The Year 47

5| Broken

The Centre was all abandoned cobbled pathways and slanting buildings; shades covered shop winows and makeshift "closed" signs hung on their doors. Scottie could still feel the presence of those that had been present earlier in the day, as if their bodies had left, but their spirits remained. He sat in front of a textile shop, his guitar on his lap and his eyes squinting against the darkness; dressed in Torey's dark cloak he blended in with the dark stone of the building.

"Scottie?" He recognized his brothers voice as three pairs of quiet footsteps made their way around the building. There was the sharp sound of a match striking and the small flame illuminated the faces of Sammie, Hale and Silvina. They were each wearing dark cloaks as well, Sammie's was a bit wrinkled from where Silvina was clutching his arm.

Scottie beamed up at them and patted the ground beside himself, "Have a seat."

The girls obeyed, sitting close together as it was a little chilly outside. Sammie pulled a small glass jar from the pocket of his cloak, in one quick motion the flame was burning inside of it and the match was extinguished and discarded to the side. He sat the jar in the middle of their small circle and stared at Scottie, whose fingers were now darting across the guitar strings. "We can't keep sneaking out like this, we're going to get caught. If not by Kade and Torey, then by Agents or--"

"I never asked you to come here," Scottie said, he hadn't stopped plucking his guitar strings, he was working out the notes to a quirky melody.

"I would never let you come here past curfew by yourself, you'll need me here just in case you do get caught."

He stopped then, looking up to meet the eyes of his brother. It really was like looking into a mirror, aside from the differences in the shapes of their eyebrows and Sammie's widow's peak, they were very much identical twins. The rest of their differences were within; Scottie's short attention span and childish nature, Sammie's desire for leadership and race to adulthood. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you need someone to watch you all of the time, to make sure that you don't screw something up. You always have." Sammie felt Silvina tuck her hand into his much larger one, tapping on his palm with her thin fingers. It was something she did when she heard his voice escalate; each tap was one beat of his heart, it often kept him from getting too excited. But it wasn't working that time, if anything it was making his heart beat faster, the anger burning through him like fire through a gasoline soaked string. "One day, you'll mess up the way that you always do and I wont be there to bail you out of it."

"Go home, I don't want you here."

"Fine," and Sammie was up on his feet again, Silvina following suit. "Let's go Regina."

Hale flushed bright red, her lips forming a snarl. "Don't call me that."

Sammie rolled his eyes, "Let's go."

"I'm not leaving him here."

"Go ahead," Sammie said, his voice just above a whisper. "You shouldn't stay."

Hale looked taken aback, it wasn't often that Scottie shooed her away. She got up and followed behind Samie and Silvina as they walked out of the town centre.

Scottie sat by his lonesome, things were still illuminated by the jarred flame that Sammie had left behind. He didn't sneak out because he wanted to screw things up, he did it becaue he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He found that if he didn't take the proper time to gather them, they'd run loose and reek absolute havoc in his brain. In hindsight, the Centre wasn't the best place to go, but he was already there.

His fingers continued to play around on the strings of the guitar, the melody changing into something dragging and somber. And then there were more footsteps, but from further down the pathway, and Scottie smirked to himself, thinking that his brother had come crawling back from fear of the dark or something equally as immasculating.