Intuition.

When I got home, the house was empty not that it was so surprising. I sighed into the silence and let my bag drop to the ground. My stomach grumbled and a pain shot up my middle. I ignored it.

In the kitchen there was a stack of dishes; Dad had obviously been home today but not long enough to see me, of course. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes together. When the water was running hot out of the tap I added some detergent and began washing dishes.

By the time I was done my hands were raw red and pruny. I let the water drain, realising I had only wasted twenty minutes of the night that lay ahead of me. I groaned. My piano sounded pretty inviting but I knew I would miss Gerard’s phone call if I started playing.

Sighing, I realised I’d have to find something else to do. It gets pretty boring always being an only child, home alone. I trudged upstairs with my schoolbag and began on some English homework that had been given out this afternoon and wasn’t due for another five weeks.

It was an essay. Essays weren’t really my forte but I worked hard to get it right. I was finished my draft by the time Gerard called.

“Hello?” I answered, excited already. I knew it was him; caller ID.

“Hey new kid,” he greeted me. “What are you doing?”

“Finishing off an essay draft.”

“The one we were given today?”

“Yeah.”

“I haven’t even looked at the topic yet! Jesus,” he laughed.

I smiled, even though he couldn’t see me. “I had nothing better to do.”

“Dad at work?”

“Yup,” I replied, adding some forced cheer.

“So what about Friday? Is it all good?” Gerard asked, changing the subject quickly.

“Yeah, it’s fine. I texted my Dad and he was all for it.” I grinned; it was going to be so fun. The last person I had over at one of my houses was Charlie and that was a while ago.

“Cool. Mikey! I’m on the phone, go away…no I will not play Tekken with you. I just said I’m on the phone. I’ll play later. Sorry about that, little brother,” he chuckled. Although he was yelled at Mikey, he was still loving about the way he did it. Once again, incredible. This guy was just above and beyond the normal expectations.

“So, what have you been doing tonight?”

“Nothing much. I played the Xbox with Mikey but got bored pretty quickly. Then we played Guitar Heroes. Then I was talking on msn to Lyn-Z,” he listed.

Lyn-Z.

“Is Lyn-Z the girl you were with on my first day?” I asked quietly.

“Yeah. I had my hand on her thigh. I got in trouble for that, grumpy old Mr. Smith,” he chuckled.

“Oh, do you like her?” I hadn’t heard anything about Gerard liking anyone but I shouldn’t be so surprised. He probably did like her or someone at least.

“Nah,” he laughed. “She likes me but I don’t like her. She’s too…I don’t know. I just don’t like her though.”

I let out a single breath that I wasn’t even aware of holding.

“Oh, alright…What movies do you want to watch on Friday?”

“Something funny. And maybe scary,” Gerard suggested. I smiled, of course. Funny and scary. I rolled my eyes.

“I’ll find something,” I assured him. “You like pizza?”

“Yeah, I do. I have some vouchers I can bring for this cool little pizza shop that’s near your house, do you want me to bring them?”

“Yeah, okay. Sounds good.”

”Geraaaaaaard!”

Gerard sighed. “I have to go, my little brother will just not let Tekken go,” he laughed, probably at his brother who didn’t sound too far away from him.

“Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, Gerard,” I chuckled.

“Thanks, mate. See you.”

After I hung up the phone, I went downstairs to the kitchen. In the fridge there wasn’t much to eat. Well, for me to eat. My Dad had stocked the whole fridge up with sausages and meaty things. Probably an attempt to get me to eat meat. It would have worked better if he was actually around to enforce it.

I found some lettuce in the crisper and peeled a few leaves off, munching on them as I remembered Charlie.

”Come one, Frank! Please, just one reading. It’s all I ask,” Charlie begged. We were sitting in my old room in the dark on either side of a big candle she had lit a half hour before.

I grinned at her, still pretending to be reluctant. “I don’t know…”

“Oh, stop being such a pansy and let me do a reading,” she huffed.

I laughed at her. “Yeah, go on then. What do I have to do?”

“Just shuffle these,” she said as she passed me some oversized cards with unusual markings and pictures on them, “and then put them in three piles like so.”

I copied what she had done a few moments before when she did a reading for herself and laid out my three piles. She turned a few cards over and asked me to pick a few out before setting them in a weird sequence. I watched curiously.

“So…what now?”

“Ssssh, hang on a moment,” she whispered, her expression locked in a frown. She shook her head slightly and the little trinket things she had in her hair jingled. Her style was unusual, like hippy meets Bollywood.

“This is…very strange. A lot of your cards contradict themselves in meaning. Like, take this one for example, it means that an unexpected love which will be prosperous will come your way soon. But this card over here signifies it will also be painful and unprosperous and because of it’s placing it’s talking about the same love,” she explained, only pausing to reach for her tarot book.

“But this one, in the middle, is confusing me. It signifies hunger, but with this reading I’m unsure if it’s emotional, physical or mental. I just don’t know. Wow, this is doing my head in. The only bit I understand is the love one. The love will be unusual, unexpected. So at your new school some boy will catch your eye,” she grinned.

I was sucked in…until the last sentence. I laughed. “You, my dear Charlie, are full of shit.”

“Oh really? Don’t take me and my cards so lightly. You might be surprised. I may not have been able to interpret all of it but I still know that the part I did will be of relevance later,” she shot back, smiling.

“Whatever you say,” I taunted, laughing along with her.

“Can I decorate your converses with white out?” she suddenly asked.

“If you can stand them smelling of my deodorant. I kind of drowned them in it after walking home today,” I told her.

Her expression turned sympathetic. “He forgot didn’t he?”

“He’s busy,” I whispered, “he didn’t mean to.”

“What kind of parent forgets to pick their kid up half an hour after they called? I know he’s a doctor, I know he’s busy but that doesn’t excuse him forgetting to pick you up from school the one day he said he would, Frank,” she whispered back.

I had to fight tears; I knew she was right. I brushed them away quickly and faked a smile. “It wasn’t a big walk anyway.”

“It’s the middle of summer, its burning hot outside and it’s a six mile walk.”

“Are you going to decorate my shoes or what?” I mumbled.

“Frank…” she sighed.

“Drop it, Charlie. Please?” I begged her. She looked at me for a moment before nodding and changing her gloomy expression to a cheery one.

“So…what am I going to put on your connies?”

I missed her. Missed her so much. I wish I could call her but she’d probably be asleep. Groaning, I walked into Dad’s study and picked up the phone. I was halfway through dialling Charlie’s number when I saw a photo of Mum sitting on Dad’s desk. A photo album was sitting next to it.

I put the phone down on the hook and stared at it, I didn’t want to open it and look at it. I knew the photo album well. It was the one that held all the beautiful yet painful memories of the last two years of my Mum’s life.

I stood and stared at the album for a long time, just thinking of my mother. Finally, I decided to look at it. I picked it up and took out to the lounge room where I sat with my legs tucked beneath me. Slowly, I opened the cover and traced my fingers over my mother’s old fashioned script-like handwriting. Frank, Linda and Cheech.

I took a deep breath and turned to the first page. The first picture was of me, my Dad and her. She looked so thin, so…skeletal. Grimacing, I looked at the others. In every photo she was smiling, happy and so full of love. In most she was holding me tight, one arm slung around my Dad’s neck, always smiling at one of us.

I turned a few more pages before I got to one that I remembered vividly. My Mum was wearing a white summer dress that hung off her bony frame like rags yet she still looked beautiful. She was sitting in the middle of our old yard; the grass was so green there. White blossoms swirled in the wind around her, landing in her hair, on her lap, everywhere.

I’m in the picture to. I’m spinning around just next to her and she’s watching me. Six year old me. Her face is dull and drawn but there’s a radiance that always lights it up whenever she’s looking at me or Dad.

A tear splashes onto the plastic covering the photo and I drastically wipe at the tears that are now streaming down my face. I miss her so much. She was my world for my whole life until she died and when she was gone, Iwas am distraught. I didn’t talk to anyone for weeks after the funeral. I wouldn’t say a word and I wasn’t really ever forced to.

Everyone understood how close she and I were. She was my everything as much as I was hers.

And, even now, I can feel the hollowness I felt when I heard the monitor, attached to my mother, stop beeping.