Your Today Might Be My Tomorrow

Chapter 2

"Mel, you've got to be joking," I said as we arrived at the car.

I stared at her, refusing to move. She nodded towards the car, indicating she wanted to leave. However, I had other plans. I was not going to climb in without her explaining what had just happened.

"Jaz, please," she pleaded, "just get in, I'll tell you later. We need to be gone in case..."

"... in case the police showed up?" I raised an eyebrow. Melody had always been an incredibly polite girl, studious and mature. She hadn't chosen it, she was forced to for my sake, but she still was. I just didn't understand where this sudden rebelliousness. Weren't teenagers the ones supposed to be reckless? I was 17, that should be me. My sister should have been the one whacking me, I wasn't fully aware of how I had to react. I mean, sure I couldn't just go along, it was illegal after all. But I couldn't lecture her and expect her to listen to anything I'd say.

"Please, hop in."

I obliged because I could sense sadness and guilt in her voice. Her eyes hadn't dared look me directly in the eyes, yet. Biting my bottom lip, I opened the passenger door. Seeing as I was settling, Mel quickly sat in the driver's seat, buckled her seatbelt and turned the car on.

As I heard the roar of the engine, I looked outside, trying to let the scenery distract me, but I couldn't. Stretching my arm, I pushed the stereo button on, putting the volume up so that Mel couldn't talk to me. I risked a glance to the right to see what she was thinking. I wasn't majoring in Psychology or anything related to it, but I had always been the one to be able to tell when something wasn't alright. And by the looks of it, Melody wasn't well at all. Her eyes were focused on the road, as they should be, but it didn't look like the road was all she was thinking about. Her frown and her deep breaths had convinced me that she was conflicted about the situation, which was good news, if you could call it that. She was licking her lips a lot, something she did quite often, but she was also biting the inside of her cheek. I tended to do that when I was thinking of chords and harmonies in my compositions. However, Mel only did this when she wasn't sure what she was supposed to say. Combined with the other signs, I could only imagine how hard it would be for her to explain the whole thing to me.

"Jaz...," she started, looking at me for a few seconds, before getting her eyes back on the road. "Don't, Mel. Wait until we're home and you can think this thoroughly," I told her. I didn't want her to be concentrated on her speech and certainly didn't want her to forget we were still in a car. I didn't have a phobia, but I was one to always demand that we respected some safety rules in a car, one of those being that no one should talk on the phone while driving. Simply because it can distract anyone from what is really important-the road.

"Please, we can't talk about this in front of mum and dad," she said, her voice low and shaky. "They'll kill me, you know it." And I did. If my parents ever knew that my sister had just even seen drugs, they would not hesitate for a single second to kick her out of our house. My parents had come from a country in which little kids would be shot for stealing drugs that they would bring their parents, that would then sell it in order to increase their ridiculously low income. They came from a country were education was, in fact a priviledge, not a right. Education was granted only to people that could afford to pay the local teacher, a frightened lady that also settled for a low income in order to let children learn something, rather than forcing them into ghettos and gangs, where their days were counted. No kids from their neighbourhood was welcome in other schools than that local one. The country my parents came from offered no opportunities for younger and educated people, that would generally end up being overqualified for their jobs. My parents had succeeded in leaving that in the past, and had sacrificed their relationship with their own family in order to give us, Mel and me, a chance to grow up and be someone. My parents had pushed us to become what they considered successful: a doctor and a lawyer. My sister had become a teacher, and I wanted to become a singer. In some ways, we had already let them down, but they never told us that, because they knew that in this country, even crappy jobs assured you a way of living till retirement. They had warned me that I needed to consider a B-plan in case my career didn't work out, and I had it: I could be a music teacher.