How To Live

Chapter Seven

I leave the house at around three o'clock in the afternoon the next day, when the summer breeze begins to pick up and the heat from the sun isn't so severe. I'd like to say that I've been busy all day, that I've been doing something to keep myself occupied, but I haven't.

The truth is, I've been sitting in my room, staring out of my window waiting to see a blue truck come rolling up the drive.

My Father left early this morning and my Mother hasn't even emerged from her bedroom cave yet. The silence inside of this prison is killing me and if I don't get out soon, I'm worried I'll go insane.

I wander down the lane way towards the main street and it occurs to me that this is how I'm going to spend the next couple of months, stuck inside of my house, stuck inside of my own head.

It's a kind of reality that makes me cringe and I know there is no way I will ever make it through the summer if I don't have anywhere to escape to.

I'm not even sure where I am heading right now, it's like my feet have a mind of their own and I just let them take me, I ride the wave, letting my body drift to wherever it wants to go.

I only pause for a moment as my feet find themselves brushing the edge of the train tracks that run along the middle of town, the border of my world and the beginning of another.

I have only ever driven through the other side of town, never gotten out and looked around, or wandered the streets. I've never even gotten to know the people.

Wesley is the fist person from across the tracks that I have ever had a proper conversation with, other than a few kids I've talked to at school, and I had misjudged him terribly.

Maybe I had misjudged this part of Bolton too.

There must be something worthwhile over these train tracks, Tommy thought there was. He had the courage to defy our Father and the rules that we grew up with in order to see the other part of Bolton for himself, to get to know people he was always told he should ignore.

Today, I want to be more like Tommy.

So I place one foot after the other over the metal tracks and I forge through the invisible barrier inside my mind that was created by my Father. I ignore the voice yelling at me to turn around and go home, to think about my reputation.

It feels nice to finally silence that voice that has controlled me. To severe the invisible hold that my Father has lorded over me for so long.

Now that Tommy is gone, I've realised that life is too short to live and that I can't afford to regret anything. Because if I live with a heart filled with regrets, am I really living at all?

I need to see what is across the tracks and I need to do it for myself. Not because I want to disobey my Father or try to understand my dead brother, but because I want to find myself, and maybe a part of me that I never knew existed is hiding across the tracks just waiting for me to find her.

I wander slowly through the streets that mirror the ones I walk through on my way home from school everyday. The only difference is that these homes don't have fresh paint jobs, or immaculate gardens.

These homes are shabby and broken, but when I stare at them I'm envious.

These homes are lived in. They are laughed in. They are loved in.

What I would give to experience those feeling with my own family once again. I would give up every material item I have ever owned just to see my Mother smile again, or my Father laugh that full belly-shaking laugh that I haven't seen for such a long time.