Tight-Knit Family

Well The Situation's This, I Do Not Wish To Offend

Emma

This entire family's been a mess. I decided to go back to school, I missed my friends and Niki and hopefully seeing them all would give me some sort of distraction. Dylan, on the other hand, decided not to go back for the rest of the semester. Dylan and I had some of the same classes and teachers, so I was catching him up on what he missed and helping him out.

"I'm home!" I said after school one day, trying to be as cheerful as possible. "Pickle?"

"In my room." Dylan said in a monotone. "Feel free to come in whenever, I really don't care."

I shrugged and put my backpack down in the kitchen, opened the fridge to grab some of Dylan's favorite ice cream (with extra chocolate sprinkles), and headed down the hallway to Dylan's room. The door was slightly cracked and I could see Dylan laying on his stomach, mindlessly scrolling through something on his phone.

"Hey Pickle." I said, creaking open the door a bit more. "Are you okay?"

"As okay as I'll ever be." Dylan responded, seeing the bowl of ice cream in my hands and taking it from me. "Chocolate chip cookie dough?"

"With extra sprinkles." I said, sitting down on the edge of Dylan's bed.

"You're too nice." Dylan said, laughing a little and eating some of the ice cream. "Do you want me to get a bowl for you? I hate that I'm over here eating all this ice cream and you're just sitting there."

"It's fine, Pickle, just enjoy yourself. You needed this." I said, putting my arm around my brother and giving him a hug. "You know, I'm really proud of you."

"For what?" Dylan said, setting down the bowl on the nightstand and looking at me. "All I've done these past few days is stayed in bed doing nothing, you're the one going to school and seeing Dad in the hospital and trying to hold this family together."

I smiled at my brother and took his hand, as he looked at me with the most confused look in his eyes. "I'm proud of you for being here, for being strong."

Dylan smiled at me and rested his head on my shoulder. "It's just hard- it feels like as soon as we got adopted our family fell apart. With the divorce and with Papa becoming some sort of...monster. And as soon as it got better, it fell apart again. It reminds me of-" Dylan said, stopping himself before he could say the final words.

And part of me knew exactly what he was going to say.

"Ma and Pa?" I asked.

Dylan nodded slowly. "Yeah. We were so young when they separated that I don't even remember a moment when they were together and not fighting. And we were so young when they...died that I don't even think I have a good memory with them. That's probably because their deaths are literally engraved in my brain, but still." 

"I know, Pickle, I know. I do remember one thing about them besides...y'know, the day it all went to shit." I said.

Dylan chuckled at my comment and scooched closer to me. "What do you remember?"

"We were about three and a half. It was right after they divorced and we were with Pa and he told us we were going on a trip to America. And it was funny, we had no idea where America was or what he was talking about."

"But we never got to go on the trip, did we?" Dylan asked.

"I don't think so. But maybe our adoption was the trip Pa wanted us to take, and it's a permanent trip. And I'm sure he would want us to have fun and make the most of it, and even though it's hard now, I'm sure we're making him proud."