The Race

Limes and Cigarettes

Limes and cigarettes

Mo's POV

The second my feet hit the floor, I feel tears spring to my eyes. This exact date; August 17th, is the day my father died 10 years ago. Exactly ten years ago, I lost everything. My father, my mother, my sister. I have done everything I can to forget it. I took up sprinting in an attempt to outrun the pain, and though I got something I loved out of it, I never managed to run away from what happened.

Each year on this day I visit my father's grave, talking to him and laying flowers on his grave.

I love my father, and I pray to him and for my mother and sister most nights, but visiting the place where his dead body lies... It's still too much for me to do more than once a year.

I stall as long as I can, but eventually I have to get ready.

I shower, using my favorite satsuma body wash, then change into a simple but pretty white dress that flows around my knees. I pin my black hair back into an elegant bun, letting thin wisps of it fall loose in the front. I don't use much makeup, only a layer of mascara on my long lashes that surround my electric blue eyes.

When I am finished I examine myself in the mirror, twirling slowly to see all angles. I want to look nice for my father.

I lift the bouquet of tiger lily's I bought yesterday, my eyes welling up a little at the sight of my father's favorite flower, but I push the tears away and walk purposefully out of my quiet house, straight toward the remains of everything I lost.

Naomi's POV

When my plane lands an hour later, I stretch and pick up my bag and bouquet of blood red roses. I come back each year and I watch my sister, Morgan, from afar. I watch her gently rest her bouquet against our dad's headstone, then sit on the grass and speak to him for a little while, ,before drying her eyes and walking away. Never have I had the courage to talk to her since what happened to our parents. I was - and still am - convinced that she was always our mom's favorite, and now that our mom got out alive and whole, with the exception of her memories, I can't bear to talk to her. Mo and I were always close, but it seemed that other than Mo and my father nobody loved me. Our mother seemed to usually spend time with Mo, and even though she constantly reminded me of how she loved me it still didn't seem real.

Mo could always make friends easier than I could, was always better at things than me. It seems so unfair that Mo, who got everything I didn't, also got to keep one of the people who loved her.

When our parents got in a car crash, our father died and our mother it brain damage that wiped away her memories. But at least Tammie got to live. Mo always got everything and she always got it easy, but the one thing I had was my dad, and I lost him. Sure Mo's precious mommy lost her memories, but I lost the one thing that really seemed to understand me; my dad. And because of this I pushed Mo away. I was angry and hurt at her, and I pushed her out of my life for good.

I hate myself for what I did to her, but I also wouldn't dare to try to win her back. Mo is too good for me, I don't want all of my bad to tarnish her good.

When I make it to the cemetery I am surprised to find that Mo is nowhere to be found. Maybe she already came. Maybe she's coming later. Or maybe she isn't coming at all.

I carefully walk in silence through the rows of graves and headstones, until I see one with the last name 'Barks' on it. I walk past three or four dead Barks until I find the right one.

{James Barks, husband, father, son and brother, will carry his greatness with him wherever he carries on to.}

The headstone reads.