What It Seems | Wattys 2023

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The initial moment after three solid years is when I'm standing on my tiptoes, reaching for the family album. I fetch the heavy photo album to relax on my forearms and scan over the yellow-colored flap. I could tell this photo album hasn't been touched in years due to the amount of dust it held. I walked from the empty living room, down the lit hallway to my room. The album is held tightly to my chest with one arm while the doorknob is twisted with my free hand. I walk through my messy room and lounge on my stomach across my bed. I rest the album in front of my chest and swipe the sleeve of my shirt across the dusted flap.

On a tarnished page, one picture is the day of my parents' wedding, both the age of eighteen. Dad and Mom's hands are both connected as they begin cutting the twenty-four-inch cake. Grins from ear to ear are plastered across their faces in the next picture as they both have white creamy icing on their cheeks. Another picture captures my big brother holding me in his tiny arms. Either Mom or Dad snapped a picture of him leaving a kiss on my forehead. In this picture, I had a head full of naturally straight, dirty blonde hair with a pink bow clipped in my mop. Aiden's hair was pushed back, giving off a messy bedhead look. His glasses were hanging onto the bridge of his nose.

Aiden's eight-year-old small body is sitting beside me as I peer over his shoulder, watching him teach me a few notes on a plastic guitar that was possibly from Toys "R" Us. I've seen this picture before; the photograph is on my dresser.

A soft knock on my timber door was heard. The pulse of the knock signaled that Aiden was home from the gym he recently trains at for boxing. His life-long dream since he was ten was to become a WWE boxer, or a boxing coach at least.

"Yeah," I called out to my brother. The door creaked open. A tall, broad-shouldered nineteen-year-old appearing from the hallway into my room.

"Just makin' sure you were home. The living room was dark and cold."

I scanned through a few photos I couldn't bear looking at. I felt the foot of my bed plummet in and my brother crawl to my side. He rested his head on my pillow and dug his face into the fluffy cushion.

"Tired?" I questioned. His chest was heaving up and down, no answer coming from him in a moment of time. He bobbed his head yes and turned to face me. His eyes glanced to the side of my face then to the photo album.

"Woah," he laughed. "Look at Baylor. He's supposed to be moving back to Shady Grove in the next few days." For not paying attention to the photograph just behind the plastic piece, I had not realized that the current picture I landed on occurred of this guy named Baylor. There was another young boy standing by my side with Aiden on my right. Both of them had their arms swung over my shoulders.

"Who is Baylor?" I inquired. This time, Aiden had the album in front of him and he was looking at the photographs of him and his friend.

"My old best friend who moved to Boston. He moved when he was, like, fourteen I think," Aiden hesitated as he was unsure of his statement. He was a cutie, I thought to myself. Aiden finished speaking, "We've been friends since he was in first and I was in second grade."

Aiden shoveled my hair into a mess, leaving my hair gushing around my eyes. "I'm going to start on supper."

With just Aiden and me here, it didn't get as lonely as it was intended to be. I was used to both of my parents being gone. Well, for my mother has only been ten years. For my father, it has only been a couple years. I wanted to have a normal family. A mother and a father under the same roof. I desired for a mother to wake me up in the mornings for school and both of my parents to make Aiden and myself breakfast before school. I wanted to come home, and as horrifying as it appears to most teens, and tell my parents about the grades I made that day. I longed for the amazing dinners cooked; us sitting around the dining table - laughing, talking about how our day went. I've always wondered what it would feel like to walk down the aisle with my father as he gave me away at my wedding.

I will never get to experience that with either of my parents.

The longing experience is shared with my older brother. He's the only person who can keep things stable around here. There might not be two of him, but Aiden has done a good job of being two parents in one. Most of the time, he wakes me up in the morning. Aiden rarely cooks breakfast in the morning due to his schedule, but he tries his hardest to squeeze a cooked breakfast in his hectic schedule. He does ask me about my grades. Aiden can cook, and we do not necessarily sit at the dining table, but we do carry on the laughter part. We have had multiple amusing moments throughout the days that weren't busy, but when we were busy, we did squeeze that part in.