When Bluebirds Fly | ✔

Part Two : Chapter Eight

"What happened?" Isaac whispered worriedly as I sat down next to him.

I lost my baby brother who I didn't give a fuck about.

I leaned to his ear. "Nothing big of a deal. My mother just had a miscarriage."

"Oh shit, what? How is she . . . And where is she? Is she okay?"

"Jesus, you're reacting like I was supposed to when I heard the news," I said with a nervous laugh. Even in the dark, I could figure out that he was gaping incredulously at me. I waved my hand dismissively. "She's fine." There was an awkwardness that drifted between us the next couple of minutes so I spoke, "What's going on in the movie? Why is she slitting her wrists?"

"Erm . . . She's trying to kill her and the baby inside her."

Her feelings died with the dead baby inside her.

I scrambled up. "Yeah okay, I can't."

"Where do you want to go?" he asked as we both squeezed past the people seated, irking the hell out of nearly all the people in the cinema.

"Fucking losers!" That particular someone behind us yelled.

"You are!" I furiously yelled back, flashing my middle finger and exiting the cinema with Isaac trailing after me. "I have never been such a nuisance before. It's refreshing and oddly powerful to be a total dick in public."

"Let's not make it a habit," he said humorously as we stepped out under the ebony sky. "Do you want to eat something?"

"Yeah, there's a kebab guy around the corner. Do you like kebabs? Wait, do you still cry when you eat spicy food?" I teased and he gently pushed me sideways with his shoulder. "I knew it, white boy."

"In my defence---" he began, then abashedly shook his head with his curls bouncing. He said in a small voice, "I don't have any defence."

"You can prove it to me by not shedding a single tear while eating. If you win, I'll mop the floor at Bailey's Nuts for a week," I challenged as we neared the brightly lit kebab corner. "If you lose, you'll have to do the floors for a week."

"I know I'm going to lose," he muttered in defeat, looking at the fiery, red kebabs cooking on the grill.

I ordered them anyway, conspicuously delighted at a week of not cleaning the sticky floor. We took takeaways and both of us strolled together to the park, leisurely swinging our plastic bags containing the food all the way. Often, I felt like a carefree child in his company and we even matched our footsteps with the squares of the concrete sidewalk. My loose, silky hair was swaying with my movements and I was seven again, loving how my high ponytail smartly swung whenever I strutted around.

I started skipping on alternate squares. "You know my mum used to braid my hair every night, then do my hairstyle every morning."

She wouldn't be able to do her dead baby's hair.

"I remember she used to make a lot of fuss about our hair," he said with an easy smile.

"Remember the summer when your mum shaved your head because your curls made you feel hot and my mum got in an argument with her for doing that." I reminisced and he nodded fondly. "But you did look like a little criminal with your shaved head."

"I was thinking more like a military man . . . "

I snorted. "You looked like a child drug dealer."

"I don't think there's anything called a child drug dealer, Ana."

"I don't know. Might be. A toddler smoking a joint does look very funny in my head."