My mom would surely not come with us. She had found an effective way to avoid the utter hassle that was spending time with her husband and his family. My mom had recently started acting weird. She would never want to do anything more than the bare minimum around the house. She would constantly ditch us to go party with her newfound or, rather, newly reconnected high school friends.

Now, don’t think I’m one of those who thinks that a woman belongs in the kitchen or anything like that. Just see it from my point of view: The woman had been nothing but kindness and devotion since I could remember and gradually but certainly not slowly she turned into a whiny and easily offended woman who cared for nothing other than “being happy”. I don’t blame her. Years of tolerating my dad will surely take a toll on anyone. I should know. While, I had grown cold and numb experiencing the constant attacks and swearing that to the best of my rationalization were never intended to actually hurt us, she, on the other hand, was always deeply hurt by what he said. I was so used to things constantly becoming worse than they were, that I did not even bother to tally her in the list of things that would ultimately become a barely sensible pain in my neck. And so, I ate the already familiar rehash of yesterday’s lunch.

I took a shower. Twenty minutes of peace. When I came out, my sister was already dressed and was, once again, having a useless conversation about sports with my dad. Some menial argument about the performance of pro players. I didn’t even bother to ask what sport they were talking about.

I hustled my already familiar ritual of getting dressed and doing my hair and some ten or fifteen minutes later, I was ready. My dad had already put a pair of blue jeans on and a black polo shirt. I helped carry the icebox into the car and we left. The trip felt short. With the years, I had learned to put my headphones on and blast the volume to the maximum whenever I shared a vehicle with my family. Luckily, they had grown accustomed to it too so, no one expected me to hold a conversation anymore.

As uneventful as the trip was, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy on my way there. Something was not right. It was not the weather. The sun was getting increasingly hotter as we approached our destination and that was completely expected. I figured it might have been the playlist's fault. My usual assortment of depressing rock songs felt surprisingly unnerving and despite myself I spent half of the trip struggling to shuffle into a song that I could enjoy. Before I had a chance to ponder over that, though, we had arrived. I got off the car and immediately felt the scorching kiss of the sun. It was unbearable. To this day, I cannot remember a time of my life in which the sun has brought me fun or joy in any way.