I've never felt so empty. There was adrenaline, before -- rushing through to my fingers and singing in my veins in anticipation of what lay beyond the kitchen door -- but now, it's empty. Barren. My body and feelings and mind are number than my fingers in the cold. I droop, my shoulders slumping, and my eyes cowering at my feet. I drop the bag I held, and suddenly, I'm too heavy to keep myself up. I fall onto the arm chair, pressing the cold skin on the palm of my hands against my hot cheeks to shake some sensation back into myself. But I can't. The words whirl in my head, faster than a hurricane; faster than my breaths. I've been working with Maggie this whole time. It feels like a joke. It can't be real.
Michael reacts before me, just when Alejandro bends down to touch my shoulder. His body lurches forward, shoving my brother back and into the coffee table. He stumbles, but catches himself before falling. Michael shoves him again, his face red, his hands tucked tight into fists with hot red marks across his knuckles. I don't have the strength to tug the boys apart. I sit there, my head in my hands, my aching chest clobbering under my clothes. A warm tear slips down to my jaw while Michael shouts.
"You think you have the right to worry about her, hm?" He isn't pushing Alejandro anymore, but fisting the front of his shirt and throwing him down onto the sofa. My brother doesn't move, and Michael slams his foot next to him, leaning over him with terrifyingly dark eyes and a finger jabbing into his chest. "You think after all this time -- after all this time of putting her life in danger, you pick now to worry if she's fine? Did you not care while she suffered in front of you, and you could've stopped it?" He poises his arm in the air, the sleeve of his flannel rolling down to his elbow and exposing the tattoos on his forearm. Michael's not angry. Michael's livid. "You want to know how pain feels, huh? You want to know how it felt to be torn apart and told your crazy by everyone?"
Alejandro says nothing, closing his eyes and curling back into the sofa. He knows he's lost. He knows Michael's stronger than him; he knows Michael, with his fist quivering in the air as he brings it down to the other's jaw, has probably broken at least one of his teeth -- and so do I. Something breaks in my heart, seeing my brother with my boyfr-- husband's -- fist crowned into his face makes something sink in me. My brother -- the boy who brought me here, who woke up all too early in the morning to make sure I ate breakfast before heading to school, who left the icing on the cake so I could always eat it, who let me take all the covers in the bed when I was too scared to sleep on my own. My brother, who let me cry into his shirt after we landed in Australia because I missed Mama and Papa already. My brother, who took side with the girl who only looked for raw revenge for me, and justice for my sister. What happened to her? I ask through my drowning mind.
He braces himself for another blow, a tiny cut beside his chin weeping blood. Michael raises his fist again, his lips curled back and teeth gritted together. It looms above Alejandro with menace, demanding relief. Demanding the vengeance to reap for me.
"Mikey," I whisper in a laboured voice. He flips his head over to me, the clouds clearing from his eyes, and his old self washing back into him. I realise that he probably forgot I'm even in the room, watching the fight escalate in jumps in front of me. His lips part, but he doesn't lower his arm. I say, something a little louder than a mumble, "don't hurt him any more. Please."
He reluctantly rolls his sleeve down and retreats, approaching me and standing next to my couch. We grip each other's hand tight, and I want to say something to Alejandro. My chest burns to spit some words out, my throat aches for explanations, my head throbs to just make sense of this. I choose my words in my mind, and look at my brother. A bruise is taking place on his face, angry and black and much worse than the petty ones on Michael's knuckles. Alejandro inhales, not moving from the sofa. He doesn't even turn his head; I can imagine how much it hurts.
YOU ARE READING
how to make a mixtape :: mgc (fin.)
Fanfictionin which a girl with an accent is scared of talking, but a boy finds a way to hear her voice.
