heartbreak weather // niall horan

four.

When Delaney was a little girl, she thought the worst thing that had ever happened to her, that she could actually remember, was breaking her right arm. As a seven year old, with the mind of a small goat, whatever she had her mind set to, she always followed through. She wanted to teach her older sister how to play with a ceiling fan.

So, that's what she did. She and her older sister, who was nine at the time, climbed up on the top bunk of the loft bed, and then Delaney asked her to stand. They were hunched over, their shoulders awkwardly touching the ceiling. Delaney then reached out and gently nudged one of blades of the ceiling fan, making it spin slowly.

Her older sister looked at her curiously, and reached out to mimic what she had watched her younger sister do. There were two smiles and a pair of giggles, and then both of them took turns spinning the ceiling fan. They seemed to be having a good time, until they weren't.

It was Delaney's turn to spin the fan and she reached out to do so. Unfortunately, her feet got caught in the blankets causing her to then be falling to the floor. Delaney landed on the floor, directly on her right arm, and the last thing she remembers before blacking out is hearing her older sister scream for their parents.  Very vaguely does she remember waking up once in the hospital, but she couldn't tell anyone what she saw even if she tried. Her right arm was broken at the wrist and forearm. That particular place of broken bone made it difficult for a cast, and it ended up being too small for the original cast the doctors wanted her to have. They constructed a hard casted one that required Delaney to have her right arm bent at all times. She remembers it being extremely itchy and annoying, and that the cast was a dark shade of green.

Her parents told her she had that cast, her right arm at a constant bend, for about five months. The only lesson she learned was that there should be no blankets on top bunk when spinning a ceiling fan.

There was another time; she's also been told of a story when she was younger than seven, and something else that was quite tragic happened. She doesn't remember any of it, but her parents have told her and shown her the neat souvenir they got out of that whole thing.

If she had to guess, she was maybe two or three years of age. She was sitting in one of the bedrooms, it was either hers or her older sister's. At the time, her older sister had to be four or five. Being such young, little girls, they fought over everything. This included small things, like pocket change.

Their father had given each of them a quarter and they were absolutely elated by the notion. Hell, they were rich! They cherished those quarters and showed their quarter to one another. Out of pure coincidence, as their father was leaving the bedroom, a penny fell out of his pocket. Both of them saw it, and both of them went for it.

It's a childish thing to fight over a penny, one whole cent, but that's all Delaney and her older sister were. Children.

Her older sister managed to snatch the penny first, claiming it as her own. Obviously, Delaney didn't take to that lightly, so she tackled her older sister to the ground the best she could. Her sister was two years older than her and taller, so it was rather difficult, but she never said no to a challenge. Once on the ground, the two girls started pulling each other's hair for the penny, and when they learned that that caused both of them great pain, they resorted to throwing the best insults and threats they could at one another.

Things like threatening to never color with the other again or not joining the next tea party didn't seem to work.

Their parents could hear from the dining room, of course. They chose to not move from their card game though, because what they heard was just something that siblings did with one another. Both their mother and father were the youngest of two. So, they thought nothing of it. There was nothing that could have gone wrong.