The Bus Stop

10: Opening Game

  A/N: if this chapter can receive 5 votes and 3 comments from THREE different people, I'll update the next chapter early :)

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"Your hair's dry," mom commented as I reluctantly opened the front door and stepped into our house.

It was Sunday morning and with that, came the compulsory family breakfast. It wasn't that I didn't like having breakfast together or that I had other things to be doing, it was the ongoing tension and snappy remarks between my parents' and I that I could only tolerate for a certain amount of time.

"I didn't swim this morning, I just went and watched practice," I told her, grabbing a bottled water from the fridge and drowning half of it.

"Why?"

I held up my injured hand with a frustrated sigh, "because mom, when you and dad were busy not answering your phones, there was a fu-freaking fire in our house and if you didn't already know, chlorine and burns don't mix so well."

"That's no way to talk to your mother!" My father snapped as he made his way down the hallway and into the kitchen.

I almost wanted to laugh at that. I wanted to call him out for being so hypocritical because he and I knew very well that the person who caused my mom the most damage was him. My dad was the reason she spent so long crying on the couch at night, leaving me to fend for myself and to be the parent to Josh that she was incapable of being. My father was the reason for a lot of falls in our family and all the emotional scars that occupied my mother's heart.

I ignored my dad and turned back to my mom, "where's Josh?"

"At the park," she stated in a small voice, the one she used when she was trying not to disturb any last slicker of peace.

Josh had been going to the park down the road for a while now; every morning, day and night and if he wasn't at the park, he was either asleep or crashing at a mate's house. I'd called him out on his absence before but he claimed it was because he wanted to make the Varsity team next year and he needed the extra conditioning. Except I knew very well that Josh was good enough to make the team how he was now, it was simply a matter of his age that was often what the coaches criticised him on. I couldn't help but wonder if the park had become his escape. If it was the place he went to when he couldn't deal with home. When he couldn't deal with mom and dad.

"That reminds me," my father began, cracking an egg into the dented frypan, "I need you to babysit Josh today."

I don't know why he stated it, it wasn't as if I did it every other freaking day.

"Where are you two off to?" I asked my dad, drowning the other half of my water bottle and tossing it into the trash.

"That's none of your business, Clara," my father warned, sending me a glare.

I decided not to answer, not in the mood to pick a fight. Although that didn't stop my thoughts from flowing through my head. I would have thought that if my parents were going out for the day, dumping my younger brother on me for the one millionth time, they would have at least had the decency to tell me where they were headed. But I guess my father didn't have a polite bone in his body and my mother simply didn't have the guts to object.

After a few tense minutes of silence, Josh came sauntering through the front door, kicking off his cleats as he made his way through the hallway. His hair looked ruffled and sticky as sweat dripped from his face and I noted the slight eye roll he gave my parents as he entered the kitchen.