Young Writers Society

The Way We Lived

“If you've ever heard a beating heart

A rhythm for the songs we're too afraid to sing”

My Favourite Highway - Bigger Than Love

That box was never to be touched; it was stored away on a shelf, collecting dust for my mother to sweep away, though for us we never dared to go near it. Children came to our house, peering in cracks and wondering about what they didn’t understand. It was often that they asked what that green box was and what it contained. Without a thought my siblings would say, 'We do not know; the guards won't let us in.' The children visiting our home would turn their head slowly, looking for a trace of a guard, there never was one and I never saw one either. When my mother and father were out, or sleeping on a lazy Sunday afternoon, we would sit for hours staring at that box, as if trying to stare through it. All I know was that whatever it contained would destroy what I held so tightly.

My family was not average though we never appeared out of shape to anyone outside our closed doors, there was the occasional drunken row and disagreements over our chores. Yet we lived calmly, staring at our box. Sometimes us kids felt like the duct tape, saving our mother and father from falling apart, all six of us had a different job to do. I just told everyone to shut up, because the yelling eventually got to much. I was never the happy one in my family, that title belonged very often to Keavy, though one dark Tuesday I found him crying outside hugging his lifeless duck, Pelly, as if her death had pushed him over the edge.

I liked reading, we all did, it was our escape from our torment. Paige could read from the age of two, she was the smartest kid I have ever known yet I didn’t know her, it seemed as if she was a ghost to me. She just lived in my house, she ate off the same table as me, she gave me the books she had read. Paige never spoke a word until she was ten, I never heard her voice up until one night.

Edmond lived so far away from all of us, he sat in his cramped room, his art stuck on his otherwise bare walls, a old worn typewriter sat on the end of his bed. A CD collection stacked on the only shelf he owned. His clothes were thrown around on the faded red carpet. Edmond only ventured from his docile room for meals, bathroom needs and school. I only ever heard Edmond speak in low, obedient tones, agreeing to anything my father said.

Winter fell around our cold dark home, the outside was covered in snow. Frost topped the fence Dade and I had painted green in the summer. Dade sat near a window covered in ice, his green eyes stared carefully into the dull morning. I watched Dade through a curtain made of fine material; its soft lace pressed lightly against my flushed cheeks. There was a crack, it echoed through the old house of ours. Dade jumped, his once concrete eyes now darted throughout the room.

“Not again.” Dade said to himself, before leaping from his window and bounding into his room. As I heard the door to Dade’s room close softly, I leapt from behind the curtain and ran out into the grey winter.

I pulled myself tightly into a deep crevice around the side of the house. I sat starring at the painted fence. Slowly my mind wandered, hours passed by as my eyes started to close, the cracks and beats came often, I heard whimpers from behind me but I squeezed my eyes shut praying for silence. I stayed, dug in my hole, until the sun faded behind the frost tipped mountains and the voices on the other side of the walls ceased. I finally pulled myself from the snow.

The moon reached it’s highest peak as I sat on my filth covered bed, legs crossed in a calm way, I dreamt, though I was wide awake. Voices swirled in my head, I tried to concentrate on the distant lights. I waited until dusk, my feet curled under quilt, as the sun rose, I began to move myself slowly towards my dresser, picking anything to wear. The morning froze my fingers to each other.

Our house was filled with diligent noises as Dade and Edmond woke. They skilfully finished a rocking horse, one that they had been working on for weeks and my youngest sister, Addison, played, squealing in happiness, on her new red and azure handmade horse. Addi, kept that horse for years until she forgot about it, leaving it in the linen cupboard to collect cobwebs. Though for years as Addi grew she would wake to sunlight streaming through her window and begin to rock back and forth. That morning on her horse, she looked at me sitting a metre or two from her and smiled.

‘Abigail’

Her first word was my name.

Sunny was the boy next door, I couldn’t help but fall in love with him. He was my age, born on my birthday, in the same hour, three hundred kilometres away.

Sunny was the most curious boy that I knew, he searched through anything that he could. He used to lean on my chest, waiting for a heart beat. I could feel a flutter in my stomach as his long brown hair flickered on my face. His eyes where the colour of the ocean, though they swirled and blurred when he was confused, or at times angry. Sunny was a tall boy, with long legs and slender and tapered arms. He was smart, with a photographic memory. He loved music, often dragging his acoustic guitar, with perfect tunings, across to my house. Though, no matter how much I loved his pianist skills, he could never find the physical strength to haul the grand piano to my door, so I simply wandered over to his living room. There was little conversation between the two of us, it was a friendship in which nothing needed to be said. Where silence was comforting, not awkward or painful.

Sunny loved Paige, who was seven, though she still never talked, she smiled whenever Sunny would walk in the door and run to hug him. I would beam at her olive skin pressed against his stomach, her light brown hair, tied in a pigtail, sitting neatly on her head and her dark eyes squeezed shut. Then she would gather her book, whether it was Moby Dick or a collection of poetry from Edgar Allan Poe, and stalk up the stairs to her bedroom in the attic. Sunny would watch her walk up and smile, then turn to me, wide eyed and delicate.

‘I love you Abigail.’

Nodding, I ran to hug him, just like Paige.

The science of flying was as simple as believing, it was finding the courage to skate down a ramp at the local skate park, it was saying sorry when you didn’t need to but you said it to make your friend feel happier, to smile, it was coming to school on the day of a test you know you’re going to fail, but you still tried, that was the science of flying.

Yet the anatomy of falling was austere, much more straight-forward than the science of flying, falling was knowing you’re best friend was leaving you, it was seeing you’re parents deal drugs from the window of you’re new car and knowing how they paid for it, falling just happened, there was never any justice, never anything to catch you.