Growing Pains

Chapter 75 - It's good to know that life is good

S A M

I was smiling, smiling, and running into their arms, and before I knew it, Tristan was hugging me, and picking me up, and saying he missed me. I didn't think he would say it, but he did.

"I missed you too," I said, and he smiled, and put me down, and next to him, Zoey opened her arms for me, and I walked right into it.

They were back from their trip. I had been counting the days, waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and finally, the wait was over. They were back.

They had been on a cruise somewhere and I had expected them to come back with cool tans, but they looked pale instead. Paler than usual even. Behind me, someone called my name. Whoever it was had been calling it for a while, but I didn't care. They were back!

"Sam!" Dad. It was dad. "Time to move, buddy."

I was confused. We had come to pick them up from the airport. We had just gotten here. Why the rush to leave? Where were we going next? Maybe dad had booked a table at some fancy restaurant. Maybe –

I woke up. I had been dreaming. Outside my window, the sun shone through the trees and sneaked into my room through the shutters. Tristan and Zoey hadn't gone on a cruise. It was only a dream. They had gone on a trip, yes, but it wasn't a cruise. I couldn't remember what it was. I got up.

I had kicked my blankets to the floor during the night, and my pillow was wet where my face had been. I touched my cheeks. Wet too. I looked at my bedside table. A postcard from somewhere along the coast read:

Thanks for letting me borrow your brother for a couple of weeks.

I will be forever thankful.

Love you.
Zoey.

Of course. I remembered now. They had gone on a trip down the coast. They had rented a van and everything. That was it. I remembered. They had come back early because Tristan hadn't been feeling too well. They had been back for a while now.

It hadn't been the first time Tristan's body decided it was done with a trip. Once, on a family cruise – that was where the idea of a cruise had come from, of course! – Tristan had started having nosebleeds out of nowhere. We would be having dinner and a drop of blood would fall on his soup, and then more, a lot more, or we would be in the pool, and suddenly the water around him would turn red with blood.

Dad had decided we better just go back home, cut the trip short. Linda had been upset. They had paid for the whole thing already and now we would have to get off the cruise somewhere and fly all the way back home. They had a big fight that day, dad and Linda. I knew they did, even though Tristan turned his music all the way up so I wouldn't hear them scream at each other in the room next door. I hadn't care if they fought or not. In fact, I had wanted them too. I didn't think Linda was being very nice about the whole thing, and if I had to listen to dad when I wasn't nice, then so did she.

So we came back, and Tristan was rushed to the hospital where I got to set up camp in his room, and things weren't so bad. In a few days, he was out again. That was just the way things were.

This time, he hadn't needed to be rushed to the hospital though. He had dropped Zoey off at her house and come home only to collapse on the couch where I had been watching cartoons. I remembered I asked him if he was sure he didn't need a doctor. I remembered he said he was just tired, that he had never been really good at road trips anyway. Once, him and Caitlyn drove for hours for some music festival, and he felt so sick, they had to stop so he could throw up. He said it only happened once on the way there, but Caitlyn later told me it was more, way more.