers undoubtedly transferring into the dark mess of her hair. She always talked to him when she visited him, but it took minutes before she could get her throat to work around the lump there, as if she were learning to talk all over again - something they'd learned together, bouncing sounds off of one another and mimicking their parents until they were able to truly talk. 

 Maybe they had never really talked, though, Monroe wondered, for maybe if they had really and truly talked, then possibly she wouldn't have been sitting at the grave of a boy who deserved nothing but the world at his talented fingertips. 

Maybe then his potential would have been recognized and not wasted on the cruel, cutting words of people who never looked past the exterior. 

 Monroe brushed her fingers against the cool surface of her brother's tombstone, her fingers touching and feeling the divots of where the letters of his name had been engraved into it. "Maxwell King, beloved son, brother and best friend" it read, a series of words that never failed to clench Monroe's stomach into a tangled mess of nerves and nostalgic longing for the past. 

 "Miss you, Max," she found herself saying, her hand still resting on the stone, as if it could connect her to her brother. "I don't think I can say it enough, how much I miss you, I mean. It still feels like you'll crawl out of bed in the morning and try to steal the cereal box from me, all the while sporting that fantastically disgusting trail of drool drying on your face," Monroe's voice broke with a sad laugh and she paused to take a deep breath.