Page 94 of Teach Me How To Fly

“You must be hungry, right?” I asked her, opening the fridge’s door.

“I’m not,” she replied, taking a seat on the chair beside the table. “But I would like a glass of water though.”

I smiled in the corner of my mouth as I took a glass from the cabinet and poured water in it. I gave it to her and she thanked me with a slow tilt of her head. She seemed like she wanted to ask me what happened, but she couldn’t because Maksen’s eyes were still wandering on us.

“How do you like your room?” I asked, putting my elbows on the table’s edge.

She smiled, then took a sip from her water. “It’s really nice and makes me feel comfortable.”

Our conversation felt as if we had a barrier put between us that didn’t let us get closer to each other. I didn’t know why, but I just felt it there. Maybe it was because I had a volcano ready to erupt inside me and I couldn’t concentrate on anything else but what I had to say to Maksen.

No matter how much I would’ve tried to ignore that he hid a little girl under the same roof with me, I just couldn’t do it.

The silence we kept was shattered by Maksen’s ringtone. We both turned to him and I noticed his face expression changing when he took out the phone from his pocket. He swiped with his finger on the screen, then left the kitchen as he started speaking slowly.

As he made his way through the hallway, I looked at Katya and she sighed.

“Are you okay, Anna? You didn’t seem well when I came here.”

I let a sigh escape my mouth, running my hands through my hair strands.

“I keep finding so many things that are not moral, and I need to keep accepting them as part of my reality,” I whispered, looking cautiously around me so nobody could hear me talking.

She gulped, then she let her hands grab mine in a firm grip.

“There are many things you don’t know, ” she replied, her beautiful green eyes gazing at me in despair. “Our family is doing the least moral things you would think of, and it’s not something you could be proud of, but that’s who we are.”

“I know we hurt people, but I think I just came to the realization of this more deeply now.”

“Who told you?”

“Told me what?”

Her expression changed drastically and she tried to break eye contact, but we both turned around when Maksen walked in the kitchen again.

His shadow towered over us when he came closer. My heart skipped a beat when his fragrance hit my senses, but as soon as I heard his sigh, I knew we were going to fall down the hill soon.

“What happened?”

“Lydia was found dead in her house. We need to prepare for the funeral.”

My soul fell on the ground as my body stood strong in front of Katya who bursted out crying. Maksen tried to comfort me by caressing my hand and I kept silent as I looked at my sister. I took her into my arms as my mind tried so hard to digest what Maksen told us.

Aunt Lydia was dead.

I felt many things, but at the same time, I felt nothing.

Only the numbness that scared me the most.

31

MAKSEN

We all went to our rooms the moment we arrived back home. There was a need for quietness neither of us spoke out loud, but we all knew that we wanted it.

I saw Annalise and Katya’s last pieces of souls getting shattered once again at the funeral today. I tried my best to take care of them so they would not feel alone, but it was the day they buried their aunt and nobody could take away the pain in such a situation — not even me.

As I sat down on the bed’s surface, I wondered what Annalise was doing now. Was she taking a long bath like she always did when she wanted to clear her head? Was she reading? Was she crying?

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