Misfits (#2)

27.

I remember the morning of Auburn's funeral, as clear as the day of the fire. It was the first time mom got violently drunk.

She'd shoved dad when he tried to get her dressed, screamed at me when I tried to show my face. It was the conclusive moment I realised the depth of her hatred to me. Of what I'd done.

Heartbreak's an abstract word, one that can be used for a multitude of things. I wouldn't know how to define it. But I first knew heartbreak whilst they lowered my little sister's coffin. They made me stand separately, so mom would calm. It didn't feel like sadness. It felt like my heart was being ripped apart behind my ribs.

It's been seven years of mom drinking since. Seven years with no reprieve, no rest.

Since that day Auburn was lowered into the ground and she was my sister and somehow I was watching from afar, not besides my family, and I remember Sage — remember his eyes. I memorised them after that. Sage's eyes were never the same. None of us were ever the same.

But I remember wishing I could clutch onto his arm. I was sobbing. They stood apart from me. I wiped my tears on my own and then I ran, far, somewhere deep into the graveyard. My oldest brother found me sat on the dirt ground and he looked down at me, looked at my black dress covered in leaves. Sage had  stopped crying by then and I didn't know then, it'd be the very last time he let tears out.

Sage wiped my tears, sat and pulled me onto his lap. I cried for hours, I think. The sun went down and all the Bentley's had driven away from the funeral and he sat there with me whilst my little hands fisted his shirt. He always felt so much bigger than me, even then. He sat with me when nobody else would, mourning a sister we never got enough time with.

I should've started mourning our family then too. It died the day Auburn did. We were never the same.

But now we're all sitting in one of our Bentley's, Sage in the passenger seat behind the screen. Me and Azure sit together on one side, Gray and mom sit opposite us. She looks...healthier. Her eyes aren't bloodshot, her body doesn't reek of alcohol. She hasn't been allowed to drink.

She hasn't looked at me in disdain. Hasn't said a bitter word. It's so unfamiliar that I'm almost fearful of how unsettling it is.

I glance at Azure, whose tapping his fingers against his leg like he's restless. Dressed in a collared shirt, blonde hair mussed. Every day it feels like he looks older than he should.

Colton, driving, slowly pulls up until we're at the entrance. Sage gets out first and opens the door for mom, all of us following. Azure purposefully gets out the other side, opening his own door. He 'hates minuscule traditions that have no real impact'. Like opening a car door.

I think he just hates being helped but whatever.

The Kilned Graveyard sign is twined with moss, standing tall above the arched stone entryway. There's a silence that hangs above us all now that we're here, as it always does. None of us speak. None of us acknowledge our hurt. We just let it ruin us.

Me and Azure walk side by side, behind the rest of them. I glance down to him, sunlight bathing the rows of graves through the foliage of trees. Gently, I nudge him, "You never tell me. What you feel when you come here."

He responds, in his always cold tone, "I don't mourn as you do. It's difficult to grieve what you don't remember."

They were three. He doesn't remember her, doesn't remember much from that time. Though, I feel like it impacted him harder than us all regardless. Azure clearly matured so swiftly, so abruptly.

He'd say he's just smarter than the rest of the population. I'd say he was a little boy, in a broken home, with no choice but to change. Where some turn to anger and alcohol, Azure turned to coldness and intelligence.