Dirt

12

Knox

"I hate going out in public. Specifically in this town, narrow it down to the secondary school- cause it doesn't even have it in it to be a proper high school...." The chords I'm strumming don't particularly sound very nice all together but that's a sacrifice I have to make. 

I love the feeling of the strings vibrating under my thumb and hearing the chords resonate in the guitar situated on my torso. We've accumulated Grace's violin and guitar in addition to the keyboard.

 "I hate school dances and if my sister really knew me she would stay home and watch August Rush or maybe a princess movie if she gets lucky..." I extend the word so far as my lung capacity allows. 

Grace scuffs from the corner of the room on the floor where she's curlying her hair. Kelly tried to offer to help Grace get ready but my sister insisted on doing it herself. I played the piano singing various lyrics about how stupid school dances are to 

I want to understand why she's so happy to go and be proud of my little sister getting out there and acting like her mother was not just arrested two months ago. I'm happy she has friends she's planned to meet there, I'm even happier the boys convinced Cedar to leave her alone before I had to break our friendship by breaking his nose. I'm happy she's excited to go there and experience high school even if it's a new school. I'm happy she isn't crippled with anxiety and singing sad songs with me on her bedroom floor. 

But I want to spend a night with just me and my sister. There's always someone in the house, at home we could be alone for hours in the comfortable silence or laughing about some stupid thing she found on twitter. I want to just lay on the floor playing random instruments talking about how much she likes out music teacher. 

There are still small moments in our weeks that we can sit together. When she's not out doing something with Kelly, or some school activity, or some music practice. When I'm not roped into whatever thing Roger and the boys are doing, or music practice, or trying to figure out what chords sound the best in the best certain order. 

When neither of us is occupied we've walked around the block and point out all the weird things we never saw in our neighborhood back home. We talk about the girls in her classes that laugh with her and invite her to do things. We laugh about all the strange things I've learned about the boys and their weird little rituals they do. We sit in her room and play songs together, and discuss recent music released. She gets mad at me for my impression of all the people in the house but eventually laughs too until we're snorting with laughter and Kelly knocks on the door to see if we're not choking. 

It's those momentary times we can be together that brings back the past. There could be days we'd be the only ones home and we would find stupid shit to do. I can remember sleeping on my twin bed together listening to Beethoven while mom crashed around the house with some other crack whore. Burning Mac and Cheese or trying to figure out whatever the fuck is on my math homework. 

Being so close in age helped in the beginning to make each other best friends, but spending so much time together and being the only ones behind our own backs makes her my ride or die. She's the only one could convince me to come to this stupid homecoming dance. 

The boys all tried to, except for Princeton, I'm not sure he's coming. The 'intervention' was a little over a week ago. It got even scarier than listening to what he had done in the past. Saturday, three days after the intervention Roger got a call and then darted out of the house so fast he didn't even grab his favorite jacket. Even Kelly got scared when she got some message from Roger. It took a bit to pry it out of Roger after he got home around two in the morning, ten hours after he flew the coop, he finally broke.