Summertime Madness

Chapter || 2

Red. Everywhere I looked, I saw red.

From the beginning of your life you're stuck with your parents. It's a rule, the people you were born with are most likely the people to raise you. After so many years of living with a person you start to pick up on little things about them. For example, my Father doesn't speak when everyone around him is mad. He also does not like crust on his sandwiches, birds scare him, and he scratches his left elbow excessively when he's nervous. Graham doesn't brush his teeth when he wakes up, because 'it makes breakfast taste weird,' when he's excited he talks a lot, and he secretly likes One Direction.

My Mother. After living with her for seventeen years, you would think that I would have her figured out also. Unfortunately for me this women could test the patience of a saint. Of course, I am no saint. Regardless, cardiac arrest seems like a possibility at this point with all the stress she gives me. It's like she wants me to be mad at her.

When my Mom made me come to Martha's Vineyard, she told me it was so I could have fun. Against my will I came, and now she wants me to babysit Graham. This wouldn't have been an issue because I didn't plan on leaving the house until I went back to New York, but the other day I was online and I saw this add for surfing, and I have always wanted to try and surf. I figured I could walk around the island, ask around and see if there were any places where they gave lessons. I had a plan. But now I can't do that because I need to take care of Graham, and he's not interested in surfing. I think he's just afraid a shark will come and bite his arm off. He just recently watched Soul Surfer and is scared shitless going past shore. Now I was stuck on the beach helping Graham look for crabs.

"Hey Talia, look I think I found one!" Graham practically screamed. I was trying to be enthusiastic about babysitting him. After all it wasn't his fault our Mom was a rat. "Way to go bud, lets see how many we can find." I felt like this might be a good time to talk to him about the house and his parents, but I didn't know how to bring it up. This was a touchy subject for him, understandably so, and I didn't want him to be in a sour mood for the rest of the day.

"Graham?" He turned his head and looked at me. He was facing the sun, his eyes were squinted and he was smiling which brought out two small little dimples that I loved to tease him about. My baby brother was growing up before my eyes. "How are you doing? You know with being here?" My voice was laced with hesitance and I internally cringed. That was not the direction I wanted this conversation to go in. "Do you like your house? Your room?" He was looking straight at me which made the situation all the more awkward. "Natalia if your trying to ask me how I feel about being in the house my dead parents bought then don't. I'm fine. I've told you that I can imagine how amazing and charming my parents were, I mean look at how I came out right? But I never got to meet them, and how can you grieve some one you never met? I will admit that it is a little weird seeing all those pictures of us around the house. We don't have many of those back home."

When Mira and John died my Mom wasn't able to look at a picture of them without sobbing, my Dad thought it would be a good idea to remove all of the pictures that they were in. The house looked very bare after that. I remember that the life seemed to be sucked out of our home, it suddenly didn't look like our house anymore, it was missing part of its heart. That day we went to different parts of the city, and we would change outfits, make different faces and took pictures so we could put them in the picture frames that had been left empty. It was the first time my Mom smiled in three months after two of her best friends died, and it seemed to be the day she realized things were going to be okay, it would just take some time.

"Yeah Graham Cracker, I guess we don't have many pictures of your parents." Graham gave me the stink eye for calling him 'Graham Cracker' he hated it. I loved it. "Give it up! I'm ten years old now. Practically an adult stop calling me that it's not cool, not cool at all, Sis." I grabbed my brother and gave him a little nookie. "What the heck was that for?" He was scowling. Little squirt was adorable. "Nothing. It had been too long since the last time, and it was time for you to be put in your place, Baby Brother."