guilt • phan

Chapter 8

a/n; i don't own All The Bright Places. All credits go to Jennifer Niven for this amazing book.

Phil
The sun was just starting to set when I remembered that I had not eaten anything yet. I glanced at the clock. 8:58PM. Eating after 9 is bad, your body can't digest food that well anymore later at night. I gulped and decided not to eat anything. Wouldn't want to get any fatter, would you? I turned away from the clock to face the wall, wishing the rumbling of my stomach would stop. I placed my head on my pillow again and sighed. Dinner was not important anyways.

I picked up the book lying next to me on my bed. All The Bright Places, it said on the cover. I was going steadily, seeing as I had read more than half of it in one night. I've always been a fast reader, especially when a book really got to me. This was one of those books. The story was beautiful, telling the tale of a boy and a girl that met each other on the ledge of a bell tower. I fell in love with it, but there was something special about it to me. I don't know why, but I recognized myself in Finch, the male main. Something about him felt... familiar. His personality, his emotions... They spoke to me in some way. (a/n brownie points to you if you've read this book)

It was past 1 in the morning when I closed the book and fell into the pillow mountain, sighing heavily. I lay there, like some sort of ragdoll, not knowing what had just happened. I had finished the book and I cried at least 4 times, laughed uncontrollably, and wanted to throw the book through the window out of frustration. Kind of like my life.

Of course, there were some bright spots in the dark gaping abyss that was supposed to be my life, like sneaking out in the night to pet the neighbor's dog, having coffee in that one little cozy café downtown, playing my grandpa's guitar I had received when he passed away...

But all of the bad things kind of drowned them out. I didn't enjoy the fun things as much as I used to, because the little whispering voices inside my head always found a way to ruin them somehow. Telling me that the person behind the bar in the café secretly thought I was weird and lonely or that the cute little Shiba Inu only liked me because it pitied me.
But sometimes, I knew better. Late at night, when my neighbor's wife got home, the shouting would always start. How he thought she never made time for him, and she accusing him of infidelity and cheating. His voice was always a bit slurred, as if he had drunk too much. Maybe he had. Then the dog would start yelping, sometimes even howling softly, as if it was crying. Then, the dog would always flee to the garden, where it hid in the dog house. I could understand that, I would be scared too if my caretakers were fighting all the time. But my caretakers were never home anyways. If they didn't see eachother, there was no time to argue anyways.

I was about to drift off into sleep, when the sound of the front door slamming shut echoed through the empty hallways of my house. Then I heard keys dropping and a muffled "Darn it." My mother. Why would my mother, or anybody, come home this late at night? I heard high heels clicking on the tiles in the hallway. I turned around, sighing. Well, at least she's home. 

Then, I heard the shuffling of another pair of shoes on the marble tiles of the hallway. My dad was not coming home tonight, he told me that this morning. It wasn't a friend of my mother, because if it were, the sound would resemble that from my mothers high heels. But these shoes sounded flat, and heavier. Men's shoes. But whose were they?

A giggle sounded through the house.

I started to think, connecting the dots. Dad not being home... A pair of men's feet shuffling around in my house... My mother giggling.
Could it be?

No, my mom wouldn't... cheat on my dad, right? She was a loving, caring woman, she never swore, she never got angry with us... Her and my dad never fought, why would she search love with another man?

"Phil is home, we have to keep it down,"

I bolted up at the sound of my mothers voice. Keep what down, I thought. But of course I knew the answer myself. I felt nauseous. Disgusted. In an attempt to hide from the voices and sounds, I buried my head under the pillows on my bed. I could only just make out the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Were they coming upstairs to haunt me with their infidelities? I pressed the pillows down even harder, as if I was trying to build a barrier to block out every noise.

I didn't notice my mother coming into my room until I heard my bedroom door close again.

Then, all of the sudden, I heard a noise coming from the guest room. That was it. That was the last thing I was going to be able to take. I threw my duvet off the bed and jumped up. I was not going to witness my mother being unloyal to my dad, in my own house. I picked up my backpack and stuffed my hoodie and my headphones inside. My room had a balcony, and next to the balcony was a rain pipe. It wasn't my first time using the rain pipe to sneak out, but I had never done it in the dark. I opened the balcony door and shut it as fast as I could, only wanting to get rid of the noises that, even with me standing outside, I could hear. They continued to fill the empty hallway connected to the guest bedroom. I threw my backpack over the balcony railing, hearing a soft poof as it made impact with the grass of our backyard.

The rain pipe was hard to find in the moonlight, but with my hands searching down the wall next to my balcony, I was able to locate the round plastic pipe. I threw my legs over the railing and sat myself down. My left hand locked itself around the pipe and with my other hand, I pushed myself off the railing and slammed into the wall that connected to the rainpipe.

Before I knew it, I was standing in my backyard, both feet sturdily on the ground again. I walked away from my home, not having any heading or whatsoever. I just wanted to get away, I did not care where 'away' was. The neighbor's dog barked at me when I walked past their house, and I smiled. She must have fled the house again, because I could hear her owners shouting and throwing insults at eachother. I kneeled down in front of the dog and threw my arms around her neck. The dog licked my face and I hugged it tighter.

"Looks like we both don't feel safe in our own home, doesn't it?"

The dog yelped softly in response. I wondered whether it was illegal to take someone's dog for a walk without them knowing. Whatever, she's outside and alone now anyways. Might as well take her with me. 

So when I got up and asked if she wanted to come with me, smiling, she jumped up in excitement and followed me, down the street, headed to nowhere.