When There's No One Else But You and Me (𝖹𝖠𝖱𝖱𝖸)

Chapter I

Chap. I: Square One

Back at square one.

That's what he'd like to say to himself whenever school gets too frustrating and he has a mound of homework that he just knows he wont be able to finish in time. He likes to tell himself this when his parents would fight at night―when his two sisters have to taptaptap at his door and wait patiently for him to crack it open so they can be let it, because God knows how much the Malik children hate when their parents argue―when their father's slurring his words on the recliner, beer fisted tightly in his hands as he threatens to chip his beer bottle and kill his wife.

Zain even told himself this―rain falling into his eyes and mouth and nose and mud being the only thing he can see and smell and touch and taste―when his father died one Friday morning at around 2:54 AM or 3:00.

A car, paramedics say. A hit and run, his mother says. An accident, he tells his sisters.

☮

Now, as they're quietly driving to their new house that his parents have been saving up for years now, he realizes it. Maybe a little too slowly but he does; just as they're pulling up into their posh driveway with it's high-class trimmed front yard and the for sale stand now enclosed with fat bold words that say SOLD!.

He steps out of the car and finds himself trailing down the white pavement, watching the way his old, dirty-white boat shoes―that he had gotten as a hand-me-down from his cousin―skid across the walkway until he's behind the back of the house. There was a moldy pool just a few inches away. He steps closer to peer over the ledge and is met with little bugs flurrying around in the water, along with leaves; dark and watered-down, absently whirling around in the whispering wind, just as the bugs are.

Zain heads inside for the first time, and only because the smell of mold was nauseating him.

His hands are stuffed in his pockets as he takes notice of his Mom finalizing everything over with the real estate agent near the kitchen table; and they're talking, but Zain doesn't necessarily know about what―doesn't necessarily care about what.

The interior design of the house is quite small, and Zain takes notice in how everything is already furnished. Everything ready to be eaten on and sat on and roughhoused on and played on.

☮

The house wasn't anything special and Zain even wonders why his parents were so fucking excited to be here, and if anything, their old house was much better than here. He'd rather live where the ceiling sometime leaked, leaving them with full buckets every now and then; and he'd much rather his downstairs neighbors sometimes knocked on their floor with their broom whenever his sisters sometimes got too loud than to live where he didn't belong. Because Zain knew he didn't belong here. Knew right when they whizzed by the sign: Welcome To Roseville! A place where everyone is welcome!

Zain strides back outside, the sharp sound of the screen door piercing his ears as it slams shut behind him. His Mom yells something out to him, but Zain hadn't heard what.

As he's standing right in front of his house he feels the sun's rays beat down on his back. Warming him up from the outside in, like a heater; tickling at his skin and seeping into his pores until he can't feel anything else but heat.

There's a boy across the street watering a bushel of roses in the middle of his yard. The yard is quite tiny, so most of the excess water slips through the blades of grass and leak out onto the sidewalk and down the nearby drain. Zain doesn't say anything for the few seconds that he stands there, just watches, hoping that he doesn't have to yell out that half of the water that he's using isn't going anywhere but down a dank drain.

The boy raises his head instantaneously, as if knowing that Zain is staring. His eyes lift and eyebrows pull together. His hose stops swishing and he's squints over at Zain. And he isn't sure if because of the sun or because of disdain, but either way the boy watering the roses across the street with his hose―the hose now long forgotten in his hands as it splatters more blotches of water on the pavement―was now cutting eyes at him.

They stare at each other and Zain felt his throat seize up, like a thumb pressing against his windpipe until he's gasping for air.

The boy rolls his eyes and places the hose over his shoulder, wiping the sheen of sweat off his forehead with a free hand.

He's then disappears behind his house.

And Zain realizes it again, as he once did before at his posh driveway and at his dirty pool and with his mother and the real estate woman who's name he couldn't remember, and right now; with the boy who's disappeared behind his house with his hose.

He's right where he was when his school work mounds up and when his parents fight and when his father died on a Friday morning.

He's back at square one, isn't he?

A/N: Should I continue?

Thanks for reading! 📺