“Hey, Carl,” It was my younger sister, Lilly. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy looking bun, and she was wearing a green sweater. The look in her eyes was sleepy but happy. She smiled at me.
“What do you want?” I responded, opening my door a bit wider and leaning against the frame. I glanced past her and down the hallway. There were lights on downstairs, followed by the faint chatter of the rest of my family. I looked back to Lilly.
“You’ve been hiding in your room forever,” she said, playing with a hair that dangled off the side of her head, “Why don’t you come downstairs for a change and spend time with us? Israel’s here, too. It’s been forever since we last saw him.”
I glared at her. “Yeah, I know Israel’s here. Why do you think I haven’t come out of my room?”
“Don’t be that way. You’ve been hiding in your room since your girlfriend broke up with you.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Everyone knows about it. Don't you ever check your phone?”
I straightened myself off the doorframe and took a step back into my room. With my hand on the knob, I said, “I’m not going downstairs.”
She almost frowned, but kept her composure in her attempt to persuade me. “Christmas is a month away, do you really want to miss out on decorating the tree?”
I puckered my lips and looked up. “Hmmm…” After straightening my face and focusing my gaze back to her, I said, “Yeah, I’m fine with that.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Though I didn’t live in a particularly religious household, my family valued Christmas more than any other holiday. I wasn’t going to lie; Christmas was important to me as well. As a young boy, I celebrated Christmas with the utmost enthusiasm, but now…
“I’m sure you can decorate the tree without me this year.”
Lilly pursed her lips together and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay then. I guess we’ll just go do that…without you…” She glanced down and then back up at me, as though she were expecting me to suddenly come to my senses and realise how much of a mistake I’d be making if I chose to stay secluded within the walls of my room. However, I wasn’t going to buy into it. With my hand tightly gripped on the knob, I slowly began to shut the door. She remained in her position, arms crossed, lips pursed, glaring at me. The opening of my bedroom door became narrower, but her stare persisted.
I reopened the door and sighed. “Fine, I’ll go downstairs and help you decorate the damn tree.”
“I knew you would!” she exclaimed while grabbing my hand, pulling me down the stairs into the living room.
The happiness emanating from her came in waves of yellow. They pulsed from her into me, making the blue I felt less opaque and transforming it into shades of green instead. She made me feel relaxed, as though everything might actually be okay. One of the things I cherished the most was her unfaltering joy. I knew she had it harder than any of us did after my parents got divorced. She took on all the household responsibilities without complaint—such as cooking and cleaning—never even asking for help. She didn’t have time to ruin relationships and then lock herself into her bedroom for three days straight. She had to keep moving forward. She was stronger than I was, and I knew that. I would always be grateful to her for everything.
“You’re finally out of your room,” my older brother said once I reached the bottom of the stairs. He was holding a bundle of Christmas lights as my father strung them around the tree.
“Be nice,” Lilly responded in my defence.
Israel scoffed.
My father paused what he was doing and turned around, “I think what your brother was trying to say is, ‘It’s nice to see you again.’”
I looked around the living room. A miniscule amount of decorations were put up, and I could tell that the house still needed a lot of work done before Christmas.
“What do you guys need help with?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could. I was trying to focus their attention less on my seclusion and more on the task at hand.
“Well, maybe you could get a job, and help out financially,” Israel bluntly stated.
I glared at him. “Why don’t YOU-“
“We’re not fighting today, guys,” Lilly interrupted, opening a box of tinsel, “Today, we’re going to decorate the house and get along.”
“But I-”
Lilly turned and faced me. “No buts. We’re a family, let’s act like one for once.”
“A family?” I scoffed, “Getting into arguments is the only thing we know how to do as a family.”
“Carl!” Lilly’s face got flustered, and she placed the decoration she was holding on to the top of the fireplace. She faced Israel now, “He’s been locked in his room for three days, we get it!” She faced me again. “But you guys bickering back and forth isn’t going to get the tree or the house decorated!” Back to Israel. “If you can’t handle acting like a family, then you can leave, Israel! We invited you to help out, but you don’t HAVE to be here!”
“I’m not the one who said that!” Israel shouted.
“No, but YOU’RE the one who instigated him!”
My father was finishing up the lights around the tree when he stopped and faced us. “Israel,” Israel’s face fell a bit as he turned to my father, “You’re the oldest. I’d expect you to act more maturely than Carl.”
“I am mature,” he retaliated.
I smirked. “Yeah, if having a child at 17 is considered ‘mature,’ then you beat me by a long shot.”
“I’m gonna fucking KILL you!”
“I’m not goddamn scared of you,” I grinned.
My older brother and I had never gotten along. From birth to childhood, through our teenaged years, until that moment in time, we had never been functional together. Lilly had gone through a strange phase in her life where she would light incense alone in her room and read tarot cards to herself until she perfected the art of what she referred to as “fortune telling.” She told me once that Israel and I didn’t get along because our star signs were considered worst enemies.
“It’s like if you wear pink and red as part of the same outfit,” she stated, the incense smoke dwindling around her and settling down into the floor, “A Libra and a Capricorn clash with one another.”
“Which one was I again?” I asked. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom. At the time, I was seventeen, and she was sixteen.
“You’re a Libra, Carl.”
“Okay, but why are we worst enemies?”
She explained various star signs and elements. How different elements can’t get along for reasons I can’t recall anymore. Since that day, I always took her “wisdom” into consideration while the two of us bickered, and today posed no exception. We were worst enemies, and nothing was going to change that.
“Boys!” My father was genuinely angry now, as he completed the lights around the tree and began to walk toward us. The disorder between my brother and myself had caused his attention to abate from the tree, resulting in the cord wrapping itself around his ankle. As he approached us, the cord’s grip tightened, causing him to trip. He was so focused on our arguing that he didn’t realise he was in danger until he landed on the floor with a loud “thud!”
“Dad!” Israel was the first to react, immediately dropping our differences and rushing to his aide.
Lilly was second to follow. “Dad, are you okay?!” She unwrapped the cord from his ankle.
“No,” he muttered, “I think something broke.”
“Carl, go call an ambulance,” Israel snapped at me. I actually listened to him, and ran upstairs to retrieve my phone from its hidden realms within my sheets. I turned it on for the first time in three days, and used it to call an ambulance.
I guess this meant Christmas decorating would be delayed.
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