where ghosts wander || ONC 2022

It's not that I don't like my ex best friend — it's just that it really sucks that she's dead.

It really sucks to realize that apparently she's known where to find me for all these years, and yet never once been bothered to even write me a letter, let alone come to visit.

It really sucks to realize that I've probably been looking for a ghost, all these years, or if not, then for someone who really didn't want to be found.

And it sucks even worse to acknowledge that there might be a reason why she's here at my parents' house instead of at my apartment — she probably didn't want to see me.

No one expected me to be here, after all.

Least of all my parents themselves, going by the looks on their faces that don't really change even as the seconds pass and I start to feel weird, standing in the doorway to the kitchen like that.

The kitchen cabinet door flaps again, and I startle, then use the movement to bend down and pick up the brick, desperately trying to cover my reaction.

Several things happen at once, then.

My mother seems to recognize the brick and gasps, holding onto my father's arm with an unreadable look on her face.

My father's expression turns thunderous, then stormy, then stony and weirdly resigned. He yells for my aunt, apparently having realized who's to blame for my being here.

And then my sleeves ride back as I straighten up again, exposing the tattoos on my wrists completely, and Father's voice takes on a frantic edge when he calls for her again.

I mostly only have eyes for Priya, though.

She looks... good, I guess.

Healthy.

Grown up.

Dead.

She looks back at me just as awkwardly as I look at her.

There's a weirdly intense look in her eyes, though, and it gets worse when she sees the tattoos, and her eyes light up in obvious recognition.

"Is that—" she starts asking, but gets interrupted when my aunt finally appears in the doorway behind me, her voice carrying.

"What are you yelling about, Armand?"

"It's time," my father says, cryptic as ever.

Aunt Saskia pushes past me into the kitchen, soothes the still upset cabinet with merely a touch. She narrows her eyes and puts her hands on her hips as she stares her brother down.

"What are you talking about?"

A very reasonable question, I think.

He doesn't give a straight answer, though (I don't know why I even expected him to). 

Instead, he purses his lips and waves a hand in my direction, without quite looking at me, as if that first moment of shock was all that he could bear for a day. 

(I don't know why that still hurts, the thought that I disgust him that much. I should be used to it by now.)