Chasing Charlie

Chapter Five | First Conversation

After an hour of playing, the shirts won 2-1.

I checked my phone seeing it was just past eleven in the morning, thinking it was too early to head back.

I started to walk away when Joseph called out, “Charlie, wait.”

I turned around, waiting for him to catch up to me, “What?”

“Do you wanna play another game?” He asked, his eyes glancing at me pleadingly.

“Maybe some other time,” I replied and walked away from the field.

“Sure, okay another time,” Joseph said, barely audible as I was already making my way to the pond.

I plopped myself down on the bench and just sat back and relaxed as the day went by. The ducks were quacking and the swans were swimming around looking as beautiful as ever. Children were playing, parents were talking and everyone was having a normal summer’s day. Nothing seemed to be different in their lives, no major event taking place.

They were normal. But at the moment I felt anything but normal. The ache in my chest seemed to grow as time passed by slowly. The pain I had felt since the murder of my parents had grown, it had intensified to an unbearable pain, able to be felt everywhere in my body, even at the tips of my toes.

This unmanageable sadness had completely taken over my body, not daring to even show a bit of happiness. My eyes were an atrocious, red colour, redder than the deepest regions of hell. Bags were evident under my usually happy green eyes, not wanting to hide the lack of sleep that I’ve had in the past few days.

At the moment I looked horrible, but in all honesty I didn’t care. My worries were on my parents. I hadn’t gotten over the fact that it was their time to leave. They seemed too young to die. My mum had turned 42 a month ago and my dad was about to celebrate his 45th birthday.

It didn’t help that my dad had left behind a business which he inherited from his own father, a mechanics repair shop. It was a good business, which started out with one small shop in Newcastle, to three shops, two of which were located closer to Sydney. This meant that we would often drive down to Sydney most weekends and stay at my Uncle George’s house. He was also a mechanic and he looked after dad’s business during the week.

As my dad owned his own business, it meant mum didn’t have to work as hard. She did have a degree in nursing and she use to work as a nurse back in Newcastle but after Olivia’s birth she decided not to. She said it was because she didn’t need to as dad was thriving in his business as he had just opened up a third shop in South Sydney. But I knew that wasn’t the reason, I knew nursing had tired my mum out. She had an average of three 12-hour shifts a week, sometimes more sometimes less.

I stared at the pond, stuck in a middle of a daydream playing memories of myself with my family. I touched my eyes not surprised to find them covered in tears. I found crying a normality for me these past two days. I knew it wouldn’t solve anything, but it was the only thing that helped me cope with the loss.

I looked around the park, seeing many younger children running around chasing other children or playing on the playground. Some hung upside down from the monkey bars or went down the various slides. I watched the children play, seeing not only mothers but teenaged girls chatting to each other.

I think I was staring for too long as a girl who looked to be around my age started walking towards me. She had beautiful blonde hair that went down towards her bottom and stunning blue eyes that were filled with joy. A smile was formed on her pink lips, threatening to break out into a grin. She was tall, long pale legs striding towards me. She looked to be 170 cm, way taller than my 160 cm. Seeing as it was still summer and it was pretty hot outside - nearing 40 degrees - she was wearing a singlet with the Coca-Cola logo on it tucked into jean shorts. Converses were the latest trend and like most teenagers she had white, low-cut converses on. Overall, she was a gorgeous looking girl.