SHIFTED.✔

12

Two weeks later it was decided I would move into Jake's room. A room which had once belonged to two brothers. At first I felt uncomfortable about this decision. A decision which had been made for me. But I realised this was part of my role in the family. I was now the baby. The person they needed to make decisions for. I gave them reason and by moving me into this room a new path was being laid. It overlapped the old like a bandage to heal a wound. It was a decision which closed one wound but opened another, created the pathway to the next moment in our lives.

Mum flustered around making new curtains and repainted the walls. Kerry hissed at me. "Does Mummy's little girl want a new dolly?"

It didn't matter Mum was also going to redecorate her room.

It didn't matter that she got expensive CD's and I magazines. Kerry seemed to hate me more and more.

"She's a real bitch," I complained to Katie. "She's getting worse and worse."

Katie chewed on her sandwich. "She's always been nice to me."

"Yeah, that's because you're not her sister."

It had been worrying me. Kerry and I had openly never gotten on but there was a secret side to our relationship. We knew we loved each other but her cruel comments had escalated.

"Charlie...!"

"Hey what?"

Katie looked at me strangely. "You're doing the blank stare thing again."

"Oh...sorry."

Katie had said I still did this occasionally when I was worried or upset but it wasn't freaky anymore.

She lay on her back with her hands behind her head and looked up at the sky. "My mother turned up last night."

I stared down at her. "Really...why?"

Katie rolled her head towards me. She jerked her elbows to resemble a shrug. "I heard her telling Dad she wanted to come home. He asked her about Rick. That's the latest boyfriend. She says she left him, says he was an idiot and she realised she still loved Dad."

I bit my lip. "What did your Dad say?"

Katie laughed. Her eyes glimmered at me. "He told her to fuck off."

I nearly choked on my apple. "What?"

"I completely agree with him," she smiled. "I gotta give the old man his dues. Would you take back a woman who left you two years ago? Took your son and has had three boyfriends in between?"

I blew out a big breath of air. "No...I don't think I would."

Katie grabbed the apple out of my hand and took a bite. "I've thought about this happening for a long time." She said waving the apple up and down. "I've seen how sad he's been and thought for sure he'd take her back. I was pretty impressed when he said no."

"What about you, Katie? Don't you want her back?"

She shook her head. "What, just so she can leave us again, cause she will. No thanks I don't need that in my life."

"What about Graham, where's he?"

Katie handed me the apple and sighed. "He's the one I feel sorry for, being dragged from one place to the other. It's like I don't know him anymore. He's quieter, but it's his choice. Dad said if he wanted to live with us again he could."

I cocked my head in question. "So is he?"

"I don't think so," she said as the bell rang.

Copyright © 2017 by Donna Fieldhouse. All rights reserved.

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