Itty Bitty Stories

Home Sweet Home

“On August 23rd, 2008 I told you we were going to meet at the park down from my house on June 10th, 2012 at 5:00 pm. You. Never. Showed. Up. Don’t you damn lie to me about how you don’t remember.”

Ah, home sweet home.

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Home Sweet Home

“POPPY!”

Rosy, my 15 year old, attacks me into a hug. I stumble back a bit, surprised at her actions. Rosy is not a touchy-feely type of person. She did get a bit bigger--taller and longer brown hair. We could pass off as twins if we wanted to, with the same long brown hair and green eyes. The only different is she’s three years younger than me.

Fin, grinning like an idiot, settles for patting my back. “Welcome back, sis.” He looks a bit more like my dad; black messy hair and a stubble of hair on his chin. That stubble wasn’t there when I left four years ago. He got taller, taller than me. And he’s a year younger. His voice got deeper too. Puberty finally hit him.

“Well, well, well, puberty found another victim,” I grin evilly.

A slight blush dabs at his cheeks. He hates talking about it. “Shut up.”

My dad and mom are the next ones to attack me into hugs, talking at the same time. I barely hear them as we drift out of the airport and into the car. When I was 14, I went off to boarding school. My parents didn’t want me to go in the first place. They didn’t like it at all. But I didn’t care. I wanted to go because of the better education. They let me go, and I left them all here.

Now I’m back. School is over with, and it’s time to move onto college. We pull into my house. It’s exactly the same from how I left it four years ago. The shuttered roof and front door a dirty brown. The stairs to get up to it are still not repainted, which my dad says he’ll get to it when he never does. The inside is the same too, I realize, as we go inside.

I head up to my old room which, to my surprise, hasn’t been touched. At all. The bed sits neatly in the corner near my window. Walls are still a deep purple with a fuzzy carpet. I throw my luggage onto my bed. I dart out the door, my mind on one and only thing:

The park.

“Guys, I gotta go somewhere!” I yell, eyes trained on the front door.

“But you just got here!” My brother’s deep voice yells. I gotta get use to that.

“I’ll be right back!” I shout back and slam the door.

I don’t bother with the car and run straight down the sidewalk. I can see the park from here. When I was 14, I had my very own best friend. No, this best friend wasn’t a girl. It was a boy. He still is my best friend, to tell you the truth. I had friends in boarding school, yeah, but nobody compared to Griffin.

The first year I missed him so bad, it hurt. He was mad when I told him that I was leaving. He didn’t want me to go. I ignored him, though, and his pissed off attitude. Griffin refused to call me after that. The whole four years I was at school, he didn’t contact me once.