Walls

Ch 12: Liv

I took another look around the table and my eyes landed on Liv, who'd been strangely silent for a great part of the conversation. I turned to face her.

"Anything interesting happen with you before all of this went down?" I asked, taking note of the amount of food on her plate. It looked as if she'd only taken a couple of bites at most.

Liv poked a tomato on her plate and shrugged. "Nothing noteworthy. I've been here three years, since the beginning of my year in grade ten. Like Ducky here, I'd be graduating in a couple of months if not for Darius. I can't hold anything against him, though. Life wasn't exactly peachy where I came from." And that was it. She went back to staring at her plate, obviously deep in thought.

Felix spoke up. "Liv doesn't like to talk about herself. Like, at all. We've all tried, trust me, but it's kind of like a thing for her to dissociate when we're talking about anything before Darius came." He paused. "Don't take it personally."

I nodded and looked around again. More people seemed to be coming into the gathering area thing, and no one at my table seemed to be eating still. I stood up and pushed my chair in. "I guess we should go, then?" I looked at Liv. Felix chuckled.

"Yeah, you got some work to do. Come on-" He stood up and slapped Liv on the back. She jumped, grabbed his hand and twisted it behind his back. Liv took a moment to actually look at Felix, then released his arm with embarrassment. "Sorry, Felix. Didn't, uh, see you there?" Felix snorted. "Yeah, sure. Let's go, old man." He poked Liv in the back and ran a couple of meters towards the elevator. Liv turned to face me. "He's right. There won't always be dirt to throw, let's make sure you're not fighting like it's your little sister." She smiled and turned to face Felix, who was now beginning to clime the stairs, motioning to us to hurry up. I let Liv go first, then I followed close behind. I heard Ducky stand up, then a crashing noise I could only assume to be a chair.

As we entered the elevator, I began to think about what was happening at home. Did my family miss me? I bet they didn't even notice I was gone, I thought solemnly. They really never did care much about me after Emily was born. Now that I think about it, even before I had a little sister they were always distant. I thought back to the time when I was 7, I heard my parents arguing about me, something about me not supposed to be here. There's not really a good way to interpret that, I guess.

As the elevator rose, I wondered if I'd ever see my family again. And if that really was such a bad thing.