Graffiti Girl // Michael Clifford

|| 6 ||

I'm holding onto a fairytale. We're moving forward but we're not there yet.

«Homesick» A Day to Remember

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"Hey mom! I'm home!" I call and close the front door behind me.

"In the kitchen!" my mom's voice called back to me.

I walk down through the corridor before turning left to the large open kitchen. Our house is nothing ornate, but it is nice and spacious. It's a typical suburban home, I suppose. It is just the three of us so we don't need too much. Still, it's two stories and has four bedrooms. We use the extra one as a bonus room type of thing. But nowadays, it is mainly where my little brother plays video games and hangs out when his friends come over. He is only eleven years old so games and bugs are still his favorite toys.

If it's not the bonus room, he's in the treehouse in the backyard. That is my favorite part of this house: the backyard. I suppose it is nothing too special, either. It has a back porch and a fire pit. But the part I love the most are the trees that go around the perimeter. At the farthest edge of the yard, there is a big patch of them dense enough that if you go further into it, you can't see much of the house. That's my favorite place.

There is a swing on one of the furthest trees. My dad put it in when I was younger so I would stop begging to go to the park every single day just to play on the swings. I've always loved the swings. They're so free and calming. When he put it in, I spent hours a day back there. I'd bring out a picnic blanket of some sort and maybe a few of my toys and hang out beside my swing, playing on it on and off throughout the day. I'd climb the tree and hide up there. Eventually my dad added in a little perch. It was basically just a wood floor added between the center of the branches. I kept pillows and blankets up there, too. For years that tree became my second home and hideaway. It was perfect when I was a little older and my parents started fighting. I would spend hours out there whenever things got too tense in the house. Sometimes I'd bring my brother or tell him to go to his treehouse. Luckily we both had seemed to find a home in the trees so my dad made him a treehouse of his own. His had walls and windows and all that, though. Even after my dad moved out and our parents divorced, they held that feeling of safety. Especially my swing.

"Where's Hayden?" I ask my mom, leaning over the kitchen counter to look at what she's making. It looks like chicken and dumplings, which sounds perfect with this weather.

"I think he's in the play room," she answers, wiping her face with the back of her arm so she doesn't get the flour from the dumplings everywhere.

"Okay! I'm staying for dinner then I promised R I'd meet her at ten."

"Okay! That's fine. Just be careful," she says, like she's always reminding me. She knows about the warehouse but she doesn't know about all the drinking or boys who have been there over the years. I never correct her on the information, of course. No need for her to know now.

"When will dinner be ready?"

"Hmm... about fifteen minutes."

I nod and turn to head upstairs to see what my brother is up to. Nowadays I spend most of my time at the warehouse, and stay between my mom and dad's houses the days I don't, so I don't see him that much. We're still close. Whenever we are around other people, they always get annoyed at the way we had our own little language. It was mainly just inside jokes and shit like that but we could talk for hours between the two of us and everyone else would be oblivious. I think it probably started because during the divorce, we kinda clung to each other. It all worked out in the end, I suppose. Although my brother isn't as close to my dad as I am, now. He was still pretty young when he moved out, and the years leading up to it he wasn't the happiest person to be around, so they never really formed that relationship.