The Pages Between Us

Chapter 3

Apollo's POV:

Books smelled like heaven. Yes, I was the weirdo who would smell books. But they had a smell, something that would send straight dopamine to my brain, a drug that could a peak like no other. It was silly, but I grew up going here. I remember walking hand in tow with my mothers as we browsed for hours, she'd get tired and we'd sit and read the books we picked out.

I didn't realize she was always tired because she was battling breast cancer. She never told me, thought it would go away and I didn't have to suffer growing up with memories of her dying. It never went away, it simply got worse. When I believed she was at work, she instead was at the hospital. She never lost hair, and that's how she knew the treatment wasn't working.

Simply, she just decided to live those years to the fullest. She homeschooled me for one of the years, and I thought it was for some random reason. She'd take me on trips around the state, sometimes we'd go to Oregon or California. She'd take me to historical sights, and as many bookstores as possible. We'd buy a book we really wanted from those bookstores that we visited in every new city or state. I still have many of them, even though most of them were Dr. Suess since I was so young.

After she died, my father remarried and had a whole new family with his other wife. My half sister, Alicia, is only four, but she's a joy to me. Even though her mother hates me, and my father is rarely around, I never let Alicia see that.

"Pollo," I heard the faint voice of the sweetest kid say as she walked into the aisle I was standing in, staring at the beautiful cloth bound books. "Can I get this?" Her doe eyes blinked endlessly as she butted out her lip. God I hated when she did that. I knew what guilt tripping felt like, but she was a master at it.

"Of course, tatter tot," I reply. She beamed the second I agreed, coming up to hug my leg. Alicia was shorter than most kids her age, which wasn't by a lot but still made her sad. Her head came just below my hip.

"Hey," she frowned when she realized I called her the childish nickname. "I told you to not call me that, I'm a big girl now."

My laugh was loud and contagious, how much I miss smiling when she isn't around to help me do it. "You will forever be my tater tot, until you do something equally stupid that will cause a new nickname." When she was three, she would always steal my tater tot's off my plate, and sneak them into her pocket until she had tons, then after I'd tuck her into bed, she'd eat them before falling asleep. I didn't know this until I caught her eating tater tot's at 12 am one night.

"But I stopped doing it!" She whined. Instead of playing into her whining, I grabbed the book she had and read the title. It was some silly fairy book, a series that is as old as me. "Grace the Fairy?" I say the title aloud.

"She's very pretty, and her hair is cool and wavy and purple!!" She jumps up and down in excitement. Grabbing at her own hair, and pouting, she says. "I wish I had wavy purple hair." My heart broke.

Alicia was so beautiful. She had bright green eyes, and strikingly blonde hair, she was the sweetest kid with the kindest soul. She reminded me so much of my mother, sadly she didn't have any of her DNA, but she would have loved the adorable kid who shared the same love for books as me.

"You are just as beautiful," I tell her, kneeling to her level. She was playing with her hair, twirling on her heels as she looked at me. Emerald eyes casted in a glow from the near tears and bad lighting.