'Dysfunctional: not operating normally or properly'
That was one way to describe Clara Campbells family. Dysfunctional; not operating properly. That was just what happened when your older siblings leave you.
Or that's what Clara had always believed...
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| Clara Campbell |
I was sat on the couch, Caleb sitting on the ground, lying down on his back, throwing a tennis ball up and down, while my eyes were trained on the TV that was playing something, but I wasn't paying much attention to it.
I had been so out of it for the past two days since I had seen Fallon's older brother. It had really thrown everything off. I had overhead a conversation when I had passed the kitchen yesterday morning, and I had heard my sister and Ryland in there, and something that they had said had really shaken and turned everything around.
"Do you think she's alive?" my sister had whispered, but not quiet enough for me to not hear. I had grown up in a large house, and I had trained to hear conversations like these. "No, she can't be. My father has done something, he had a plan, to get her out of San Francisco that day. He believed that she could have had a bright future, but she didn't. He decided that for her at the age of 12, and I think she is trying to get her way here, if she is still alive"
I couldn't sleep at all last night because of it, hence why I was staring at the TV, trying hard not to fall asleep. Everywhere I looked, I could see a Fallon, covered in blood, completely distorted and coming for me, just to blame me like everybody else had for her death. I knew that there was something going on. There always had been, with the Hartley's.
"Lara" a deep sing-song voice rang through the living room, but I didn't have a chance to even turn around as the person gently pressed their hands on my shoulders. It didn't make me flinch or jump like it used to, it only caught my attention like I knew it should have for most people, and know I was feeling like most people, not an outsider anymore.
But now, that Ryland had said what he had said the other day, I just couldn't get it out of my head. "What has got you all lost in your head, Lara?" I knew it was Greyson, from the way that he plopped his larger figure down beside me, before tugging me into his side all combined with a ruffle of my unbrushed hair.
I was going back into the girl that I knew Auston had coaxed out of me by bringing my friends over and going out to lunch with them. How we had had that danced together had put that small girl in me to rest, and to stop fighting the love and comfort that was being so easily handed to her from her brothers and now her older sister.
"Nothin'" I muttered, pushing my head further into his sweater that he was wearing. I could smell the faint tinge of gas and smoke bombs off of everything that he was wearing these days, and I just was over the moon that he was safe. That he only smelled of it because he had been around it, not that he had been one of the ones that was taken because of such things.
He pulled me closer, not saying anything. I knew that he would be able to see through it all, if the way he calmed me down from my panic attack in the apartment was anything to go by. "Grey" I murmured, when the whole room had finally gone silent, besides the TV that had somehow been changed to a NFL game that made no sense to me at all.
