Page 32 of Malaise
“Meg,” Mum exclaims. “Don’t be so silly. I mean… yes, you’ve been… difficult lately. But….” Her eyes search the room, but it’s no use; she has no words to offset the truth, no white lie to make us all feel better.
“I’m simply thinking of you, Mum,” I say saccharinely. “And let’s face it.” I pin Dad with my gaze. “I can’t be your little girl forever.”
“Whatever you want, Meg,” Mum says as she sets the bags of groceries down on the kitchen counter. I want to say she sounds dejected, or resigned, but it’s more… relieved. “We’ll help out where we can to get you set up, I guess.”
“Don’t go out of your way,” I say as I exit the kitchen and cross through the living room to the front hall. I call back across the space as I pick up my bag, “I’m used to doing things on my own.”
She stands in the kitchen doorway, a perplexed frown on her face as she wrings her hands together. Dad shadows her, his hard stare nothing but pure contempt.
“Where are you going now?” Mum asks tentatively, as though not to spook me.
“Out.”
I open the front door and step outside, the air immediately thinner and easier to pull into my lungs. Silence hangs like a death shroud behind me as I click the latch closed and take the few short steps down to our front path. Dark clouds cover the sky, although there isn’t any immediate sign of rain.
I’ve got no idea where the fuck I’m going—now, or in two weeks when I’m apparently starting the rest of my life more alone than I’ve ever been. Who the hell will rent space to a seventeen-year-old? I don’t turn eighteen for a month, which gives me two weeks after school to fill before any rent officer will even look twice at me.
What would Den tell me to do? God, he always had the answer. I need him more than ever right now. The sad irony of it all is I wouldn’t need him at all if he hadn’t died. If that bus hadn’t taken him out, we would still be our false family, living a lie; a lie that kept us comfortable and sedate; a lie that ironically held us all together.
A hollow ache weighs heavy in my chest when I realise that I don’t even have anywhere other than this house to go to feel close to Den. With his funeral yet to happen, there’s no grave, no marker, nothing. Only his belongings upstairs, which may as well be on the opposite side of a river of lava for how safe it feels to re-enter the house right now.
My home.
What a fucking farce. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable, more unwelcome to be somewhere I “belong.”
The weight of my backpack in my left hand draws my attention to the only constant I have through all of this—my ability to lose touch with reality and fly for a few hours. I look down at my right hand, at the bandage that still covers the back of it, and the pink, angry flesh on my fingers. Does my heart look the same? Raw and vulnerable? Or does it look as it feels, like a lifeless lump of rock that’s unable to feel anything but anger and resentment?
A cool breeze whips my hair around my face as I set off right, toward my second home at the band rotunda, content in the knowledge that no matter how cold it might be tonight, I’ve got two bottles of liquid insurance in my backpack that’ll make sure I stay warm.