When Bluebirds Fly | ✔

Part One : Chapter Eight

Dad gripped my arm in a typical fatherly fashion and we both stumbled out of Bailey's Nuts while I mentally calculated the best responses which would be least consequential. "Papá I---"

"What are you doing with that boy?" he muttered, taking a glimpse inside through the glass door. I caught Isaac's flummoxed face, before he shifted his attention to the hipster customer in front of him. "You never told me that you're going to work with him?"

I sighed audibly, my shoulders sagging. "Why are you here?"

"I . . . I came to check up on you," he said with a helpless worry arising in his dark eyes. "You didn't come home."

"I didn't feel like it." I took a step back. "I still don't."

He massaged his temples wearily, gathering his rational thoughts. "Was he working with you all this while?"

"Does it matter?" I huffed and his grave face clearly indicated that it did matter. "Why? It was years back! Wasn't even his fault. We were kids, KIDS!"

He didn't utter a single word, staring into the abysmal depths of the dense trees on the opposite side of the concrete street.

"Okay, I don't even hang out with him that much for you to stress about this. This tiny, tiny thing," I said sensibly and his hand slipped inside his pocket.

A pink card peeked out which he quickly shoved it back inside, shaking his head. "I'll see you at dinner."

With that, I watched him walk away for the second time in a long day, his entire figure drooping in defeat like never before. I quietly sauntered back in, the bells ringing after me. Isaac's concerned eyes immediately met mine and I looked away, avoiding him for the rest of the bleak day.

* * *

I held the delicate pink card, my sharp nails already scraping off its dainty silver border. "Found this in my dad's pocket."

Sam stretched himself on the stairs, giving an apathetic glance at the piece of paper.

"It's an invitation to my marvellous mother's wedding," I continued bluntly and that seemed to catch his attention. He straightened his posture and nearly snatched it from my hand. "It implies, fuck you, my daughter. Fuck you, my old family, I'm going to get a new one. A richer one."

"Holy hell," he swore under his breath, surveying the invitation card. "That same guy from years ago?"

"Yep, Dave fucking . . . Dave . . . I never learned his last name," I drawled out the last sentence. "The way she's rubbing her happy life on our faces is itching me to show up at her wedding with a machine gun---"

"Well, are you?" Sam rummaged through his pockets, probably for a joint. I could never fathom how he laid his hands on them. In my head, I pictured him in a deserted alleyway with a shady man silently trading him drugs in exchange for money that he deviously acquired by stealing from his nasty mother's purse (the money and the designer purse which was rightfully his father's) or by prostituting himself to his numerous girlfriends. I could never tell with him, I had barely witnessed him studying and yet he aced all his tests. And scored plenty of girls. "Are you?"

"What?" I asked absently and he raised his eyebrows, finding the joint. It was amusing to me how it always used to be in the depths of the left pocket of his pants, still, he forgot about it each time. "Right yeah. The wedding. The machine gun."

He let out a puff of smoke which clouded the sight of the enthralling sunset. It appeared as if the pink and the orange hues of the sky were trapped in the translucent veil of vapour as it floated in front of me and I instinctively, but gently waved my hand, dispersing it. Here I was in a glum stairwell of my dingy apartment, gaily relishing the delights of a piece of heaven that God was willing to exhibit to all mankind and I wasn't content. I wasn't. I wasn't okay with how much malignant haze I had let in my life and I was putting minimal efforts to diffuse it. To not allow me to freely breathe in a wicked sunset.

"You know what . . . I'm going," I announced confidently. "I'm going to the wedding all pretty and as perfect as I can be and I'll show her what she's been missing all these dreary years. I'm going to be the bloody machine gun."

"Bravo." Sam grinned with the joint in between his lips, derisively clapping his hands. "Your dad would be cool with this?"

"He tried telling me about this since it's addressed to me. He obviously wouldn't approve me of going but would feel guilty of keeping me away from mum. A conflict situation of which I intend to take full advantage of," I explained, feeling mildly uneasy about saying that. "Sam, I need you to come with me. I can't stand there like a loner, would make a bad impression."

"Can't say I'll make a good impression," he joked and I critically stared into his reddening eyes. "Take your other friends. That girl Ally, she looks like a rich one."

"No, no, not her. She doesn't know about my family drama and I plan to keep it that way," I asserted. "We'll clean you up and you'll be fine. Really. After all, you would have some charm in you for attracting all those girls."

He smiled boyishly- the kind of smile I seldom saw and tipped his head back, blowing out the smoke.

"Wow look here, two love birds," Abel teased hoarsely, standing on top of the stairs.

I suppressed my urge to fire back and instead, gave him a saccharine smile. "Don't disturb our make-out sessions, we have many nosy neighbours poking in our lives already."

"Sorry to disturb you Mariana, now excuse me." He squeezed through the narrow space that Sam and I occupied on the stairs. Then he tottered to the exit- towards the sunken sun and the navy blue sky. "See you both later."

"I hate him," Sam said candidly and I quirked an eyebrow in question. "He has become BFFs with my mother."

"Seriously? He's pretty chill to me. We could have a much worse person living close to us, a human trafficker or a drug lord."

"I wouldn't mind a drug lord."

"Clearly." I seized the joint from him and got up swiftly. Before I could run, I was tackled to the ground and Sam coolly leaned against the wall, the joint securely pressed in between his fingers. "You got strength in those thin arms of yours."

He helped me up. "Your father would kill me if I influenced you into doing this."

"If only I wasn't high from all the smoke you let out, I'd think you're being sincere." I plucked the joint again from his hands and successfully sprinted into the parking lot. He chased me and our laughter boomed in the eerie atmosphere. Suddenly, the deafening sound of a gunshot made us halt abruptly.

I was twelve and playing with a tennis ball all by myself, lazily throwing it against the wall and catching it. I missed Isaac and if he would have been there, I wouldn't have to picture the wall having tiny hands and a wrinkly smile. I flinched and dropped the ball when I heard a gunshot at a distance. The birds above cried and fluttered away.

My heart pounded wildly in my chest as I took off to my apartment and there in the middle of the dark stairwell was a ten-year-old boy with a bowl cut and slanting eyes.

He patted the place next to him and I sat there, holding his thin, clammy hands for the rest of the evening.

"Come," Sam mumbled and grasped my hand, displaying the same strength that he had shown when he was ten. "Let's go in."