The Boy Between Us

“Oh crap!”, I groaned as I stepped out of the slightly warm grocery shop into the light cold drizzle outside; an armload of grocery bags and a couple of books balanced under my armpit. I knew I should’ve trusted my instincts to bring along an umbrella when I saw the dark clouds this morning. My next thought was to go back into the grocery shop and wait a bit for the coming rain to stop but then right now it was only a drizzle and God knows how long it could keep raining. Besides, the house was only a few blocks away and I was sure I could make it only a bit wet if I doubled my steps. Ignoring the little rivulets of cold rain water snaking down my coat and running in my hair, I started off quickly. Despite the slight shower, the ground was already wet and little puddles were beginning to come to life on the side walk. It was now pouring more and more and I was beginning wonder if my decision to stay back at the grocery shop would’ve been the better idea. In my rush to get home, I didn’t notice the figure before me until I hit it with full force. The groceries and the bags went flying everywhere and I winced inwardly as I heard the splash the books made as they landed on the wet concrete and in the puddles. The force of our collision sent me reeling and I had to hold on to a lamppost to bar myself from landing right on the floor. “Oh my God, I am so so sorry”, I sincerely apologised as I leaned over to pick up the slightly ruined books. “Maybe next time, you should watch were you’re going! That’s what the eyes on our heads are there for unless of course, yours are malfunctioning and then you have no business here in the first place.”, a gruff voice retorted in a rude growl. Taken aback by this, I looked up to see a tall man, maybe only a few years older in a dark coat and a brown hat, scowling at me. I raised my brows cynically at him and replied: “Maybe next time you should learn to concentrate on walking instead of using your phone, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t made to be used whilst walking on busy streets, unless of course you didn’t know it’s correct function which I’ll be glad to help you with!”, nodding in the direction of the phone in him hand. Giving me another growl, he quickly placed the phone in his pocket and walked away. Shaking my head, I picked up the bruised vegetables from the ground, the incident enraging me a little. “People are unreasonably mean these days”, I said to myself as I dumped the soggy bread into a nearby trash can. A can of soda suddenly burst open so that had to go too. Packing the rest of the stuff that wasn’t wet or ruined, I continued down the familiar street to my neighbourhood. By the time I got to the house, I was soaking wet, angry and disgusted. My hair was plastered down my face and one of the paper bags had given way, meaning I had to hold the groceries in a cluttered mess in my arms. Ava, my big sister, who was placing some fresh flowers in a vase by the window, looked up at me and frowned a bit. “What took you so long? And why are you so wet?”, she asked. Rolling my eyes, I snapped: “Well, I had to wait a little after closing time because Eric had taken the keys with him when he left the shop earlier. And as you can clearly see, its raining.” Placing the bags, books and vegetables on the large table in the kitchen, I stormed off to my room. Ava is my big sister, as I said earlier. She’s a small-time architect and she’s currently venturing into a new field as a landscape designer as well. We live alone in this house that my dad bought a few years ago. Our mother also died when I was nine and right after I was about to get into college, our dad passed away too. Because of that, I couldn’t get into college for a long while because we didn’t have enough money to do that. Sadly for us, our dad didn’t leave us much when he died. In fact, you could say that he left us nothing at all, only debts and angry debtors. In his last days, he had been reckless and entered into a business deal that ended in a total disaster and then he decided to give up ghost and leave his two daughters to deal with it; because why not? I started working part time at a bookshop to earn enough money to pay for college since Ava was also trying to cut off all the debts we had inherited. Not that she could cover a lot but we are making progress, though the progress still wasn’t preventing those angry calls every other morning or the flood of bills at the door each day. Some days, I just wish my mum were alive. Then maybe we wouldn’t have this much burden on our heads. Not that I didn’t like my dad or anything but it hurts me to see Ava who was only 28, struggling to keep us together. He kind of denied us any chance of having a real life because of his actions and that just isn’t fair. Still, there’s nothing we can do anyways but just hope; I think to myself, staring at the rain sliding freely down my window.