Miss Arden {wlw-professorxstudent}

Chapter 5

KALINA'S POV:
Two and a half hours of my brother's awful singing and endless thoughts of Miss Arden later, and mind you not a single second of sleep, we arrived at my grandparents' flat.

It was nothing grand but it could accommodate the five of us. Even though my brother and I were forced to share a bed. Which never ended well but for our mum's sake we always ended up getting over it. At some point.

"Kali, if you don't get your hair off my side of the bed I'll rip it out!", Arin was very adamant about getting his fair share of things.

I did not get why my hair bothered him so much but I just moved it over my shoulder because I really wanted to get some sleep.

It was farely early in the afternoon but I had barely slept the night before.

My grandma walked into the room then and shuffled my brother out the door. I propped myself on my elbows and looked at the pitying look on her face. I knew what this was.

It was only the second time after Keelin's death for me to come visit and the first time had been barely three weeks after she had died. You can imagine that my mood had been rather terrible and I think I had only left the room two times back then.

"Sweetie, will you come out for dinner later or should I bring it in here?", she had been the only one I had told about the immense guilt I felt whenever I thought of what happened that night. She was the only one who understood.

"It's fine, really, grandma, I am fine. I am not that sad anymore. I think I got through it alright. So, of course, I'll join you for dinner", the look on her face before had broken my heart. She looked so very sad, it almost made my throat tighten up.

But what did I tell her? Did I tell her it was killing me to live in a city where everything held a memory of our friendship? Did I tell her that I still had no idea how to cope with the fact that Keelin simply would not come back?

I could not. I would not. I had brought Keelin around my grandparents' place so often when she was alive. They had treated her like family. She had been family. We would bake and we would sind and we would have flour fights and we would do everything we could not do back in Kingswood. Because this was the city. And my grandparents never denied us anything, ever.

So, when the hesitant look on my grandma's face relaxed into her gummy smile I was so glad she believed me. Of course, she had been sad herself when, basically, her third grandchild had died but I knew that her real hurt in this situation culminated from the reports about my well-being afterwards which she received from my mum.

And how, for the first two months, they nearly only ever contained me not getting out of bed for the entirety of summer break.

"Well, alright then, Kali, I'll prepare your favourite", and then she departed with a pat on my thigh and a kiss to my forehead.

It seemed almost bittersweet how, even though this place was filled with my happiest memories of Keelin, there was no place I felt quite as safe and sane in.

Well, dinner came around and my brother begged our mum to take him to the limited technical exhibition which had been freshly added to the city museum.

But mum had "to get something done in the city" and told him that maybe I could take him if he asked really nicely.

He looked at me expectantly and I looked up with twenty centimetres of spaghetti hanging out of my mouth.

I pulled them into my mouth and was very well aware that he would not ask me nicely. And this look, that inquired that he would be furious if I denied him this, would be all I got.