The McKay Boys

5| kensho•

"Many moons have come and gone. Don't know why I'm still searching." —hope.

Chapter Theme Song: 'Who Am I To Say' by Hope.

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Amelia: 2014

Some days it felt like time had stopped temporarily, taking some days off for whatever reason, and then on other days, it felt like it was racing toward something. An apocalypse? The end of the world? I didn't know, but the good days faded away so fast and the bad ones, pitched an awning to stay.

Meredith had gotten me a ton of brassieres and underwear as my body had changed in the space of a few weeks. Things were different with me and I could feel it. I was not as thin as before; my hair had gotten thicker...and my chest? They felt like they weren't a part of me. Or they weren't mine. And I needed some time to get used to a material being clasped around them. A lot of things remained the same, though. For instance, I kept having vivid dreams of my dad. You know when you were little, and something—maybe a horror movie or a tragic incident got stuck in your head and when you'd lay down to rest, it'd be the first thing that popped up? Bright and vivid. Well, the image of my dad with lips white and cracked and eye sockets sunken into holes were the only thing I could see in the dark pits of my mind.

In those last few moments, when our neighbour, an old lady with on and off dementia, took me to the hospital, I felt like it was not my dad who'd been lying on those hospital sheets. I'd been traumatized ever since and felt despondent that he gave the same fear that scary fiction monsters would. He looked terrifying. But I loved him either way, like a villain of a movie you secretly wish had survived in the end.

And I had questioned once; what is life? What is the purpose of it if one day you'd leave the people you love behind? You make memories, you build a home, you find love...but in the end, you would have to let go of it all. It's like we are a pawn in a game, being watched through a circular glass. Pitiful chess pieces with wishful thinking and hopeless fates. My father was a man with dreams, and he'd aspired to achieve so much, yet those aspirations were useless, meaningless, and just at the age of eleven, I pondered why we were made to dream...to hope...if some of us weren't meant to achieve them. It felt like a cruel game, and I had hoped to find the cheat sheets for it.

But I prayed I had many years ahead to search for them. Right now, at eleven, I wanted to be a kid. I wanted to run in the green fields and chase my own shadow. I wanted to laugh, to hope, to dream...and most of all, to live. I wanted to remain this innocent for as long as I could.

But innocence? Oh, innocence...it doesn't last forever.

On one of those sunny afternoons, I closed my diary and laid back on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

Khalil...

I missed him. It was cruel that he said I was his family yet was being unreasonably mean to me. He had stopped talking to me, and whenever he did, he'd add Potato-face at the end. But not in his playful way, he'd look angry and annoyed while saying it and my feelings would be so hurt that I'd stay in all day. I told Mr. McKay about it, and he said Khalil was just going through changes since he was almost thirteen. I was going through changes myself, but I didn't treat him mean because of it.

I got out of my room to head downstairs in hopes that it'd cheer me up. The house was quiet as Mr. McKay and Meredith had gone to the Factory. Keegan was at the library, and Kanan...was probably on the hunt for some other insects to...torture.

As I passed by Khalil's room, I heard giggling and stopped behind his sill to peer into the room. He was sitting on his bed with Giselle. She was laughing while he showed her his PSP game, and I could tell he was trying to show off as he fiercely pressed the buttons on the gadget. Trying to impress her, it appeared. He was arrogant for his age and always liked to overdo himself in the presence of girls. He had done the same whenever other little girls would come over with their parents. Sometimes, he'd intentionally leave his room without a shirt earning words of rebuke from Meredith.