The front door caught the five chain locks when Nate tried to open it. He’d messaged Aurora five minutes ago telling her to unlock said locks so he could come in. It irritated him that even with nothing better to do she still couldn’t read her damn messages and follow simple instructions. Nate couldn’t shout for her. She wouldn’t hear it anyway. He could rattle the door a bit more, maybe bang it a few times. She’d feel the vibrations. But that could scare her.
Nate let out a sigh and snaked his hand through the gap and used his keys to tap the chain locks out of place. Nate had installed them, along with two other deadbolts, after Annie had died. The deadbolts were a bit much, but he was his mother’s son. They only used the deadbolts if they were both home. If Nate was feeling particularly paranoid.
After a few minutes of faffing, he finally managed to step inside and clicked all the locks back into place, thick brown envelope still in hand. Nate slipped off his shoes and mask, took one look at it and felt a sudden impulse to throw it into a fire. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. But he was a coward. Nate threw it across the living room. It skidded across the wooden floor like hockey puck hit the wall with a hard thwack.
That migraine had fully blossomed into a horribly pain. Nate stumbled his way to the kitchen and rummaged through their drawers for some painkillers.
He spotted the eggs and bacon breakfast he made Aurora, still lying on the table, stone cold, untouched.
That’s…odd.
Nate closed the drawer and made his way upstairs, that familiar, hideous feeling of dread that’d been quenched suddenly fizzing over again. “Aurora?!” He called, knowing it was stupid, but needing to do it anyway. He stormed into her room—once again unlocked—the idiot. “Aurora!” He threw her bathroom door open. Nothing. Threw his door open—still nothing.
Calm down. Calm down. This has happened before. When they were younger. His stupid, bored sister, wanting to play hide and seek and not telling them. Annie and Nate had torn the house apart; Aurora had popped out from under the sink cabinet with a grin of a victorious Olympic winner. Nate had nightmares for weeks after that.
Nate checked the kitchen again, the cleaning supply cupboard.
Nothing.
She wasn’t here.
Why wasn’t she here?
Horror was a living creature in Nate’s chest. He checked the stupidest places for her; wardrobes, cupboards, the kitchen, the tiny living room, but he couldn’t find her—it was impossible. She couldn’t have gone anywhere. The door was locked from the inside. She couldn't have gone outside, not without a mask, and the Dust…
Five minutes of no results and Nate was vibrating with fear.
No. no, no, no, no, this can’t be happening.
Nate tried ringing her, but she’d left her phone upstairs in her bedroom. He could hear it chiming and found it in between her covers and swore violently under his breath at his stupid sister.
He did another lap, his heart going ten miles an hour—and finally noticed the spare keys jammed into the back door.
Nate practically leaped towards it to pull the shutters open.
There she was. Aurora sat with her back to the house in the middle of their shabby, dead back garden, cross-legged, back hunched. Relief flushed through Nate so quickly he went light-headed, but it was quickly replaced by a rapid surge of rage. Nate shoved the door open so hard that the hinges almost came off, slamming against the back wall. Aurora jolted a foot in the air.
She was up on her feet in a flash, her hand holding up their mother’s old gas mask to her face, its straps dangling loose at her back. Busted.
Nate didn’t have to say anything. Aurora couldn’t have moved faster. She picked up her sketch books and ink-pots like the grass was on fire and skittered back into the house. Nate slammed the door behind her. Aurora jumped at the vibration. An ink pot slipped from her pile of sketchbooks. It fell and exploded all over the kitchen tiles, a deep violet bruise pooling into the ridges.
Nate barely registered it. He ripped snatched Aurora's mask from her. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Aurora was still as a rock, clutching her sketchbook tight against her chest, just barely able to keep her eyes on Nate’s lips. Dust residue lined her hair, her shoulders. She coughed a little. How long had she been out there for?
Nate pointed outside. “Do you know how dangerous that is? Do you know that could fucking kill you?”
Aurora stared down at the puddle at her feet, at the tiny shards of glass.
“Do you think that just because Mum’s dead you can do whatever you want now? Do you think that—hey!” Nate’s arm moved before he could think—the mask thudded against Aurora’s temple, but the metal buckle on the strap nicked at her cheek.
Nate froze as the cut split open, as the blood well from Aurora’s skin. Anger snuffed out of him at the sight, leaving nothing but a nauseating churn in his stomach.
Aurora was motionless, even as the blood ran down her cheek like a tear. Nate felt his heartbeat in his ears as he watched it fall down to her chin. He almost got angry again. Don’t just stand there and take it. He thought. Get upset, get angry, don’t just take it. It was hypocritical, Nate knew. Nate had never struggled against his mother either.
Aurora tried to swipe it with the sleeve of her pyjamas, but Nate stopped her.
He remembered the blood on his fingers, the cuts along his knuckles, the bruises, his mother’s caress as she carefully patched him back up.
I won’t be like her. Nate let out a long sigh and fell to a crouch in front of his sister, head in hand. That headache was a pulsing beat against his skull. He looked up at Aurora who blinked at him in confusion.
Then she placed a feather-light hand on his head. Aurora’s language for ‘are you okay?’
Nate shook his head. “I’m sorry…” he said. “It’s been…” He couldn’t begin to explain what kind of day it’d been. Complicated? Difficult? Overwhelming? “Go. I’ll clean…” He gestured to the smashed ink.
Aurora hesitated for a moment. She moved to help clear away the glass, but Nate stopped her. “Don’t. It’s fine. Go.”
Aurora nodded and scurried out of the kitchen. Nate cleaned the ink with an abundance of kitchen roll and swept up the smashed ink pot and threw them in the bin.
He went to wash his hands, stained, trembling.
He won’t be like Annie. He’d do whatever he could to keep her promise, but he won’t turn into her. He can’t. He didn’t think he’d survive it if he did.
When he returned to the living room, Aurora was sat on the sofa, looking at her drawings but not retouching anything. Her bare-feet were dirty, and she was blinking really fast. The Dust was starting to get to her.
Nate took her to the bathroom and got her to roll up her pyjama bottoms so she could stand in the bathtub and wash her feet. Nate went and grabbed a a blow dryer to blow out the Dust from her hair and pyjamas.
"Really, what were you thinking?" He muttered, more to himself than for Aurora.
Nate was probably five or six at the time when his mother told him Aurora couldn't go outside. She'd said Aurora was too fragile, too sensitive to the fumes, she’d told him that his little sister’s skin would burn if she went outside, that the wailing, tiny child, with hands barely the size of Nate's thumb, could die if she took more than two steps outside the house. Nate had believed her for years, had been paranoid about touching Aurora for years, just in case whatever germs or fumes he had left on his hands would contaminate her.
It wasn’t until Aurora was seven and stupidly stuck her hand outside a window to try and feel the rain. Nate almost had a heart-attack, but when Aurora’s arm returned unharmed and still intact it didn’t take long for Nate to realise he’d been had. He never really did get an explanation as to why Aurora had to be kept indoors. Now that Annie was gone, Nate probably never will.
Even if his mother had lied about the burning skin, it didn’t mean Aurora wasn’t fragile. She was smaller than the average sixteen-year-old and was still a little slow on conversations. You would be, if your only dilemma in life were paper cuts.
Nate often wondered if maybe Aurora would stop being mute if she had more to say, if there were more people around her to talk to. Would she ever be able to if she tried? If she saw a doctor? Another thing he didn't know. Was Aurora mute by trauma or by physicality?
“What were you drawing?” Nate asked as Aurora splashed her feet about in the tub. She stopped, sensing he’d spoken, and looked at him, ‘did you say something?’.
“What were you drawing…when you were outside?”
Aurora, for a second, looked taken aback. Nate had never asked her about her drawings before. He’d sneak glances in here and there, his eyes catching at a pencil drawing, her sketchbooks, but he never asked.
She pointed to her feet, the water, gesturing to the tub. Nate didn’t understand, but he nodded anyway. “Nice.”
Aurora rolled her eyes. She could tell when Nate pretended to understand something.
He thought about La Guida, about the scholarship. Nate lived closer to the South than he did to Richmond, so commuting shouldn’t be that big a problem. But he would still need a job. It costed a lot to live and to put up pre-tenses, even without rent, without bills. Annie had died leaving them a bulk of money to survive, but they couldn’t live on it forever. Nate only wanted to use their blood money as a last resort. He’d like to think they haven’t reached ‘last resort’ yet. That they would never need to.
Aurora was all glee again, like a toddler who’d find even a sweet wrapper fun, she kicked about in the bathtub, all smiles, her cut forgotten.
Nate carefully put the hairdryer to the side and crouched down again. Aurora blinked up at him, confused by Nate’s stern expression.
Nate didn’t know when the last time was that he had a decent conversation with Aurora. It was more difficult than he thought. “Mum's dead,” he said.
Aurora stared.
“It’s just us.”
Aurora kept staring.
“That doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. It doesn’t mean I can do whatever I want either…But I'll try my best, so…just...don’t scare me like that...Okay?”
Aurora nodded, her eyes filling with tears, but not falling. Her lower lip quivered a little with the effort not to cry. Nate ruffled her head affectionately as Aurora wiped at her tears. “It’ll be okay.” He whispered, knowing she wouldn’t hear him. It didn’t matter. It was more for himself anyway. “It’ll be okay.”
Annie hadn’t been a good person. Nate knew he wasn’t either. But he refused to be like her.
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