Fixing Up Valerie

A Red Liquid Catastrophe - 14

"Valerie come on get up, we're leaving,"  I open my eyes and see someone who wouldn't let me sleep.
"Abel? What are you doing here? I thought you weren't coming back till later . ." Abel turns to look at me and looks at me weirdly, "what're you talking Val? Mom and dad are downstairs waiting for us to go. Don't you remember?"
I shake my head but he doesn't see me since he's putting on his shoes. Abel finished tying his shoes and gets up. He wiped off the imaginary dirt from his pants and puts his hand out.
"In breakfast today we all agreed we'd go drive out to the city and go to whatever store was opened. Come on just grab your shoes and let's go,"

1:32 am
We've been driving for 20 minutes looking for whatever was opened, but surprisingly we haven't seen anything. Since I already had a nap I wasn't going to sleep anytime soon unlike Abel, he had his head on my shoulder and was lightly snoring.
"Hey dad, can we go by that big bridge we passed by yesterday?" He turns to look at me for a slight second and looks back at the road. I'm behind my father but I can just tell he's smirking.
"Is there a certain reason why you want to go to that bridge Valerian?" I groan at the sound of him saying my whole name and he knows very well I don't like it.

"Now Roland let Valerie pick where she wants to go, no matter the reason. We didn't let her pick the whole entire time we were here." I smirked when I heard my mom tell my dad off that she's on my side. She wasn't specific about it but you could tell I always was her favorite.
"You never let me have any fun with her Liv." My mom and I just chuckle at him. I notice that the blinker is signaling to turn left, he loves obeying to his own wife when it involves me.

2:15 am
"Come onnn!" Abel groaned and the three of us turned to look at him questioning what he wanted.
"All we've done is look at the water over this bridge, unless we're jumping in I don't wanna be here anymore."
We laughed, and it wasn't softly, no--we laughed as hard and loud as we possibly could go. We were outside of the city so of course we took advantage of it.
After the laughter died I turned to look at my older sibling and noticed he found nothing amusing. Not even our joking around, but of course he's a twenty year old, he wants to live a little.

My parents decided we spent enough time on the bridge and to leave-- for Abel's sake of course. We've been driving for ten minutes in the wilderness until we entered the city. There wasn't many cars when we drove in the Blvd, which was surprising since Washington was always busy during the day. Abel finally started smiling and bringing his positive self back once he realized we were "back in society" as he liked to call it.
We both had endless conversations about my senior year and things we would do, parties included too. After a while we stopped discussing about it and Abel asked my parents if we could get ice cream. Of course only Abel would want ice cream at 2:29 IN THE MORNING.

I kept my head on Abel's shoulder as we were heading to DQ.
"Kids?" We looked up to my mom looking at us smiling, oh great another random moment where she tells us she loves us.
Although, I wasn't complaining about it-- In fact it made my self esteem very positive.
Before she could say anything else I noticed some headlights coming closer and brighter to our car. Before I could even comprehend what was happening I was giving it my all to open my eyes and in front of me is the radio.
2:30 am

I force myself to get up and look to see red liquid all over the car. Red liquid. Realization hit me when it wasn't just any red liquid, it was blood.

I turn to my left and notice dad isn't moving at all. I shake his body but he doesn't show any movement at all so I turn to mom and she's shaking.
She reached her hand out to me and grabs my shoulder firmly and I start crying, knowing what was coming next. Her firm loosened and she closed her eyes, "Mom. Please don't do this come on open your eyes." But they wouldn't budge at all which brought me to sob harder.
I look back at the radio and notice the time, 2:34 am.
That was the official time I lost the ones I loved and my happiness.

3 hours later
I don't understand why they took me into a white room to talk to a therapist. It doesn't make sense why they wanted me to talk about my feeling right after I've seen my parents die. When the ambulance finally arrived they took me away from seeing my parents once more and I only had a glance of Abel before they carried him in a different car.
I've sat here staring at this funny looking Doctor while he observed me. Not a single word came out of me, although that didn't stop him from asking me all these irrelevant questions. I've grown quite tired of all this silence but I didn't want to talk, I just wanted to go home.
But what is home?

It used to be a place where I lived with mom, dad, and Abel. We would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday together in the kitchen talking about how our days went. And watching movies of all kinds together at midnight, even if it was on a school night.
Home, I think, is when you're surrounded by love and safety.

But that's no longer happening.
I'm in this white room alone with a stranger asking what I'm feeling and only my parents bodies are left here in this earth.
Anywhere I go will never make me feel welcome.

"A house is not a home if you're not with the ones you love."
And with that I got up from the chair that was across from the shrink and headed to the door. Once I opened it I ran till I entered the main office and set my eyes on Abel. He had his face hidden with his large hands and looked like his whole body was violently shaking, I walked closer and tapped his shoulder.

"Can we go back to the house please?"