Remember November

Chapter Two

Goosebumps pimpled my skin. That's how it'd been since I woke up thirty minutes after I'd gone to sleep ten past twelve.

October 29 has been the worst day of the year for the past five years. Just thinking about it makes my stomach knot.

I wish I could stay in bed all day but I know that's not what's best for me. Or so I kept telling myself. I forced myself up and one glance at the large mirror next to my bed told me my lack of sleep was very obvious.

"Hey." Andi said as soon as I walked into the kitchen. He was whipping up some scrambled eggs and shot me a sad look.

I scrubbed my face with my hands and dragged them down, "hey" I replied, nodding his way.

"I made waffles with bacon." I heard him say as I walked over to look outside the large window beside the couch.

Looking over my shoulder towards him I watched his sincere smile.

Andi was the best. I didn't share much about my past. Both because I didn't have many close friends to share it with and also because I just couldn't. Talking about it has been too painful.

But when I met Andi, there was something about him-like with Joel- that dug inside my chest and made me want to spill my story. He may not know every single detail that I'd been through, but he knew that once a week my father would make waffles stuffed with bacon.

Meeting him almost five years ago, when we were just two lost eighteen-year-old, I began to slowly open myself up to him and share things from my past. And ever since, he's always made my father's waffles on the anniversary of his death.

"You're the best," I reminded him and glanced back outside.

The sun was out and the sky was a pale blue, clouds lingering here and there. One that looked a bit like a lopsided heart and another that looked like a dinosaur.

A huge grin breached my somber face. When I was young, my father didn't have much money to spare to buy me new toys. So we would go to second-hand stores.

One time I found a few toy dinosaurs that I quickly became obsessed with.At the playground girls would always play, and trade with their barbies and bratz dolls, but I would never trade my three dinosaurs for them.

Even though today stung and burned, I knew my father was in a better place, resting, wherever that may be.

So I pushed off the window frame and helped Andi finish breakfast.

Because though I'd had a terrible night's rest, and my heart hurt, I was determined to make today good. It had to be, it'd been five years and there came a point when I had to look at things in a different perspective.

"Hurry Ty, we'll be late. Again, ." Andi yelled from the bottom of the staircase.

Crap, I always managed to make us late for the pick ups.

"Yeah yeah, I'm coming." Grabbing the handrail I ran downstairs and nearly bumped into him as I stopped so suddenly."Perfect, let's go." I said, adjusting my small leather bag on my shoulder.We began walking to the subway station, "So, how come you haven't mentioned where we're going exactly?"

Normally, when people wanted to give us their vinyl collections it came with a price, literally. But last week, we'd gotten a call at the store from a lady named Annie telling us she had a few boxes of records she wanted to give us.

For free.

In the record business that's a golden opportunity.

It seemed kind of sketchy since an opportunity like this rarely arose.Still Andi had gotten the information from Annie and when he told me we'd pick up the boxes on Thursday-today- I didn't really ask too many questions just as long as the pick up would fill my day.