The Dictionary

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

    In the guest bedroom, there was one window. It was covered with a thick, burgundy curtain that seemed to keep out both the light and the cold air. I didn’t like that. Ever since I was a little kid, I always liked to be able to see out the window. I didn’t care if we were at a restaurant or in someone else’s house, my mother told me that I would always open curtains and look outside. And into my teen years, that never changed.

    But today, I didn’t have my normal urge to pull back the curtain. Because unfortunately, on the other side of that curtain there was my childhood home across the street, burnt to ashes.

    I had successfully avoided looking in that direction since the day it happened. From the hospital to our neighbor’s home and everywhere else, anytime I passed it, I looked away. I just wasn’t ready.

    I imagined yellow tape covering the premises from corner to corner, stopping at the property line where Hannah’s house was being built, literally, as ours was being burned down. I thought about my bedroom completely charred, like coal on the bottom of a grill. Or worse, like my brother’s body...I forced myself to stop thinking about it.

    Back in the day, this would be a moment to call Cory. It was amazing how much I had kind of forgotten about her until I saw her at the funeral. I wondered why she had even come to begin with. Did she come as a friend of mine? As a member of the community? The daughter of the country sheriff? A girl that had a crush on my brother for years?

    I knew that that was the original reason Cory wanted to be my friend in the sixth grade. My brother, an eighth grader at the time, played on the middle school football team and even though it was hard to imagine now, he was quite popular around that time. Like so many other girls, Cory was in love with him, and wanted to do whatever she could do be with him. As a result, she befriended me. Eventually, I found out, and we were even able to laugh about it, and we remained friends. By the time my brother went to high school, he was far out of Cory’s league, and she eventually moved on.

    I was grateful for her friendship, and even though I was telling myself I was okay without her friendship, it was odd not having any kind of companionship in my life now.

    Even though my brother was in an out jail and on meth, we still talked. For some reason, we were always close. We had different lives for sure, but we got along, and I could tell him just about anything. When he got a girl pregnant the summer after he graduated from high school, he told me weeks before he told my mom.

    Of course it had gotten rocky over the past few years, but I loved him, and even though I disapproved of his lifestyle, I had this belief that maybe--just maybe--he’d get better one day. Perhaps, the locals were right. Maybe, like my mother, I was in denial, too.

    There was a knock on the door and I suddenly realized that I had been sitting on the edge of the bed in my pajamas for at least an hour.

    “Come in!” I called out, standing up, and straightening out the wrinkles in the pajama pants I had borrowed from my neighbor’s daughter’s closet who was away at college.

    My mother appeared on the other side of the door. She, too was wearing clothing from our neighbor’s daughter’s closet, and I was actually surprised by how nice she looked. Other than the funeral, it had been a while since I had seen her in anything outside of her Waffle House uniform or pajamas.

    “How are you,” her words were soft, and even though I knew she meant them, I could tell that she really wasn’t putting much effort into speaking unless she had to.

    “I’m good,” I responded, shrugging my shoulders, indicating that I was just doing the best I could do.

    “Well, your friend Cory is downstairs,” my mother said casually.