Life without You...

Part 20 - Mia

Letty's POV

Inside the house on a Sunday in the late afternoon a quiet always fell over it. It was as though everyone agreed to shut up for a while. Mia sat at the table and poured over her school books, she had only three months left and was studying hard. Jesse and Vince took themselves into the living room and played video games. Usually Dom joined them and I did whatever needed done.

Today I didn't feel like doing anything so I headed up to my room and lay on the bed and read a book. I rarely read anything but Mia had bought me a book about a toxic relationship which was sort of interesting but the wife was a complete nutjob. Checking the front cover I realised it was called Gone Girl, the name of the book always escaped me. I let myself get absorbed between the pages of the book almost grateful for this time by myself.

I drifted off at some point into a sort of doze but I was also conscious enough that I could still follow a train of thought, perhaps it was I was waking often enough that my thoughts had never really stopped. Anyway, I dreamt I was the girl in the book, plotting to have Dom sent to prison because he didn't listen to me about the cars. Just like in the book I disappeared and left a trail of clues leading to the conclusion he'd killed me and also that he was behind all the truck jackings.

Jumping awake, cold sweat was trickling down my back and neck. My heart was thudding in my ears and my hair had fallen out of its ponytail. Blinking three times I tried to bring myself back to reality. Unfortunately I was so unused to waking up in my own room it took me a few seconds too long to realise where I was. I took shallow and slow breaths to steady my panting breaths. It was weird being this scared by a dream. I worried it was a sign I actually needed to talk to Dom about it instead of blindly following behind him.

I returned downstairs for a glass of water to find Mia seated at the table crying her eyes out. I hoped she wasn't too stressed. Like always I sat at the table with her. Not really to my amazement she was sitting with textbooks surrounding her. Tearing up a blank piece of paper I marked the pages with the page fragments and shut all five textbooks and pushed them into the corner of the table.

"You okay girl?" I asked her gently.

She shook her head. "I've never been so stressed in all my life."

"What's stressing you?" I knew the answer was school work but sometimes it's only one thing that stresses you. She needed to give me a specific answer and then we'd be able to help her. We could find money for a tutor if it was her English or her Religious studies or her Biology classes or her Home Ec. I'd do anything for Mia. The only place I'd get the money from was by helping Dom. That meant carrying on with the heisting.... Which I knew I would do for Mia.

"There's too much. I can't do this anymore."

"Mi, you're so close to finishing school. A lot closer than I ever got," I began. "You can't give up now. Cmon you're the brightest one of us all. If you can't finish high school there's literally no one in the world who can. Cmon girl, you're nearly there. If you don't finish school, no one ever will."

Mia smiled slightly and rolled her eyes. I slid my chair round to beside her with that horrible screech of wood on a tiled floor. Hooking my arm around her I pulled her close.

"Cmon girl, you're nearly there, do it for me."

Mia nodded and wiped away her tears.

"Talk me through it, what subject you working on?"

"Religious studies. This debate is really hard," Mia admitted as she reached for the smallest of the five textbooks. An A5 book which looked like more of a notepad as opposed to the other A4 bricks.

"What debate is it?" I asked. I'd be shit at this but sometimes you need someone to talk it out with you. Mia had a real love of learning instilled in her by her father and I never wanted her to lose that love for learning.

"The euthanasia debate."

"Okay. What don't you get?"

"There's two different types, voluntary, involuntary,it's looking at case studies trying to decide which is which."

I nodded. Her words were flying over my head so I let her do all the talking. She talked it out with me and I helped her draw a mindmap. While it had been interesting to listen to I still didn't have a damn clue. I got the main gist of the argument but not the actual argument.

"Thanks for that Let, I appreciate it."

"No problem. I wasn't much of a help though."

Mia started on a dinner for everyone and I sat down to do nothing. My head was fried. Today had been a really long and busy day and had worn me out.

Dinner passed uneventfully and Dom and I headed upstairs early.

"That was a good thing you did for Mia."

"What's that?" I didn't know what he was talking about.

"Helping her with her homework."

"Anybody would do the same Dom."

"Not anybody, you would."

I smiled at him as he climbed into bed. "I was bound to get one thing right today especially after everything I got wrong."

Dom laughed at me. He leant in and kissed me softly and we fell asleep.