Friday evening, February 7th, 2020

The sound of forks clinking is the only thing that stops the room from filling with an overbearing, chest-crushing silence.

I was used to these dinners. We had one nearly every Friday night when my mother finished work early and my father had the day off. The only difference now was that we would set the table for three instead of four.

"How was your first week, London?" dad wonders, talking between bites of his steak.

His blonde hair had been combed back with gel and it makes my stomach drop. I'd never seen him look so similar, yet so different. Everyone in this family was trying to change some part of them, just to distinguish between past and present. Despite his young age, he looked older, not like the happy 37-year-old self he once was.

"It was fine, dad."

"Just fine?" mum jabs, picking up on my use of words.

Excellent. Superb. Splendid.

What the fuck did she want me to say?

I shrug, cutting up my steak harshly, accidentally scarping it along the plate and making everyone cringe.

"It's already dead, Lonnie. You don't have to mutilate it," my dad says, almost sounding like his joky self, if not for the harsh tone of his voice.

This was what my life is like now. Zero truths and all lies. I couldn't tell my parents that I was liking school because I had met some people I wanted to call my friends.

I understood that they felt the need to be protective. I probably would be too if I was in their position, but I needed breathing room. The school was my only escape. I wasn't allowed to go out anywhere now unless they knew exactly where I was going to be.

I play twenty questions every night with them and I can't take it anymore. My entire life was a question now, I didn't even know who I was myself.

"Did you or did you not see your brother, Phoenix, on the morning of November 11th?"

"Are you going to take the car on to school on Monday?" my mother asks.

The car. Because god forbid we said the P-word and bring up the owner.

"What? Nix's car?"

"London," my father warns. My mother keeps her face placate despite the slight twitch of her eye.

"The one he killed himself in?"

I regret the words as soon as I speak them. I knew better than this. I knew that life wasn't hard if I just left my parents alone, if I just let them stay in their state of denial. If I didn't push too hard.

My mother's fork clatters out of her hand, hitting the plate and bouncing off the table, landing onto the floor. I close my eyes when she gets up, storming off.

My father doesn't say anything to me, but somehow his silence is worse than anything he could have said.

He finishes off his meal, leaving me to sit alone at the table with my thoughts.

A month after my brother died and the reality had finally set in that he wasn't coming back, I realised how lonely it could be as an only child.

My best friend from Winterville, Millie, always told me how lucky I was to have Nix, that without siblings, you always had to make your own fun. I never thought about it until he was gone. Although, I doubt Millie would be saying the same thing now.

"I can't look at you the same. It's too hard."

They were her last words to me after what happened. She was my last tie to Winterville and after that, I was ready to leave. Even though it all ended badly, she was the only person who spoke to me after it all happened, the only person to say anything. I had to give her credit for that.

I open up my phone, staring at her contact number. He smiling face stares back at me, her surgically white teeth almost blinding. I almost hit dial, but think better of it. She wouldn't answer anyway. I delete her number.

Remember who you are now.

My mother would be proud if she wasn't so disappointed in me right now. She'd hauled up in her room for the rest of the night, leaving me alone with a dad who didn't take his eyes away from the television.

"Your eyes might turn square," I had said, half-joking, but my tone had come out serious and forced, so it fell flat. He went to bed soon after that.

Now, I'm just lying in bed, willing myself to fall asleep. This always happened though. Ever since Nix died, I haven't been able to sleep more than five hours in a row.

I deleted all my social media after it happened, but I still had my photos. All those reminders were hard to look at but I couldn't find the strength to delete them. No matter what, I still struggled to delete my past, even the most painful memories.

I scroll through a couple of photos, some from parties with Millie, some at school with a guy I had dated for a few months. Hidden in the middle is the most painful one of all. Nix and I, sitting on the beach, facing away from the sunset. My mother had taken it on my seventeenth birthday last May. We're both smiling, arms wrapped around each other, Nix's hand halfway through ruffling my hair. Me reaching up to pinch his cheek. 

"Can't I just have one nice photo of my children? Honestly, it's like I've raised a bunch of wild animals," my mother had chastised us, tsking.

My heart lurches in my chest and I quickly scroll past it, completely forgetting that I had kept it on my phone at all. Most of the pictures I had with Nix, even the baby photos, were hidden at the bottom of a box I kept in my wardrobe. The ones I never printed off were stuck inside a USB stick with the letter N written across it. It was a warning for me if I ever came across it in the future. That way I'd know not to look at it, not to plug it into my laptop and wonder what I was going to find.

I can hear footsteps down the hallway, getting louder as they approach my door. I almost pretend that I'm asleep, but it's too late by the time my dad cracks the door open, letting in a small pool of the hallway light.

"Can I speak to you?"

"I thought you were asleep," I say, not answering his question. I push myself up to sit against the headboard anyway. My dad takes it as an invitation and he comes in to perch lightly at the end of my bed.

I don't have to look at him very hard to see how tired he is and not just from lack of sleep. He's wearing his favourite Nirvana t-shirt, the one he bought back in the early noughties. When he went to their concert with mum. He brushes his hair back and I'm glad to see the gel is gone. It's just him, it's just my dad.

"What happened tonight was not right, Lonnie. But I don't think I have to tell you that, do I?"

It's not a question. My dad knows I regret what I said to mum. He knows that I will apologise to her in the morning, that everything will return back to normal. Except it won't and we'll just keep pretending that everything is fine until I snap at one of them again.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, playing with the bracelet around my wrist. My present for my sixteenth birthday from my parents. I used to say that it was from Nix too, but I tried to bury that now.

"You don't need to apologise to me, Lon."

I nod, holding in the tears. It wasn't my mission to hurt my parents, not after everything they had been through lately. Sometimes I just forgot that we were going through the same amount of pain. Sometimes it was hard to see that you weren't alone in these moments of madness.

"I'll apologise," I quiver, "tomorrow when I wake up. First thing."

"Good," he nods, patting my knee above the duvet. He brings out his hand, palms up. I place my palm facing his and we slap them together before doing our secret handshake.

In moments like this, time slipped away and I forgot about everything. Everything Nix did and everything I couldn't.

"Night, Lon."

"Night, dad."