The car.
I hate the car.
It was summer. The birds were chirping, bees buzzed around every flower they could find and cicadas chirred, sitting on trees as if it were no one's business but theirs.
It was a hot summer, this summer, and there was life all around us. The trees surrounded us with their green leaves, the flowers were more beautiful than ever. Everything around us was flourishing and thriving, even all that, that wasn't supposed to grow.
We were sitting in the car, the midsummer day was on the brink of turning into a midsummer night and we watched the sun slowly sink behind the horizon, never to be seen again until she would rise up in the morning.
I wore my newly bought tank top and he wore the shirt he always wore. I don't know why it struck me as this significant but at the time it did.
We didn't kiss. We weren't at the point of kissing back then.
But we talked.
We talked a lot and we didn't stop talking, even if we hadn't enough knowledge about the topic the other was talking about. Which occurred quite often.
We hardly had anything in common and yet we were so alike.
Both of us were on the edge of starvation and so we fed each other stories. Neither of us had a family we could go to so we comforted each other.
My mother was busy working, handling our finances and keeping the house in tact. She hardly even had time for my little sister, who needed her more than me.
My father lived in our basement, desperately trying to find something. Mostly what he found were vague ideas about things he could build that might bring a tiny chance of fame.
By the time I was fifteen I already knew that these inventions were not what he needed to find. I never figured out what exactly it was he was looking for but it was clear to me that his crazy ideas just drove him farther away from our family.
There were days he would lock himself inside the basement, not even coming out to eat.
There had been days my mother would scream at the door, would throw plates against it, only to break down and cry.
I never could tell if my father noticed or if he kept living in a world filled with oblivion.
My little sister and I, we were in the same boat. Abandoned by both our parents we should have grown together but she never was fond of closeness.
Instead, she rather went out with friends, got drunk, smoked and, sometimes, I wondered if she was high on some sort of drug when she came home.
My little sister was a mess and it was my job to tidy her. Our mother never remarked on her behaviour and our father was too lost in his own world to even notice.
So it was just me. Alone in this insanity.
We sat in the car and talked. About the weather, about driving, about whatever came to mind.
The sun had said its final goodbyes, but it was still warm. His smile heated up the room even further and I felt the urge to take a shower, yank my t-shirt off and just bathe in coldness.
I watched his lips move and thought about the hunger simmering in us both.
His younger sister had died. She'd been only a few months younger than me and still the earth had decided to rid itself off her.
There was no sign of sadness in his behaviour but the loss had cut deep even if he didn't like to show it.
It was not only the loss of his sister that he mourned.
Her death had damaged his parents and made them blind. All they saw was their taken daughter and her absence. There was no place for him and his two brothers in their grieve.
