Iris

27 | sick

     MY ATTENTION RACED back and forth as if it were running a marathon. The starting line was my past and the end line was my present, and my mind was held captive between both. I found myself unable to cling to a single reality among the ones racing across my mind.

I took part in the conversations among my brothers and the others every once in a while, but I still let my thoughts travel back to the night we returned from the hospital and the few days that followed. It had been eerily quiet for the first two days. Claire had spent the days alone in her room, and James had barely shown up. I had kept my distance, nonetheless, for I knew that they'd been no different from a ticking bomb. One that had been activated. The time for the explosion to occur had started running out.

It'd been the fourth day when the bomb had finally exploded. James had arrived back home late that night with a bottle of alcohol in his hand and a tinge of red tainting the edges of his eyes. He'd been evidently drunk, his clothes disheveled and his anger resurfacing.

I had remained hidden behind the wall, watching. I had watched as he'd spoken to Claire, their words incoherent. She'd said something about needing money for the treatment, and that had been all it took for James to throw the bottle across the room, breaking it into tiny shreds. My heart had halted with a paralyzing terror, and I had started to walk away, too afraid of what was yet to come.

And I'd thought that I had managed to escape. I'd convinced myself that I had been safe in the cold basement with nothing more than a blanket shielding my body from the cold. But I had been wrong. I'd been too wrong.

Blinking rapidly, I set a barrier between my past and my thoughts. I separated them from each other, forbidding them from blending again. A soft sigh brushed past my lips as my chin rested atop my open palm, and my gaze settled on the table before me.

"Your hair looks so pretty." I heard Lily whisper to me.

A grin crept onto my lips as my neck craned slowly so that I faced her. "Nol made it for me, thank you."

"Oh, he did?" The corners of Lily's lips lifted into a subtle smile. "He's picking up skills, huh?" We both chuckled. "I'm truly impressed."

"Nolan is cool," I told Lily, keeping my voice quiet so that the rest of my brothers didn't hear our conversation. "We always read together, and the food he makes is soo good."

Lily's grin only widened. "Oh, he definitely is. How are your studies going?"

Shrugging, I let my gaze drift to my hands as I began to fiddle with my fingers. "They're okay. I like English classes. The stories we read are so fun." I thought about what I said for a minute. Then, I looked at Lily. "Science classes are fun, too. I'm studying the body systems."

"Oh." Lily's eyes glimmered underneath the bright lights bouncing throughout the entirety of the restaurant. "I went to med school because of biology classes."