Seen {ON HOLD}

Chapter Two

The moment I step into my grandmother’s house, I realise that nothing has changed. And when my sixteen year old brother, Max, enters after me, he’s probably got the exact same thoughts running through his head. Our grandmother’s most likely sleeping by now, so I decide against waking her. Our father suggested we move here, into the country, so we could spend more time with old grams, and take care of her better. The two of us knew that she’d been struggling recently.

 

“It’s like I never left!” I say aloud, the thoughts in my head somehow forming words. Max nods his head in agreement. The two of us grew up under this roof. Before we’d moved away to the big city, that is. But still, there’s nothing here now that wasn’t here all those years ago.

 

“You wanna get Grams up?” Max asks, setting his suitcase down gently at the bottom of the winding staircase in the centre of the lounge room. He brushes stray locks of blonde from his eyes and smiles softly.

 

I shake my head in response to his question. “Nah, she’ll be asleep by now. It’s best that we settle in now and greet her in the morning.” I tell him. Max shrugs his shoulders.

 

“Sure.”

 

I tug my suitcase inside, its wheels squeaking loudly. Max flicks on a light and the two storey house lights up. It’s a classic eighteenth century mansion, preserved and renovated countlessly over the years. Grams hasn’t exactly cleaned it up in a while, but all the old furniture remains; plush couches, stained glass windows, mahogany tables and the familiar trapdoor at the top of the stairs that connects to the attic, where I used to play.

 

“Hungry?” I ask my brother. Max rolls his eyes and nods.

 

“Yeah. I really hate plane food.” He answers, grimacing. I chuckle to myself. We’d just spent over ten hours cooped up like chickens inside an international plane. Seeing as the old Oakland property is halfway across the world from our Californian residence, it was a choice we had to take. It’s good to be back at the old house, actually. It’s where my childhood began. At my first glance of the place, the memories flood back in.

 

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I navigate my way to the kitchen, which is exactly as we left it all those years back. Old and rusted, knick-knacks teeming from the drawers. There’s an old beige fridge in the corner, but you can barely tell with all the fridge magnets covering it. The floor is an 80’s style checked vinyl. Upon opening the fridge, I frown. Everything is in order, apart from the loaf of bread. The packet has clearly been torn open, and a rather large piece has been ripped from the loaf.

 

“Stupid rats.” I mutter sourly, as I fetch the ingredients for pasta.

 

“Rats?” Max enters the room with his IPod touch in one hand. “Where?”

 

I shake my head as I fill a rusty red saucepan with water and set it on the stove. “It’s nothing.” I assure him.