Stars Live in The Sky

Chapter Three

Cereal is Good Comfort Food.

I don't even know how many bowls I've eaten since Amber ran away. As many as you can eat in four years, I suppose. Every time I feel that familiar absence in the base of my abdomen, I pull out a box of cocoa or fruity pebbles, cinnamon toast crunch, or some other unhealthy breakfast abomination. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night with a void in my soul and no milk in the fridge, so I ate a whole box on its own. It wasn't quite the same.

Then again, nothing ever is these days. One might think that I would move on after four years, but no, I still think about her a lot. School has been a hellscape without Amber there. She was one of the only friends I had. Nowadays, I just sit in the back of the class like I'm being shunned by the whole entire world. In reality, though, my lack of friends is just another thing that's all my fault.

"I can't understand how you can eat that sugary crap."

His voice is half annoyed, half-joking. Usually, he talks as if nothing affects him. He's the type of person who, as long as nobody's getting hurt, doesn't care what other people do with their lives. He's a bit of a health nut, though, so to him, "eating sugar" and "getting hurt" tend to be one and the same. Jet black hair reaches down to his shoulders, and his cloudy gray eyes look down at me from their six-foot-tall perch.

"I can't understand how you can get through life without it," I respond, my bright blue eyes glaring at him through the morning fog inside my head.

"Just wait, Carson. In a year or two, you'll come begging to me for advice, and I won't give you any."

"I am perfectly fine without your advice, Damien. Sugar highs are much better than high horses."

He says nothing. He just stares at me again, his eyes half-closed and his left brow raised in question. He never did appreciate my sarcasm, but how can I stop when the look he gives me is so entertaining? A moment passes and he sighs, reluctantly sitting down next to me and grabbing an apple from the bowl in the center of the table.

We eat without conversation in the otherwise empty kitchen of my house. I look around absentmindedly at my familiar surroundings. I've lived here my entire life, and barely anything has changed. I could probably get around blindfolded if I had to, I know the place so well. The kitchen isn't much to look at, just two walls of counters, cupboards, and a sink with a window looking out to the backyard.

The dinner table is old and covered with small injuries that have been inflicted over the years. It was my grandfather's before he died. The old oak wood used to be shiny and new. Now, it's sort of a miracle it's still standing. My mother once left a candle burning in the middle, and it caught on fire. She swore me to secrecy about it, and now we leave that fruit bowl in the center to hide the burn marks.

To my left and behind Damien was our living room. It was a simple room, with a big brown couch, a television mounted on the wall, and a reading nook by a bay window looking out to the front of the house. There are bookshelves, a coffee table, and a few other decorations.

In the space between, a door leads to my mom's room, and a hallway directly across it leads to my own bedroom and a bathroom. Memories line the walls, from one of the oldest, our trip to Disney World, to the most recent, my graduation. There were a few of my own photographs as well. My mom says I have a talent for it, but I don't really see it.

Amber and I used to do all kinds of things here. Our favorite was horror movie nights in the living room. We would spend all week finding either the scariest or cheesiest movies we could, then spend all night watching them and ranking them from best to worst. As fun as it was, it caused a lot of nightmares over the years. Nowadays, I do that with Damien. He doesn't like horror, though, so we watch whatever stupid action movie looks interesting on Netflix.