Metanoia

"You've been gone for three years and now you want to just come back as if nothing happened?" Elijah speaks lowly, standing up, fist balled up tightly at his sides. As he continues though, his voice grows louder. "Well, we don't need you!"

"Eli I-" Kaz silently moves behind me, placing a comforting hand on my lower back.

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" He screams, slamming his fist against the table making Kamari jump. "Don't fucking call me that!"

Stunned into silence, I stare at him, my arms hanging limply at my sides. He looks me dead in my eyes for what's very possibly the first time since I've been here.

"I wish it was you who died, it should have been you," He says, breathlessly, his voice breaking near the end, and then he rushes up the stairs.

-------

21 year old Xaria Bell left home for good after her father was killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver. Now she returns to her hometown after the tragic death of her mother.

Despite having zero contact with them during the time she had been gone, she ends up with the custody of her younger siblings. Xaria is stretched thin trying to raise four grieving siblings, keeing a suddenly clingy boyfriend happy, organizing a charity event her mother had started, and dealing her own whirlwind of emotions.

She isn't sure that she will be able to make it out of this alive; or atleast with her full sanity.