Mutants (Under Revision)

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

I watched the sun rise, instead of the other way around.

I was still sitting at my old desk, my finger tracing the spiderweb cracks along the glass.

I stood up, my limbs heavy. I could practically feel the dark circles under my eyes.

My mom poked her head in, her green eyes bright and awake and pretty much everything that I wasn't, at the moment.

"Good morning, sweet heart, did you sleep well?" She didn't seem to notice that I was practically falling over. I bit my lip.

"Yeah. I didn't realize how much I missed my old bed," I lied, sitting down on the mattress.

She beamed, and I saw how fake it was. How forced.

She was hiding something.

But so was I.

"Mom?" I asked, trying to swallow down my guilt. She looked at me, her eyes serious, like she could tell what was coming next.

"I need to leave soon." The hurt crashed into her features. The pain was killing me, and it might as well been physical pain, because it hurt just as bad.

She gripped the doorframe like it was her lifeline.

"Oh, honey, of course you don't have to.." She said softly.

But I did.

I wanted to tell her how much it would hurt her if I stayed.

How much it would hurt Rale.

How much it would hurt me.

Because if I stayed, I knew how the story would end for us.

Badly.

"I'm sorry, mom, it's just..I can't.." I couldn't make the words come out. I couldn't tell her how much I wanted to stay. I couldn't say anything. I could only sit and watch and feel the guilt consume me.

She didn't really say anything. She did a jerky nod, like someone else was controlling her movements, her being the puppet. She left without a word, leaving the silence to suffocate me instead of the guilt.

Rale appeared by my side, his arm around me, before I knew it.

The bed creaked as he sat down.

"I know you have to leave," he said, his voice gravelly. I nodded.

"But..just come back, okay? Mom and I...we thought you were dead. Gone forever." He said bluntly. Rale had never been one to sugarcoat things.

"The thing is..I may not be able to visit a lot." I said, looking down.

"Then at least call us," he said quietly. He looked at me.

"Do you know what we would do every night? Watch the news, to see if you were on it, to see if we could find you. We were so desperate," he said, "without you." My lips were in a firm line. They had abandoned me, as well as my voice.

"Just...I don't want that to happen again. Besides, watching the news all the time was boring." He said, cracking a smile.

I smiled back.

"I'm gonna miss you. Again," he said, ruffling my hair. I swatted his hands away.

"I'm gonna miss you too." I stood up, pulling him with me.

Neither of us said anything.

Then;

"Rale? Can you get a new frame for this picture?" I gently picked up the picture of me and my father.

"Yeah," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and taking it, "I've been meaning to get that done."

I gazed at the picture in his hands, trying to commit it to memory.

"It'll be good as new," he said, leaving me alone in my old bedroom.

Except.

Except, I would never see it 'good as new'.

In my mind, I would always see the cracks.

The broken pieces.

The broken memories.

The flaws.

I would never not see the cracks in a beautiful thing.