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4

Chapter 4

"FIGLIA!" my mothers accent pierced the absolute silence that I was enveloped in during sleep.

"Svegliati, devi essere pronto!" she continued to yell as her voice neared my room. Not remembering how or when I fell asleep has become an ongoing problem it seems. As I lay in my bed staring up at my painted ceiling I wondered how I managed to get here. The last thing I remember was being in the hot tub staring at the stars and now im in a dry shirt and pants in bed. Odd.

I mumbled back an acknowledgement and sat up straight in bed. Today was the day of my brothers funeral. The day we finally say goodbye to the twins, it'll be closed casket, the marks and wounds make them unrecognizable at this point and as a family we decided that's not the last image of them we want to have.

I made my way to my bathroom to take a shower and get ready. The water was scalding hot, burning my neck and back but I couldn't find it in me to care to fix the temperature, it felt nice anyways even though I knew it couldn't be good for me. As the water cascaded down on me and the steam swallowed me up, thoughts of the best times with my brothers overtook my mind.

"Soph!" Tony screamed at the top of his lungs as he burst through my bedroom door sporting the largest grin on his face.

"What?" I responded with the most monotone voice and unamused smile I could muster. We stared back at each other for a few seconds, him with grinning smugly at me, while I looked back bored before rolling my eyes.

"What, Tony?" I asked again this time lacing my voice with aggravation. I was sitting indian style on my bed my journal opened next to me, in the middle of a drawing the sunset from the night before. My laptop was opened playing some show on Netflix for background noise, when he plopped down on the bed with me.

"We, are going on an adventure." His smile grew, if even possible and those six words paired with the cheesy grin, have always meant trouble. I had no idea what he had in store for Vinny and I, but in record time I was off my bed, throwing on a sweatshirt and lacing up my sneakers. He chuckled from behind me at my speed and stood up to walk towards the door.

"Grab the paint we have down stairs and throw them into a duffle. Meet us in the driveway." He said before leaving my room, wondering where we would vandalize now. We had a record of finding a brick wall somewhere wherever we moved and covering it in spray paint. It was an unsaid tradition between the three of us and tonight would be the night we continued.

I ran downstairs stuffing all our necessities before heading out to meet them. Another reason this was very much illegal was my brothers had never been of age to drive and we would always take one of my familys range rovers. My mother was never happy that we did this, claiming it would draw too much attention to our family and our whereabouts. That didn't stop us, even after my father would call and scream at us for our reckless and illegal behavior. They learned to give up on trying to stop us, it was a few hours we got to spend in complete silence, putting our three creative heads together and coming up with beautiful pieces.

My mother and father both admired all of our work, even though the way we went about it set them on edge. In their minds we were leaving a breadcrumb trail of where we've been but in our minds it was our way of marking our territory to say "weve been here".

We were driving silently with The Rolling Stones playing softly in the background. The moon lit up the sky as we pulled into an empty parking lot across from a small café. We had eaten here when we first arrived to the town, the food and people were all around lovely. I loved the idea of marking this building. We left the car idiling, like always in case were in need of a quick get away and made our way over to the blank wall to begin our work.