One Fucked Up World

Chapter Eleven

Eleven

     On the train, I switched the seat with a middle age woman so I could sit next to the huge window. I had hidden in the station toilet until the train arrived. I took out a loaf of bread that I took from the kitchen last night and had breakfast as trees and lands flashed past next to me.

     The old man sitting across me began to snore, sending the hair on his forehead flying. Max texted me and asked me to be careful. He asked me to come home the latest on Monday.

     It was just a funeral, I could handle it. I flattered this black dress I borrowed from Anne. I pulled up my sleeves, examining what was left of Tommy.

     They were so tiny on my arms suddenly, they looked so bitter.

     Why overdosed? I needed to know that, or there would be decades of years that I wouldn't be able to sleep, or just be like everyone else. I took out a book and started reading. I didn't care to understand it, just read.

     Two hours later, I arrived the Redford Station. Things stayed where they were left. The pump woman was still working in the candy shop as the last time Max and I made our great escape. We had been sitting at that blue bench I was staring at.

     "It's alright," Max said to me quietly as we waited for the train, "Louca is nice, I've been there once during school trip. You'll like it."

     "Can't we just go further away?" I hissed to Max.

     "I don't want to go too far from here. But don't worry, Tommy won't be able to find us."

     Now I figured why Max didn't want to go too far. He still loved them, mum, dad and Tommy. I went out of the station and found the familiar buildings and roads. Louca was a place filled more of short buildings and shop while Reford was quite otherwise. The floor here was concreted, the wind was old and rusty.

     I stayed in a cheap pizza shop for lunch and didn't leave until it was almost time for the funeral. I couldn't bear going anywhere here with the knowledge that Tommy was gone and Max wasn't standing next to me. I felt so lame suddenly.

     Tommy liked this pizza shop. He liked the cartoon of pizzas on the wall. I sat in the corner where we used to sit. My fingers traced the wall under the table and I smiled as feeling it.

     Tommy had carved something on it with the table knife. There was the letters of my name and a heart shape and a T. I used to ask him why he didn't carve his entire name there.

     "My name is too horrible," he had said and he'd laugh like a big dog.

     I was taking out money when someone banged the window next to me. There were faces that I could not recognise.

     A girl with high pony showed me the finger and all her friends laughed. She was younger than me, and I remembered someone with pigtails. Max and Tommy had always laughed at her because of her freckles. They'd take her food sometimes. The girls left.

     It was more like a cycle, wasn't it? I couldn't imagine how that girl would feel if she knew Tommy was gone. She would be happy, like how I thought I would.

     I walked another way t the memorial as to avoid meeting more people from my past. I bought some flowers, chrysanthemums. Eventually I stood here, looking at the grey, bolded words on the red brick wall. Redford Memorial, it said.

     "Do you want to go in?" the wrinkled gateman said, he had more white hair than the last time I saw him.

     "Yes, please," I said.