Chapter 3

My head is pounding. I have an excruciating migraine that extends from my temples towards my eyes. My eyes are still closed and yet from the indistinct chatter and beeping sounds surrounding me, I can tell that I am not at home. I carefully open my eyes, aware of the fact that my migraine will only get worse if I open them too abruptly. I turn my head and Larry is sitting on a chair besides me, focused on his cellphone screen. Judging from the position of the sun and the shadows it casts inside the room, I can tell that it's about 8am. Upon realizing that I am awake, he puts his phone down and looks at me with tired eyes. It can almost see right through them without his glasses on. He smiles at me, wearily.

"How are you feeling?"

"Where is Charles?"

Larry looks down, fumbling with words to deliver the news in the least painful way. He looks up again and I can see tears forming in his eyes.

"WHERE IS CHARLES LARRY?" I shout, as if I don't already know the answer to my question.

"Maya...the young boy who got hit by car last night was identified as your brother."

"I WANT TO SEE HIM...NOW!"

Tears roll down my face as I feel a combination of emotions from grief to anger. My heart feels heavy and I can hear the blood in my ears like a drumbeat.

"Charles did not make it."

Larry stands up from his chair and goes to the window. He's still wearing the same clothes as he was wearing last night.

"You collapsed last night,and had to be rushed to hospital. Your parents have been busy ever since the news arrived, trying to sort things out with the police department and the morgue. "

The morgue. Just last night Charles was a 16 year old boy, who had a bright future ahead of him,a life that he lived so fully and fearlessly. And now he was just another lifeless, cold body at the mortuary. This all felt like a bad dream, one I would wake up from and my brother would still be alive.

I can feel my eyes burning from the tears. I can feel a void my heart, as if everything I once had or lived for has been taken away from me.

Larry turns to look at me. The sun is shining in from behind him, his tall lean body forming a silhouette.

"I have been here the whole night, and I will be here for as long as you need me to."

I can hear him, but I am not listening. My mind is in my bedroom, recalling the last conversation before my brother left the house never to come back again.

The doctor who has been in charge of my admission walks into my room holding a clipboard.

"You can feel free to take her home, we have been monitoring all her vitals, and you're good to go.

Larry looks at me with sad eyes,

"Let's go home Maya."

**

The drive home is silent. Larry drives gently and I fall asleep halfway there. When we arrive, the door is wide open. The Steins' car is parked on our driveway.

Larry helps me out the car and we walk up the driveway towards the house, the Steins waiting by the doorway to welcome me into my own home. When we get to the house, Mrs Steins envelopes me into a tight hug.

The Steins' family consists of 3 members, the parents and Larry. Mr Steins knew my dad back when they were both in college. Mrs Stein is a few years older than my mother, and she had Larry two years before I was born. The Steins and The Purples were a tag team, we went on vacations together, Larry and I had combined birthday parties and sleepovers were shared between the two houses. The more Larry and I grew, the more the two families started drifting apart, and when Larry's family moved out of town, I never saw the Steins again, until now.

The house is clean, as if it wasn't full of people just a few hours ago. All the decorations from the party have been taken down and the house looks normal again. But it feels empty. I already know that things will never be the same again. I am aware that when my parents come home, I'll have to face the reality of our incomplete family.

"Larry why don't you take Maya upstairs so she can take a warm shower and jump into some clean clothes'" suggests Mrs Steins.

Larry has taken the role of being my caretaker, and I am too emotionally tired to say anything about it. We walk up to my room his arm supporting my body as if afraid that I might crumble into the ground if he lets go.

My room is still dark with curtains closed. Midnight Sun is lying on my bed with the page still open from where I stopped reading after Charles had come into my room. Had I known that he would not be here today, I would have asked him to stay a bit longer. I would've laughed with him about some of our childhood memories, I would've told him just how much he means to me. I would've taken him out onto the balcony and we would've stargazed the way we used to on nights when we both couldn't sleep. I would've told him just how much he meant to me, and that he was the best friend I ever had.

But Charles lived only in my imagination now, and it would only be a few years before I would forget the exact details of face,and would have nothing but pictures to remind me.

"You can go," I tell Larry coldly.

I want to be alone in my room. I want to cry and grieve for my brother alone.

Had it been any other day, I would have probably enjoyed his company, but right now the only thing that matters is my brother's death.

'I'll be downstairs," says Larry, and he obediently leaves my room.

I go to the bathroom and for the first time in a while, I am able to look at my face in the mirror. My eyes are bloodshot red and my hair is uncombed. One of my clip-on earrings has fallen of. I stare at my reflection, looking straight into my eyes. I feel disappointed at myself. Maybe if I hadn't let my brother leave the house alone, he would still be alive. I collapse onto the floor. I lay my head down on the cold tiles, and I let tears flow from my eyes onto the ground.

I must've fallen asleep, because Larry comes knocking on the bathroom door, concerned that I might have collapsed again. I push myself up from the ground and I open the door.

"Maya are you okay? You've been in here for more than hour. Your parents just arrived."

**

When I enter the living room my mother looks at me and forces a tired smile, she stands up and gives me a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm so sorry honey, I'm sorry."

My father is facing the window holding a glass with whiskey. He doesn't even turn to look at me.

My mom guides me to a couch and sits me down next to her. Larry sits on the other side and I sink into the couch in between them.

"What did they say Wanda," asks Mrs Steins in a concerned voice.

"If he had been rushed to the hospital an hour earlier, Charles would still be alive," my mother's voice shakes. "If the person who did this had had the decency to at least call the ambulance, my son would not have died in a pool of his own blood, cold and alone."

My brother's last moments were filled with pain and terror. He had to feel his life fading away as he lost blood and no one was there for him. My mom wraps her arms around me and I can feel her body shake from her silent sobbing.

My father walks to his recliner and sits down. His eyes are distant, as if he has entered his own world and is unaware of anything else that is happening around him. He sips his whiskey in one go and instead of putting the glass down on the table, he lets go of it and it shatters onto the ground. I have seen my father angry before, but this is not anger. Anger can be identified and understood. My father looks like he is in a trance-like state. His body is present, but no matter how hard I try, I can not find my father's soul even when I look into his eyes.