FAR FROM NORMAL ── REGGIE PETERS

11. WEEKEND BONDS

"Hey, big brother!" Ashley sounded like she was answering a call and Alex's eyebrows furrowed. "Don't worry about the headphones, I've put them in so people around me don't think I'm losing my marbles and talking to myself."

It took Alex another few seconds to understand before it dawned on him.

"Oh." He was laughing at himself for being so stupid. "I get it. That's smart."

Ashley chuckled, smiling at him.

"Back to your previous question," the blonde girl stood up, motioning with her head for him to follow her, "there's actually someplace I wanted to show you."

Alex bounced up from the bench and followed his sister along the boardwalk as they chatted about everything and anything that came to mind. They spoke about their parents, what life was like living in, what Alex called, the future, how things had changed since he'd been around, where everyone from the old neighbourhood had moved to when the houses were knocked down.

Ashley's heart was beating hard the whole time.

     The amounts of times she had dreamt of moments like these, moments where she was able to just walk along with her brother and talk to him about everything, moments where he was with her and beside her - in her dreams, she could touch him, but at the moment, that was the least of her problems - so to finally be doing all of that stuff was filling her with an overwhelming happiness.

"So, where are you taking me exactly?" Alex had a bounce in his step, a huge smile on his face, and Ashley wondered how much he was enjoying himself.

She had led them onto the beach and was leading him along the edge of the sand towards the sea and what looked to be a pile of rocks, but Ashley knew better than that. It looked different on the outside, that's for sure.

"Mom was pretty good about letting me out of the house whenever I wanted as long as I stuck to her curfew rules." Ashley was climbing over some rocks now to a part of the sand which was deserted - Alex looked at her anxiously but she flicked her head in the opposite direction, asking him to follow her. "And dad would just go with whatever mom said, so I spent a lot of time out of the house.

"I found this place when I was wandering after a pretty bad moment of grief had washed over me. That happened a lot. I was walking along the boardwalk and saw a band performing acoustically and it just reminded me of all the stories mom would tell me about when you and the boys did that. Especially in those early days, anything to do with bands of any kind reminded me of you.

"I just walked for ages, my heart hurting the whole time and came across this little cavern. It's a part of the beach which nobody goes on because you have to climb over a bunch of rocks to get here, but there have never been any signs to say you can't go to it, and nobody has ever told me off, so it's my place now."

Multiple times as they were climbing across different rocks with different surface textures had Alex reached out when he almost slipped to grip onto Ashley to stop himself from falling, and then remembered that he couldn't. Ashley had been doing the same thing, but neither of them admitted it to one another.

Eventually, Ashley stopped at the mouth of what looked like a cave, but it was light inside and didn't seem to go back very far. Ashley smiled at her brother and he followed her through the mouth of the cave and into a wide-open space.

"I call it a sea cave because that's what Google said it was." Ashley was mumbling as she climbed over some small rocks. "It isn't safe to be out here when the tide is in because the whole thing will fill with water, but when the tide's out it's nice to sit in. The sun always keeps it warm too which is a bonus."