heaviside layer
Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 11:18 am
Monique was back in Salem. Home, for a given value of it. Truthfully, she'd never felt terribly at home there. Her friends had slowly filed out of the city as they moved on with their lives, and Monique had been eager to do likewise as soon as she'd graduated high school. She'd had the grades to get into a halfway-decent school without accruing too much debt, and a few friends who were willing to room together with her and make living in Boston semi-feasible. Five people in a single-bedroom apartment was a tight squeeze, but it was keeping them housed, and that was enough.
And, well, living with friends had its perks, even if sometimes they got on her nerves. It meant her apartment, small as it was, never felt as cold and unwelcoming as home often did growing up. It didn't have people who grilled her over her personal life or expressed endless disappointment in every minor failing she had. She wasn't forced to watch the only light in her family get slowly smothered under a crushing weight she'd escaped from. A weight that she'd abandoned him to.
And now that light had been snuffed out.
She hadn't driven home right away, after hearing the news. Her parents had insisted they were fine without her until they started prepping for the funeral. They'd insisted she stay in Boston and wrap up what little remained of her semester until then, and even then they seemed hesitant to call her in. She'd only just now been summoned home, a full two weeks after it'd happened. Perhaps it was only now that they'd collected themselves enough to face her.
But it didn't matter, because she hadn't actually managed to go home. She'd driven to Salem, dealt with the traffic that delayed a half-hour trip into a two-hour one, driven all the way to the neighborhood she'd grown up in... and just driven around it, unable to bring herself to finish the trip. She'd loop around to the street her parent's home sat on, even driving right past it a couple times, but she couldn't make herself actually stop there. She drove through the tangled web of ugly little homes, at once a familiar sight and a foreign country. She'd been at it for hours before she realized she needed to stop.
It was clear, at this rate, that she wasn't going home. Despite promises made over the phone, the sight of the place made her skin crawl. The idea of going back always sat uncomfortably in her stomach, but the idea of going back without Jacob there to greet her was an ache she couldn't bear. But she also didn't want to go back to Boston, back to her little routines with her friends, back to life as normal. Normal like her little brother wasn't dead, like her heart wasn't crushed to dust blowing about the empty recesses of her chest, like she wasn't doomed to watch the world move on just fine without him as if he'd never really been there and had never really mattered.
She didn't know where she wanted to go. She just knew it had to be away.
It was night as she made this resolution, this daring escape from normal life. It was night as she drove past her home one final time, hoping in all this her family hadn't seen her the whole while. It was night as she passed through the rows of houses, many of whom were probably undergoing a similar grief, but none of whom were sharing it.
It was night when she noticed him. Outside, in the just-above-freezing cold, sitting on the porch of a house she'd only known in passing. Perched on a porch swing in his pajamas, curled in on himself under a blanket, quietly weeping. She knew exactly for who. It was the same boy they missed, after all.
She stopped the car.
And, well, living with friends had its perks, even if sometimes they got on her nerves. It meant her apartment, small as it was, never felt as cold and unwelcoming as home often did growing up. It didn't have people who grilled her over her personal life or expressed endless disappointment in every minor failing she had. She wasn't forced to watch the only light in her family get slowly smothered under a crushing weight she'd escaped from. A weight that she'd abandoned him to.
And now that light had been snuffed out.
She hadn't driven home right away, after hearing the news. Her parents had insisted they were fine without her until they started prepping for the funeral. They'd insisted she stay in Boston and wrap up what little remained of her semester until then, and even then they seemed hesitant to call her in. She'd only just now been summoned home, a full two weeks after it'd happened. Perhaps it was only now that they'd collected themselves enough to face her.
But it didn't matter, because she hadn't actually managed to go home. She'd driven to Salem, dealt with the traffic that delayed a half-hour trip into a two-hour one, driven all the way to the neighborhood she'd grown up in... and just driven around it, unable to bring herself to finish the trip. She'd loop around to the street her parent's home sat on, even driving right past it a couple times, but she couldn't make herself actually stop there. She drove through the tangled web of ugly little homes, at once a familiar sight and a foreign country. She'd been at it for hours before she realized she needed to stop.
It was clear, at this rate, that she wasn't going home. Despite promises made over the phone, the sight of the place made her skin crawl. The idea of going back always sat uncomfortably in her stomach, but the idea of going back without Jacob there to greet her was an ache she couldn't bear. But she also didn't want to go back to Boston, back to her little routines with her friends, back to life as normal. Normal like her little brother wasn't dead, like her heart wasn't crushed to dust blowing about the empty recesses of her chest, like she wasn't doomed to watch the world move on just fine without him as if he'd never really been there and had never really mattered.
She didn't know where she wanted to go. She just knew it had to be away.
It was night as she made this resolution, this daring escape from normal life. It was night as she drove past her home one final time, hoping in all this her family hadn't seen her the whole while. It was night as she passed through the rows of houses, many of whom were probably undergoing a similar grief, but none of whom were sharing it.
It was night when she noticed him. Outside, in the just-above-freezing cold, sitting on the porch of a house she'd only known in passing. Perched on a porch swing in his pajamas, curled in on himself under a blanket, quietly weeping. She knew exactly for who. It was the same boy they missed, after all.
She stopped the car.