Iris

20 | painful

tw: mentions of self-harm and depression, please be careful while reading :)

— A T L A S '   P O V —

     RAIN POURED heavily from the sky and thunder blared loudly from above. Its roars echoed throughout the air and accompanied the lightning as it sliced the clouds scattered across the corners of the raging void. The blue was no longer calm or peaceful; it was rather chaotic. Dropping all its anger on us. And the dark was no longer mesmerising; it was rather terrifying. Dropping a heavy weight of fear onto my heart.

I took a step closer to my brother as I held onto my backpack straps, adjusting the bag over my shoulders. My throat bobbed; my heart almost skipped a beat. My gaze scanned over the parking lot and noted how empty it had turned. No cars were parked across its corners and no students or parents were any longer present.

Neither Roman nor Elliott had come to pick Nolan and I up, and Marcus was nowhere to be seen.

He had left last evening, saying that he needed to meet his friends for a school project, and he had avoided my gaze at all costs. He knew that I was aware of the fact that he didn't have any. That he kept on pushing everyone away and lying to our brothers. Telling them that he was fine even though he wasn't. Saying that he no longer got any panic attacks when he still did. Almost every single night.

But he also knew that I wouldn't tell anyone about any of that, because I had promised him not to. He had promised that he'd talk to Roman as soon as possible and that he'd tell him everything on his own. It was like a deal. A promise for a promise. I hadn't broken mine, but he had broken his. He didn't talk to anyone and he didn't come back after last night.

Elliott had left to search for him sometime after midnight, and Nolan had followed not so long after. Roman had come home from work at two, and his entire complexion had turned pale when he had noticed that I was the only one home. That Marcus hadn't come back yet. And that I had been crying. I had told him everything.

I didn't care about keeping my promise any longer because it was suffocating. I was so afraid of losing another sibling of mine if I didn't speak up. And I was so terrified of staring at another empty spot on the walls where our family pictures were supposed to be hung. Where my parents' gleaming faces and my little sister's baby pictures were once hung.

Everything was too empty and dull; the house was always quiet. I had thought that hanging the pictures on the wall would be a good idea. Great, even. I had pushed Nolan into helping me, and we hadn't included any single picture from when we had grown older—from when we had lived at the orphanage or even left it.