Adopted by The Sidemen

Chapter 18

It took a week, an entire week of getting to know each other all over again, for me to gather up the courage and the strength to ask Vikk to take me to visit our parents. In that time I think I learned more about a person than I ever had in my entire life- and I quickly learned that Vikk was almost exactly the same person that I remembered him being, only now he was seven years older.

He had always been the smart and intelligent one, getting amazing grades without even trying and he was always full of puns, even at 14, quips and sarcastic remarks all the time. Vikk was a jokester, perhaps a little immature at times, but I understood that. His response to the trauma was to be the jokester, laugh about it, while mine was to grow up.

That might have made you think we were about as different as you could get- but we weren't. The more I knew about him, the more I realised we were pretty much the same person. We were sarcastic, bouncy, a little on the quieter side, generally smart academically and pretty useless at anything sporty although he was a strong swimmer and I was good at skateboarding.

"Ready to go Lily?" Vikk asked, poking his head around the door of the living room. I nodded and stuffed my phone into my pocket, waving goodbye to Lachlan. He was the only one up this early and so he was the only one to see us go.

"See ya Lachy." I said, smiling a bit. I had already got into the habit of calling him Lachy, it seemed to fit him better than Lachlan. He gave me a nod and I turned to follow my brother- that felt weird- out the front door and to his car. It was a fancy one, with only two seats, and I felt almost like an imposter getting into it but the music he played, songs I could happily sing along to, made the feeling lessen.

The drive was a little over an hour, all the way out the outskirts of London on the opposite side of town, and the closer we got the more I began to recognise. A random warehouse, then a bridge- and then the school. I startled when I saw it because basically nothing had changed, it was the same old buildings in the same old colour as it had been 7 years earlier. Vikk saw my look.

"It's exactly the same, isn't it." He smiled. "Look, I can see your classroom from here as well." I followed his finger and my eyes found the building- yes, definitely my classroom. The classroom I had the year of the fire. "This neighbourhood it basically the same as it was."

"Wow." I mumbled. "I thought they might have done some things up but... they've done basically nothing."

We stayed in silence until we pulled around the corner that led to where our house used to be, and now I wasn't surprised to see that not much had changed. The houses were about 30 years old and this new house, the one on our old plot of land, had been deliberately built to appear the same as all the others. It didn't really stir anything, because I found I didn't really care- I barely remembered this place and now that it was different... it was like I had never been here. Vikk seemed to feel the same way.

"It's like we were never here." I whispered, resting my chin on the edge of the window. "It's so... different but it's the same too."

We rode in silence down the road until the church came into view- and it was exactly the same too. I hadn't expected the church to change even remotely and it was somewhat comforting to see it, a familiar sight in a place I didn't feel I knew. We were still silent as we pulled up outside it.

"They're right at the back." Vikk whispered quietly, waiting for me to follow him. "I think. I don't really remember this place."

I followed him as we weaved our way through row after row of gravestones, many dating back to decades before, that got newer the further we moved back. We came to a stop at about the middle of the second to last row and Vikk stopped quite suddenly, pulling back to let me go on ahead, alone.

The graves were overgrown, the same stones and words I had seen at 7. I sighed. There they were- my parents. The stones were worn and faded, overgrown too with moss mostly covering the lettering but I could still see the names and dates that confirmed who bodies were beneath my feet. But the thing was... I didn't feel anything. There was a slight stirring of curiosity in my chest but there was no sadness, no anger, no feeling of recognition. There was a sombre air, but nothing more.

"It's strange." I whispered as Vikk came up behind me, also staring at the stones. "I almost don't remember them anymore so it's kind of just... I don't know how to explain it."

Vikk only nodded, not wanting to talk about it. I got it, he was 14 when they died and probably remembered them perfectly fine, he just needed a moment. He hadn't been here in years. We stood there for a few more minutes in silence.

"Ready to go?" He finally asked and I nodded.

"Yeah... yeah, let's go."

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Vikk gave me a bit of a tour around the rest of our neighbourhood, some of the sights being familiar and some not so much. I mostly stared out of the window thinking about everything I remembered and everything I must have forgotten about the first 7 years of my life because there was so much I didn't remember. I hadn't even remembered my brothers name! I honestly hated myself for that.

We were just pulling up in the driveway when I turned to Vikk to ask him something.

"Vikk?" I said, quietly, and he looked across at me. "Do you think I could meet your family one day?"