Scars • hood au

15

a l e x a n d r a

JOY opened the door to her residence, luke and i following suit with calum right behind. how sad was my life? before the house fully burnt down, the firemen managed to put out the fire.

lucky enough, a part of the house wasn't licked by the sinister fire and my room was in that part. we had stopped by the house when some policemen were looking around the inside to find the source of the incident.

they even let the four of us go in and we had seen enough wreckage in there. god still had pity over me, i guess, because luke and i's clothes weren't damaged.

calum had helped with the packing and i saw how terrible luke's room looked like compared to mine. the walls had hints of black as it was burnt from the other side before it managed to reach inside.

now, i was walking into a warm place meant to be called home in this period until the house was fully built again. for a single mother, liz sure did have a hell of an insurance.

liz.

i still couldn't seem to put my finger on the fact that she was gone. and not just from my life, but from the world.

no matter how much she'd hurt luke and i, we were still a family. she was still the reason i met luke and all the people i knew now.

i never thought i'd say this...but i actually missed her.

"so, alexandra-"

"just alex, mrs-" i cleared my throat, "i mean, joy." i tried my best on putting on the best smile i could muster.

she giggled a little and nodded, "alex... luke... make yourselves at home, okay? it's not much, but i think we can all have fun."

i nodded, thanked her for everything, and she pulled luke and i into a warm embrace. she whispered all the don't-worry's and the it's-going-to-be-okay's.

calum, however, just stood by the front door awkwardly without making a sound. but he did give me a small smile which i highly appreciated.

"you can stay in mali's room, okay? don't worry. i'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind." joy continued and i recalled that mali was calum's elder sister he had mentioned about.

calum nodded and stepped closer, one hand on luke's left shoulder. "yeah. plus, she wouldn't be back until semester break which's in, like, four months?"

joy agreed and after all the hustle and bustle of moving in, we were all settled and put to rest.

luke stayed in a room just down the hall across from calum's which was a guest room. he's used to sleeping on his own in his very own room, so he refused staying in with me.

i didn't have much clothes so i'd only taken 20 minutes to unpack and clear everything up.

mali's room was so neat and tidy and beautiful. very beautiful. she had a rack filled with sorted vinyls and albums. she even had a stereo right next to her bed to play CDs.

people nowadays thought CDs were lame because they had iPods and stuff. but really, albums didn't hurt to be played. and they're still pretty cool.

well, i was bored and it wasn't close to dinner time. i would love to help joy in the kitchen and she'd told that dinner's at seven. that's an hour away, so i was glad mali had a shelf of amazing books by amazing authors in her haven.

she must've had brought her other books with her to the university because the ones left weren't that many.

i just remembered the warm bodies copy calum had bought for me. oh my god, was it burnt in the fire?