Life in Hiding

31 ~ Pillow

**Part one of a double update**

If it was possible to completely skip a day, I would do it in a heartbeat.

It's funny, because I can go to bed on December 26th and not feel a thing. Logically, I know it's the last day I saw my parents alive. I always thought it would be a more difficult day. Technically, I never went to bed that night. So even though it was the next day when they died, it felt like it was the 26th.

However, the second I wake up, I know what today is. It's December 27th. It's the only date I'll never read wrong because I have it engraved into my mind. It's been four years since my parents died.

Four years. It's crazy how that can feel like a lifetime and a blink of an eye at the same time. It feels like an eternity has passed since I last hugged my parents. It also feels like they were here just yesterday.

Time is the cruelest punishment of all.

Time refused to slow down when Uncle John was rushing us to the hospital. Time refused to speed up as we went through the funeral.

I still remember standing there and having person after person shake our hand. It was torture to hear them say how sorry they were for our loss.

Our loss, like it was some fucking baseball game and we'd get another shot to play next weekend. It wasn't a fucking game. It was our parents and it wasn't a loss. It was our entire life ripped away from us.

Some people meant it, others didn't. To this day I don't know who it was harder to say thank you to.

We all handled it differently. Saffron cried nonstop for our parents; she was only a toddler. Too young to lose the people who created her. The twins were 11. They chose each other.  They spoke only to each other. They refused to be more than a few feet apart. I guess that's the benefit of having a twin. Someone to go through hell with. They were too young to properly process everything. Scarlett took the bravest path. She chose silence. For so long she refused to function. Then, when we needed it most, she decided to move forward. Not for herself, but for us. She chose to provide and care for us when no one else would or could. She was too young to enter the adult world.

And then there's me. I chose anger. I wasn't even in high school and I had lost my parents. I was so mad at the universe. That anger bled into everything, including how I felt about Scarlett. I was too young to resent the world, but I did it anyway. It's not fair my family has suffered nonstop.

We didn't deserve this and yet, it's the cards we were dealt. I think that's my biggest issue. We have no say in life. Our parents died. We didn't get a say. Our uncle became an alcoholic. We didn't get a say. Our aunt got custody of us. We didn't get a say. We got to live on our own, but they gave us a list of impossible rules to live by and threatened to take away everything. We didn't get a say. We almost got thrown into the foster care system. We didn't get a say. Ella broke up with me. I didn't get a say.

I'm 18 years old and I'm tired of not getting a say in what happens in my life, damn it. That's why I've decided today will not bother me. I'm over crying. I'm over mourning. Mourning sucks. It drains your soul and after everything I've been through, I don't know how much more my soul can handle.

It's been four years since my parents died and I'm not going to let that crush me like it should.

Keeping my eyes closed, I think of all the positives. We have a home. We have each other. We have two guardian angels who watch over us. Today will be a good day.

Deciding I'm ready to face the world, I open my eyes. Chloe is sitting beside me, a tentative look on her face as she watches me. "Good morning."

"Morning." She fidgets, clearly uncomfortable. "How are you?"