Crash Into Me | ✓

five

We had lived on Devil's Point for a month, and yet it was the first time we all sat huddled at the square wooden kitchen table for dinner on a Saturday night. Aunt Mel still smelled of clay from her pottery class at the community center, which overwhelmed the scent of the pasta and meat sauce sitting in front of us. I ran my finger over a chip on the edge of my plate as I watched Nikki scowl and pick at a piece of bread.

"The sauce is good Aunt Mel," I offered. Pasta was Aunt Mel's go-to, ever since she left a meatloaf in the oven a few years ago and nearly burnt our house in Georgia down.

She gave me a half smile, the skin next to her green eyes crinkling. She turned to Nikki, who had now taken to stabbing her bread with a fork.

"Are you sure you don't want to eat anything sweetheart?" She asked.

Nikki glared daggers in her direction, as if sweetheart was suddenly the most intense insult anyone had ever called her.

"I told you I'm not hungry," Nikki snapped. "And I fucking hate tomato sauce."

Nikki aggressively scraped her chair back and tossed her napkin on her dish. She trudged away in silence, and after a few agonizingly long moments, her bedroom door slammed shut. My aunt let out a heavy sigh and rubbed her temples with her fingers.

"Since when does she hate tomato sauce?" she muttered.

"I don't know."

She sighed and clasped her hands together in front of her mouth. Her knuckles turned white, her nose reddened, and her shoulders heaved up and down, as she tried to slow her shaky breathing.

"You know, I read that some of the side effects of her chemotherapy can affect her taste buds and sense of smell," she said, her voice soft and trembling. "But she's just so upset, and...nothing I've read has prepared me for that."

"Don't worry too much about that." I rested my hand on her forearm. "The attitude thing is just Nikki being Nikki, and you know that. You're...you're doing what you can."

She nodded and smiled at me through glassy eyes, running her hand down the side of my cheek.

After cleaning up dinner and making my way upstairs, I heard a clattering coming from Nikki's room. I waited a moment before lightly knocking on the door.

"Fuck off," came the muffled response from the other side.

As angry and frustrated and distressed as we both were, I knew one thing Nikki could never refuse - a trip to the mall.

"Do you want to go shopping?" I asked. A few moments passed without an answer. I pressed my hand to the wall beside the door and let out a long sigh. I wasn't sure how long I stood there, alone in our dark upstairs hallway, trying to suppress all my emotions from ripping through me like a flood.

Suddenly the door was flung open, and a flash of blonde hair darted past me.

"The mall closes in two hours, we gotta go now!" Nikki called as she hurried down the stairs. Some things, despite any illness, any heartache, and any torrid emotions, never changed.