Tattooed

I Will Follow You Into The Dark

XLIV

The next day, Meenakshi had decided to go downstairs and put on her best face, better than the face she put on for dinner the previous day. Fine, one little setback was allowed. After all, it had been her first day back.

Was it generally this hard to bond with family?

Her brother was seated on his usual chair while her father stood facing the stove cooking something, it looked like.

"Good morning," Avinash said quietly as he sipped his coffee. Her father turned around then. He smiled.

"Good morning, Meenakshi. How would you like an omelette for breakfast?"

Something about the way he'd been looking at her... and not just today, but from the time she had arrived yesterday... it left her unsettled. She nodded and sat down at the table opposite Avinash and picked up the newspaper.

"Any idea on what you're going to do for a job?" Avinash asked.

"None whatsoever."

"You could always help me out," he suggested, his tone light.

Meenakshi didn't even bother responding to that.

"Mushrooms?" her father asked from over the counter.

"Sure," she responded, wondering if she should be helping out. She was going to live here, even if it was just temporarily... wasn't she? It was only fair that she helped out.

"You don't eat, you don't sleep, and you don't even help out around the house anymore!"

Crash.

Shatter.

Break.

"What good is it that I have an adult in the house when I'm the adult most of the time!"

"What do you want me to do, Meenakshi?" he'd asked her, unhappily, red-eyed, angrily.

"Help out! This is your house too. Stop getting high all the time and help out, God! Is that too much to ask for, for your cooperation to being a part of this?"

"Meenakshi?"

"Huh?"

"I asked you if you would like some juice?" her father asked, possibly having repeated the question for her benefit. Meenakshi nodded.

"Orange?"

"Sure.”

After pouring the juice into the glass, he placed it on the table and brushed by her. That had been the most contact she'd had with the man who... what? What was this man to her?

"I'll cook tonight.” She announced after having finished her omelette.

"Are you sure? Avinash doesn't mind."

"I'm sure."

Her father nodded and then smiled that disgustingly happy smile before leaving the house.

"Are you okay?" Avinash asked her then as he shuffled in some papers into a briefcase. Meenakshi nodded.

"Where are you going?"

"I have to get to this school, do some preaching. Interested?"

Meenakshi shook her head.

"Come on, what are you going to do here all day anyway?" he asked her as he shrugged on his jacket, then his coat. Meenakshi looked around, at the phone, then at the entrance to the kitchen. A little thought and a "Fine," later, Meenakshi joined her brother in his quest to reforming kids who could, or would, become slaves to the thing everyone called addiction.