Displacement // Shawn Mendes

Twelve: What Home Really Feels Like

I tried to remember the smell of autumn candles that smelled too much like pumpkin and falling crimson leaves but nothing less of a home, and then I remembered that it was here. In my passenger seat. It was embodied into a a girl the size of five feet and six inches; into a girl with shapeless hair that fell into curled wisps of smoke at the tips. She had been the candle, with a flame that burned illuminatingly– a flame that never burned out.

"Was that your sister?" I asked, when her favorite song had finally ended. I knew it had to have been one of her favorites from the way she silently sang along as she tapped her foot against the carpeted floor and knew all the hidden notes and beats that one would only know if they had heard this song one hundred times over.

"Lena?" She asked, turning to face me, only half of her face being barely lit. I looked at her for moments more, before realizing I was driving a vehicle that could easily slide off the road with a perfect distraction. I turned forward, nodding my head.

"Yeah, she's my sister. I know she looks nothing like me or my mom," she paused, contemplating her next sentence. "She got some of my dad's more... interesting characteristics."

I shrugged, though I knew she couldn't see me. "If you look hard enough, I think she has your eyes."

"Spend a lot of time staring into people's eyes?"

"No," I responded. "Not really."

Silence. I took myself for an idiot for letting my mouth blurt words that weren't supposed to leave my mind, let alone my lips. Immediately my hand reaches for the radio, anything to rip this silence to shreds, but then she talks.

"I just realized I've never looked into yours because, for some reason, you're so freakishly tall." This causes a laugh to emit from me, one I didn't even know I could release.

"Tell me, do trees live in a forest? Or do you guys have your own mansion with insanely tall ceilings?" She said, causing another laugh to leave my mouth. She's still staring into the dark road ahead of her, a smirk planted so firmly on her lips that I was sure it was never going to leave its spot. I laughed again, realizing that I was, in fact, a tree, and that seemed to be enough to cause the smirk to leave and a laugh to erupt.

"It wasn't that funny." She said, still laughing. I couldn't turn to face her, but for some reason, I really wanted to. I let her laughs subside, and then there was silence. For a split second the sound of her laugh lingered in my mind; like a record player on repeat, slowly fading into the distance.

And then it was gone.

And all in that same moment, I wanted to hear her laugh again. So my brain thought of the wittiest jokes it could find deep within its memory, but I knew I was searching for a needle in a hay stack. Not one joke was worthy of a genuine laugh from Reyna Alvarez herself.

"What's your family like, Shawn?" She asked, and I saw that she was placing a glossy coat of chapstick on her lips, rubbing them together before putting away the plastic tube.

It was a compelling question. Even I was unsure of how to answer it. Nonetheless, my mouth spoke before my mind could think up the perfect answer – but was there ever really a perfect answer when it came to my family? My mouth was moving. I couldn't seem to get it to stop.

"Well, there's my little sister, Aaliyah. She's around five years younger than me. She actually just turned twelve!" I was searching for an ellipses to cut me off mid-sentence, and leave us in a suffocating silence until the other broke it. "A lot of people say we're almost identical, but I honestly don't see it. Then there's my mom. Oh, my mom sure is something. She's basically the epitome of a 'Stay-At-Home Mom'. She never really does much. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time she asked me how my day was, or the last time I saw her at one of my choir performances..." There it was. The ellipses forming whilst I racked my brain for some kind of memory that involved the sweaty-palmed version of myself hysterically searching the crowd for my mother's warm smile and familiar features.