The Next Life

Chapter 3 - When It All Gets Serious

Before we knew it, the school day was over and I was back in Taylor's arms.

We walked back to the bus stop, holding hands, and we took the back seats. We have never been so close, but it felt right, it was like all of a sudden we had fallen for each other. We chatted about how quickly everything had been moving between us and how we never knew how crazy we were about each other. I cuddled into his shoulder and rode out the rest of the bus ride home. 

His stop came first, but he looked tenderly into my eyes and told me he wanted to alk me home and stay until my stop came. I told him not to be so chivalrous but he told me he wanted the extra few minutes with me, and that he had to hit up the store which was near my home. 

I smiled the rest of the way home.

The house was really quiet when I got home, so I ran upstairs to my room and logged onto Instagram, I checked Kennedy and Valeria's accounts because I knew there was a fall formal kind of dance, and I wanted to know when and where it would be, because Taylor would probably ask me to it. Thr truth is, I've never been to any of these school dances, not even the casual in-school-hours ones. I don't even have a fancy dress, we never have fancy events to go to, once we went to dad's firm's family Christmas party, but it was semi-casual, so I wore a simple and cute H&M Christmas jumper with a black Zara skirt with tights and some heeled ankle boots. 

After some insta-stalking I decided it was time to start my homework, which after doing barely half of, my stomach sent me a notification telling me to recharge. 

I trod down the stairs and started preparing some of the lamb chops mom made, and the salad dad left in the fridge for us. I just closed the microwave door before Nathan shrilled my name. "Kaaammmmriiiiiiiii" He started howling and it sounded like he was actually crying. "What is it?" I called back, He shrieked telling me to come to dad's office. So I assumed that it was one of his petty-little-kid problems which would until my salad had dressing on it. 

I 'briskly walked' to dad's office to see dad lying on the floor with Nathan bawling his eyes out, hovering over him. Tears halfway down his neck, Nathan turned to face me with bewildered eyes and a considerably large red stain all over his shirt, I made the decision to believe that it wasn't cranberry juice or strawberry jam.  He turned even further, revealing a puddle of what looked like blood on the floor, drifting into Nathan's knees, and on dad. There sat a frankly horrid butcher's knife lodged in my dear stepfather's chest. On the floor, written in blood was the 3-letter word, RUN. 

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Run, run, run, run, run...

Run was our families 'code-word', not safe-word., but rather 'danger-word'. Whenever we need to up and leave to move to another place, one or both of our parents would just scream the word "RUN!" and we would know what to do. It seemed like dad was trying to tell us to leave in his last words.

Every time Nathan and I would try to bring up the conversation of why we needed to leave mom and dad would always manage to change the subject swiftly, Nathan never took too much notice of this but I definitely know that there was something wrong with it. 

Nathan stared and me and then glanced back at dad, he solemnly looked into my eyes and feebly said the words, "He's dead," to me. With a sense of only natural panic in my voice, I asked Nathan where mom was and he just sobbed out the words "I dunno, but she's, she's gone Kam". I said "Okay", trying to remain calm for Nathan. He backed away from his father's body and curled up into a ball and began to rock back and forth. People have different coping mechanisms, I guess this was his. I slowly approached him and firmly grasped his shoulders an I sternly said to him, "Look, I know this is really hard for you, trust it is for me as well, but we need to save ourselves, get ourselves together and get out of here. He weakly mumbled the words, "Okay Kamri."

I picked him up and brought him over to the kitchen island, and sat him down on the edge. I kissed his forehead tenderly and told him not to worry and that "Everything is gonna be okay," A promise I wasn't sure I could keep.  I asked him what happened, frantically searching for his karate bag, which had a spare change of clothes for him, and mom's spare change stash. He told me he came into the kitchen to get his homework checked by mom, but he couldn't find her or hear her when he called out for her, so he waltzed into dad's office, and to his dismay, well ye' know the story. I guess my instincts kicked in, and I held him tight close to me and lifted him up and put him on the ground.  I told him to go wash up and get changed and muster up every little bit of bravery he had in him. Although, I wouldn't be surprised at this stage if he didn't have any left, especially because I was gonna need a dose of courage myself for what I was about to do. I walked into dad's office and bent down over him, trying not to cry, even though I didn't even have it in me. I kissed him on the forehead before whispering I love you like a father and then rooting around in his pockets for cash and his phone or wallet. I found the sleek and classy wallet I bought him for his birthday in his suit pocket. I looked for any cash or change. There was €237.53, "Should be enough to get us somewhere", I thought. I grabbed his phone and wallet and ran into the kitchen. I fumbled around the cupboards and drawers frantically, throwing bottles of water, muesli bars and fruit into Nathan's ninja-turtles karate bag along with dad's stuff and some wipes. 

Nathan stumbled out of the under-stair storage in a fresh set of clothes. I grabbed him an slung his bag over my shoulder, we ran into the backyard. There was a large enough hole in the fence at the back of the garden behind some shrubbery. I gestured Nathan to go through it before tossing his bag through. I then made the cramped crawl myself before making it out into a shady forested path in the woodlands behind our estate. From handling Nathan and dealing with his situation I had blood on my arms and wrists which I wiped off with some wipes and Nathan's bloody shorts. I tossed them behind as we were still running. No one would think to search here.

After what seemed like an endless 5 minutes of running, we cam to a clearing where I said we could take a short break,  out of breath, Nathan asked what was happening, he's young and hasn't done much moving and shifting as I had, He always saw it as a 'normal' thing, which I did not, I always knew there was something fishy about it, but come to think of it now, I could ask myself the same question. He never sensed the danger I could when we would pack all of our belongings into our car and drive off leaving a note to our landlord. It was Nathan's unanswered question which my eyes well up and my throat choke up. What was happening was our dad was dead our mom was gone, did our mom kill her husband or did she run away and why are we running away. All I could say to Nathan who was now once again in tears was "I dunno, but we'll figure it out". 

Were we simply moving on to 'the next life'?