when you were my father

finding shelter

"So, where are we going?" Micah asked, as we emerged from the deep woods we'd been prancing around in for hours.

The sky had gone from murky blue to a beautiful combination of orange, pink and a bright purple. Sunset.

"We have to get inside somewhere." Valentina said, looking at the sky with me. "It's going to be dark soon."

"So the dark is bad, these things just happen whenever they want to, the dark isn't going to change anything." Micah told her, acting like the sometimes snob he is.

"No, but I just have a bad feeling." She told him, and he rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, well you're not in charge."

"Micah," I said looking down on him. That was probably the second greatest part of riding on Brian's back, the first being I didn't have to walk on my injured leg, looking down on everyone else, including my brother. "Just listen to her, don't be Micah right now."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know, just whenever-" I realized what the problem with him was, he was hungry. He gets hangry, I remember our mom telling me that a lot when he'd be mean to me years ago. "Let's just go somewhere inside, that has food."

"Fine," Micah gave in, and we stopped walking to figure out where to go.

"We could go to my house." DJ suggested, shrugging.

"I mean, thanks, but wouldn't your parents ask a lot of questions? Without Brian we'd be a little more normal, but still not parent approved."

"Oh, they're not home. My dad's grandpa or something died, so the two of them went to go to his funeral."

"So, you're home alone? How old are you, like 10?" Valentina asked him, rudely smiling to herself, judgmental.

"Umm, I'm fourteen, fifteen in a little while. And no, I'm not home alone. My brother and sister are there with me, and they're sixteen and eighteen..."

"Right," Valentina rolled her eyes, she had an interesting personality, I could tell.

"Well, we'll go to DJ's house then, just to eat something and rest a little. Then we should try to figure out what's going on."

"Alright," Micah said, and we started walking, but soon Brian stopped, stopping me too.

"You know, earlier I said I was fine carrying you, but I'm tired." Brian told me, turning around to show me his tired face.

"I thought you would, it's hard to carry someone for a long period of time." Smiling, I let him drop me off onto the cement sidewalk. I hobbled over to DJ and Micah and put an arm around each of their shoulders and necks, and together we continued walking down the street.