Paired With The Potterhead

Chapter Twenty Three: Heartbreak At A Funeral

The Funeral - Band of Horses

Chapter Twenty Three: Heartbreak At A Funeral

It's been a week into my expulsion so far and I think I'm losing my mind.

My sleep schedule is morally fucked because I'm used to waking up early in the morning for school and now it's like I can't break the habit. I'm up at 7, I go about my boring and uneventful day and then I'm down to bed by 10. It's getting exhausting. I need something to do.

I've taken up drawing again. I haven't really sat down and drawn a serious picture in ages so that felt nice and familiar to me. There's a program I use on my computer called SAI and that's how I do usually do most of my artwork. God, the last time I even opened this program was sometime last summer. Art block isn't an exact science and it varies from person to person. It just so happens that all it took for it to go away was one of my closest friends to get pissed off at me.

As I held the pen in my hand, the movement felt so familiar and natural to me that it was like a second nature. The tablet I used was kind of old, yes, but damn I loved this tablet almost as much as I loved my camera. Sam even said one time that if my house was burning with him inside it, I'd save my tech first.

He wasn't entirely wrong.

So I drew for a few hours in my room, occasionally getting up to use the bathroom or grab a snack. It was when I sat down with a bowl of cereal when I heard the front door open downstairs.

"Hello?!" I called out.

"It's just me!" Josh called back. "Are you in your room?"

He appeared in the doorway of my room a minute later. His eyes looked exhausted-wait. I took a better look at him and realized that he'd been crying.

"Why are your eyes puffy and red?" I asked him. "Have you been crying?"

He didn't say anything, at least not at first. "I....um-" he cleared his throat. "There's something I need to tell you. Something that couldn't be said over the phone."

Oh god. That tone alone made the hair on my arms and neck rise. Whatever it was he wanted to tell me, it couldn't have been good. So I put on a brace face and braced myself.

"Dad was having complications this morning. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do and it was just a matter of time-"

"Don't," I shook my head. I didn't want to hear the words. "Don't say it."

Josh's lips trembled. "Dad passed away an hour ago, bud."

I made a fist. The nails of my fingers drove into my skin so hard that I could feel warm blood start to drip out of the indentations. "How did he go?"

My brother took a deep breath. "Peacefully. He went in his sleep, thankfully. I don't think I'd be able to handle him suffering. But he-he just went to sleep and didn't wake up."

My fingers relaxed as I nodded. "That's good. I mean...it's not good that he passed away but it's good that he went peacefully. Was he in any pain?"

"I don't know. All I know is that he went to sleep and the machines started beeping. Maybe he was or maybe he wasn't. We'll probably never know."