Memories

I got home some minutes past 4 am, today wasn't payday so I didn't wait back for any reason, after taking a cold shower for the third time now, I climbed onto my bed and covered myself up with my blanket, the night was cold but I felt dirty after work and my hot water pump was stilled not fixed yet.

I shut my eyes close begging my mind to rest and myself to sleep but no sleep came. I was too cold and weak to pick up a novel to read but I just couldn't sleep.

Memories came flying back into my mind, it was like there was a roller coaster in my mind, my mind kept drifting back to the night my sister got arrested, then to my friends in college, I had dropped out to gather some money to free Petra but I couldn't and now I'm stuck with so many bills to pay that I can't save up enough to go back to college, I had plans of enrolling into an online school next month, but even that is not possible again.

My mind travelled back to when we were still one big happy family, all the fun times we had together, then it travelled to the time of dad's death, we had prepared ourselves for it, we knew he would die because he had stage four cancer and chemotherapy no longer an option, but even at that mum couldn't bear the loss, she kept more to herself after dad died, sometimes I would hear her cry in her room, then the accident that has left her in her present state.

I had not realized I was crying till I started choking on my tears. The cold had long gone and I was beginning to feel warm, so I pulled down the duvet to allow the night breeze to touch my skin.

I got out of bed since sleep wasn't coming, put on my flip flips and started to walk around the house. I went to my sister's room, opened the first drawer by her nightstand and brought out an envelope.

I went through the envelope with a smile plastered on my face, Petra kept all of the pictures we took together while we were on a week's vacation in Spain

Dad had told us about a month before we left for Spain that he had a surprise for us, we thought it was the usual secret picnic he had planned again but then he asked us one night to pack our bags, that we were to go camping.

None of us liked camping but we wouldn't pass on the time to spend time with family so we packed our bags.

Petra being the wise girl that she is had packed some swim clothes and chilly clothes. I asked her why she would pack swim clothes for a camp and she just said who knows, maybe we would come across a river.

I remember looking at her with a shocked expression, who would want to go swimming in a river? For all, I know there could be sharks in the water, but then it's Petra. Aside from dancing, swimming is something she likes to do.

Well, she was lucky, she packed some nice outfits while I stuck to only camp clothes, trainers, joggers and the likes, safe to say I immediately regretted my actions when the uber dropped us at the airport, the shock and anger on my face then were unmatched. I wanted the ground to open and swallow me.

We all needed that vacation, mum and dad had lodged themselves in a different hotel, thankfully there was no sign of pregnancy after that, while petra and I were lodged in a different hotel with a credit card from dad to 'spend judiciously'. Even he knew that was far from possible. I mean who spends little in a foreign country? By the time the vacation was over we had already asked dad to transfer more money into the account.

That we went shopping was an understatement, we could open a boutique with the clothes we bought, dad didn't like the squander but he didn't say anything about it when he had to pay for extra luggage at the airport, mum, on the other hand, showed how pissed she was. If not for school we had to get back to when we returned we would have been grounded for at least a year. That was the last vacation we had before dad broke the news of his cancer getting worse, I remember sleeping in Petra's room for a week after he broke the news, I cried every night in her arms till I fell asleep, sometimes she'd make me sit down and watch SpongeBob with me even though she hates the cartoon, but never did I see her break a tear, I know she just wanted to be the big sister by not being vulnerable when she's with me, some other times she made hot chocolate and made us play some card games and of course allowed me to win all the time just so that I could cheer up.

I went through the bunch of pictures one more time before putting them back into the drawer then I opened the second drawer and took out my sketch pad, asides reading novels I like to draw in my free time, I'm not a pro but I try my best, I only stick to drawing nature since I cannot conjure a perfect human in arts, funny thing is that I never get the inspiration to draw except I'm in Petra's room that's why I don't bother packing my drawing materials when I'm done with the drawing, I just leave them in her drawer. I went through my drawings, trying to recall the situation that led to me drawing the images on the sketch pad.

After glancing through the sketch pad for some time I started to feel my eyes close so I kept the sketch pad back into the drawer, got into the duvet, switched off the bed lamp and allowed myself to sleep not before thinking about the black business card that was somewhere in my drawer, that card has somehow managed to chip itself into most of my thoughts and gradually I was beginning to kill my pride, I think I should call the number on the card or better still show up at the location on the card, with the amount of bill piling up it won't be bad to get an income from another source.