I sit on the couch trying to read my book as my brother plays the piano. Even though it distracts me from reading I still like to hear him play the song he plays on it, probably the only one he remembers.
He's played it without sheet music that after a while we all forgot what it was called, even though it still retained its beauty every time he plays it. The familiar tune I've grown fond of.
I guess he could be considered my brother even though we look very different, compared to my long black hair and his short wavy blonde hair.
My mother and father do look a bit like him; except mom had red hair and dad had black hair.
I ponder the thought of what life was like before he came but I can hardly remember. Some days I think I have short-term memory loss but mom and dad never had me tested for it.
I get up from the soft couch I was reading my book on, one of my favorites. It was passed through out my families generations all the way back to my Great-Great-Great-Grandmother who still lived in our home country of Germany. My parents were the first to come over from there and still had a rough German accent but Adam, my 'brother' as so to say, and I got an American accent from being over here
all our lives.
Even though we lived way out in the country, with no neighbors around we still managed to pick up the accent instead of our parents' for some reason. The only way I can prove this, is that we picked it up from our housekeeper. But yet I still have my doubts as far as that goes.
I walk over to Adam as he plays the piano and sit on the black wooden bench that we brought over to America. It even has the ebony and ivory keys still on it, and still as in tune as ever.
I just watch for a little bit quietly. I study each of his moves carefully.
"Why do you care about me so much?" I blurt out. He stops, a little bit shocked by the question. "Why would you ask that? That's an odd question for you to ask." He says, almost a little bit concerned. "I don't know, I'm not even related to you but yet you care about me so much that I just don't get why you would." I say troubled. Now not even I know what point I was trying to get to.
"Talim, do you remember the day that I came to live with your family?" I nod knowing what he was about to say as if reading his mind. My parents sort of adopted him, but not formally, more of picked him off the streets.
They said they had to go get some shopping, even though that's our housekeeper's job they insisted that they go instead. But they never came back. Adam always thought it was his fault that they didn't come back because of him.
But I know why.
I had always kept it a secret to myself even though some days it would crowd my mind more than other days. I remember going into the kitchen that morning and seeing our housekeeper cooking some breakfast when an alert came on the news.
Someone had won the jackpot for the lottery.
But it wasn't an ordinary jackpot; it was a total of a billion dollars.
Then there they were, standing with the huge check, smiling, waving. They were like celebrities. The news showed them getting on a plane and well, they flew off. No goodbye to us or anything. The phone started to ring as Mira, our housekeeper, went to shut off the TV. She picks it up.
What I heard from Mira was a story that still burns in my thoughts.
Mira thought that my parents had rigged the winnings so they could win, but if someone found out, they didn't want us to get pulled into it, so they left the country. I don't think that's how it went. I think that they just went on a vacation of some sorts and just haven't got the chance to come back yet.
Well, I hope so anyways, that would be a better ending to it wouldn't it?
"Yeah, that was a great day huh?" I ask. He smiles and gets off the piano bench.
Mira's job is to looks over us. She then calls us to dinner and we get up and go to the table. Her blonde hair is in a bun but has a few strands incasing her face. She wears a red plaid apron and brings us some sandwiches to eat. As we all sit to eat Adam and her engage in conversation.
But I eat in silence, troubled by thinking about my parents.
As we finish up Mira sends us up to bed. I'm ok with going to bed; I'm tired anyways. Mira usually doesn't come up stairs to Adam's and my room. We share a room but that's ok; I feel safer with him anyways.
I don't change into my nightgown and just head to my bed. I pull down the covers and crawl in. Adam is right behind me and tucks the blanket to my chin. He then does something I've rarely ever seen him do. He kisses my forehead as I lay in bed. As his lips touch my forehead I close my eyes.
"Talim." he whispers. "Yeah." I whisper back. "Never mind, it was nothing." I shrug it off as if it was no big deal.
He nods and heads to bed. He lies facing the wall tonight. He seems a bit stressed for some reason as if something is in the back of his mind. What was he going to tell me? I sigh and close my eyes and try to fall asleep. I do fairly quickly, that is, until I hear a loud crack as a vase or a glass hits the floor.
I sit up in bed startled. I then try to lie down and fall asleep but something wraps around my foot and pulls me out of bed. I scream and Adam jumps out of bed and clutches a large blade. The blade is huge and has a long space down it as if it were two blades.
A white orb glows in at the bottom where the blades make a circle kind of hole where they separate even further. He cuts the vine off me with one quick slice.
"Talim, get out of here it's not safe!" He grabs my shoulders tightly. "Talim, take this, it will help you. Whatever you do don't lose that sword! Its-" He gets cut off as the vine wraps around him and disappears with him. It happens so fast I have no time to realize what happened. The house then turns very still.
