DAD

Part 29

"All packed up, you didn't miss anything did you?" Derek asks as he loads up my two suitcases on the deck of his Toyota.

"Yeah, guess so."

We get on the car and while I was working on my seatbelts, he was quite annoyed; I could see on his face. I had never been in his car and it was a bit uncomfortable as in case of cars, I'm the one with BMWs and this Toyota was kinda small in that case but I didn't want to show that.

"Toyota ain't the luxury icon." He smiles at the looking glass and starts the car.

"Well, to be honest it is totally fine."

"I can see you're not so honest Ms. Clementine." He laughs.

We drove to the airport and were there waiting for the flight. It was quite unrelatable but it seemed like L.A was a place to resemble a lot of scattered portions of my thing. It was almost 1:30 and the flight was on 2:00, we were about to leave for the immigration whilst I got my phone ringing, flashing my brother's name upon the screen. It was him; calling me. I was quite thrifted seeing that notification thing but couldn't resist the call either. I hit the accept button.

"Hello?"

"Clementine? You're going L.A? You didn't tell me or mom, how come are you not even trying towards us? Did we just toss you out or something?"

"Brother, I was not sure much that you guys would like a talk with me." That more of sounded like a question than a normal statement.

He cut the phone but still, it somehow felt good to talk to him after so many days. At least he cared, my presence or where I was the whole time. But the 'tossing out' matter was seeming to be quite rude, and it was quite cleared that he talked to Mrs. Peterson; which had been quite of an issue between them and me that very day.

"We should be leaving." Derek came smiling and took my one suitcase.

"Yep." I smiled back and started following him.

In the flight

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, why Clem?"

"No, it's just you know...you're—" I let that topic go.

He didn't ask back as if he knew what I was going to say. But regardless, he had something really big hiding from me.

It was 6:00 and we had also checked in our room; a room with two joint cabins- or to say two rooms in one. We were really tired back then and had no other plans that time.