Phantom : City Of The Faded

Chapter sixteen

Leaving a place means leaving behind memories, leaving the people you love behind;

  Not in this case.

I was happy to leave the foggy, lonely woods behind.

Maybe more than happy.

Elated, jubilant but unfavorably sweaty and tired from walking miles in now brown and black converse shoes.

   After yesterday's awful dinner, I woke up with a horrible stomach ache, thanks to my genius brother.

    "Further down that hill" Philip called back to us.

It was always further down that hill with Philip.

I sometimes wondered whether the guy was moving us around in circles

    "Wait up!" I shouted at Kyle while trying to entangle my hair from the thorns stuck instead them.

    "Hurry up!" Paris moaned.

Easy for her to say. She was literally riding on Kyle's back, not trekking like I was.

     "I'm coming!" I yelled giving my hair one last tug.

It was stuck.

Before I could successfully tear out all my knotted hair, lukewarm hands already did that for me. I expected to see Philip behind me, rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath but I almost fainted when I saw, in front of me my brother untangling my hair.

   "Kyle?" I was truly shocked.

    "What?" He scoffed "only pretty boy got manners?"

   "No... I ... I" I gaped at him like a fish.

  When did his hands ever turn lukewarm. Unlike human hands, it had some wierd feeling- not hot or cold. Like a person had just entered the winter cold.

Kyle always had these hot fingers that made my skin feel like a fridge being heated up whenever he touched me

   Whenever did Kyle feel unhuman?

   "And..... Done" he gave one last pull and shoved me. "Now you can stop gaping, I know I'm too hot but I'm your brother"

    "You think" I scoffed.

    "I know" he winked like he had said something sensible.

     "I'm tired" Paris suddenly jumped from Kyle's back. "My feet hurt"

    "You aren't walking " I retorted.

     "But my feet still hurt!" She whined like a two year old at the mall.

    "Would you stop being such a BRAT????!! " My voice echoed in the meadow like forest, scaring all the bunting birds away.

    "What. Did. You. Call. Me" She emphasized on each word.

   "You heard me" I spat.

   "Girls calm-" Kyle tried to stop the escalating fight.

But I wasn't having any of it.

  "Oh..look the bigger brat has something to say"

    "I'm a brat?" I asked " What make me? "

    "If you hadn't noticed we are twins, if I'm a brat so are you"

   "No I haven't noticed! We're not even twins anymore" I cried out looking at her crestfallen face.

   "What do you mean? You are the one who literally replaced me!"

    "Oh I replaced you" I laughed.

    "Of course you-" she began.

    "I wasn't the one that got a tattoo, I wasn't the one that dyed her hair to look less like my twin, I wasn't the one who got a different clothing style just to look different from me, I wasn't the one that became, a nerd and then a cheerleader just to have a different hobby from me," I went on spitting at her  now seemingly repentant face.

     "Kari, I had no idea-" She sniffed but I held up my hand to show her I wasn't done talking.

She obeyed and shut bet mouth.

   "You think I didn't notice when you started telling people we were just sisters? For God's sake when we were kids you would yell at everyone one you came across that you had a twin. Where's all the love now? WHERE THE HELL IS IT?"

    "Well you should have replaced me with Malory then!" Paris Snapped.

    "I did what?" My eyes were wider than golf balls.

    "The day you chose to go to that Jean Claude concert with Malory, that, was the day you replaced me"

What?

    "You knew I loved Jean Claude, it was our night, our tradition but you deserted me to hang out with your new twin"

   I touched her cropped, dyed black hair with golden streaks, formerly platinum blonde with a very ash tint. "This, is when you replaced me" was all I said and run out of the clearing wiping the tears that had by now, formed in my eyes.

  I sat on a rock staring at the view, it was spectacular, a view of highlands always calmed me down. A soft rustle behind me made me turn back.

   "May I sit with you?"

I answered without looking back. "Knock yourself out"

He sat beside me quietly, also appreciating the view. "You do know that neither of you meant any utterance you made?"

   "I meant every single word" I said stubbornly turning my face away from him so he couldn't see my teary eyes.

   "She is your sister" be tried to reason. Too bad for him I wasn't having it.

    "If your gonna talk about her, then you might as well leave"

   "I am not, let me just tell you a story instead, how about that?"

   "Shoot" I deadpanned.

   "So, this boy"

   "Fiction or nonfiction"

   He frowned " Do not interrupt"

    "Forget the story, I'm going to share my own experience instead." He sighed. "I had a sister too, I indeed loved her, very much we did everything together... One day, She played a joke on me, a joke that cost us both and I retaliated."

    "H..How?" I blinked.

    "I caused her family to move, to a ... Town, a cursed place, it cost them their freedom and she began to resent me" by now his eyes glittered, he shut them up in defiance, preventing tears from snaking down his shut eyes.

  He didn't want me to know he was crying but his cracked voice gave him away.

    "She too caused me... Cost me my own life"

    "You mean you're not alive?"

He somehow managed to glare at me with his eyes shut.

   "I am not as free as I used to be" he sighed "you might as well call me a dead man walking"