How To Live

Chapter One

The silence inside my giant house is eerie.

I lie here in my bed and the only sound that fills my ears is the slow breathing coming from my own body. I can no longer hear my Mother downstairs grinding coffee, or my Father watching the sports reviews on the small television we keep on the corner of the kitchen counter.

The shower is not running. That has been the biggest change.

Every morning I would wake up to the sound of the shower, and Tommy's terribly out of key voice coming from inside after his morning run. Everyday I would get up and bang on the door and tell him to hurry up because I'm running late, and he would tell me to piss off and then leave his towel on the bathroom floor just to annoy me.

I get up out of my warm bed and walk down the hall to the bathroom. There is no shower running. There is no voice coming from inside of those walls. I bang on the door anyway, and open it slowly to reveal an empty bathroom. I pull a towel form the rack by the door and leave it on the floor, just like he used to.

I make my way down the stairs and I can hear my Mother's voice, it is quiet and polite.

"Thankyou, we appreciate all of your help." She says whoever is on the other end of the phone she has clutched to her ear. She has her back facing the door and as I enter the kitchen silently I am greeted with a view of slumped shoulders, tousled hair and wrinkled pyjamas. This has become common attire for her, and I don't think I've seen her wear any other outfit in the past two weeks.

This kind of appearance is so far from the Mother that I know and love, the strong lawyer who always used to look put together and sophisticated is no where to be seen any more. She has replaced her pressed suits for creased nightclothes and I hardly recognise the woman standing in front of me.

I pour myself a cup of coffee and silently sit at the table where my Father is reading the newspaper. He never used to read the paper. He would always watch the news on TV with Tommy. It was kind of like their morning ritual. Now he sits silently in his pressed dark blue suit and stares at the newspaper like it's a map to happiness, and as long as he doesn't speak to anyone he'll make it to the X.

I watch my parents ignore each other.

I watch them ignore me.

I join them in their silence, the three of us caught up in our own whirlwinds of grief and pain, too focused on ourselves and our own feelings to realise we could bear the agony and suffering together.

My Father is the Mayor of Bolton, this small country town we call home which values nothing but social standing and association. A town where the wealthy live in my neighbourhood, and those worse off live across the train tracks, a clear separation of two completely different worlds. This town is a place where my family has to show a united front, and pretend like the death of my brother didn't affect us at all. Because to show emotion is to show weakness, and the Mayor of Bolton, and his prestigious family must be anything but weak.

My Father leaves for work with a quick kiss on my head and a mumbled goodbye to my Mother. She then retreats back to her bedroom fortress without a glance in my direction, lost in her own world where no one else exists anymore.

Not even her daughter.

I pick up my school bag and open the front door, stepping out onto the porch and staring down the garden path where my brother no longer stands waiting for me. I slam the door behind me because that's what he used to do every morning, no matter how many times Mom would yell at him and tell him not to.

I begin my walk towards Bolton High slowly, not yet ready to face my final day of junior year.

Today was supposed to be one of the best days of my brother's life.