4

Home and Alone

"So, how's The Weirdest Witch?" Nick asked the next evening, referring to the story Lottica was working on for her English homework. "I think Grandmother Breima’s dinner of unidentifiable meat with indigestible vegetables might provide you with some new and disturbing plot twists."

Lottica’s idea for The Weirdest Witch revolved around a young orphaned witch who discovered that her magical specialty was understanding the language of stomach growls. Of course, the poor little witch was considered a bit odd by the other witches her own age.

"Yeah," she replied, "you'd think this story would just write itself. I mean, I've read a ton of dead-parent stories, and now I'm living one. Why can’t I imagine a well-adjusted protagonist for a change?"

Nick's eyes widened the faintest bit. "Protagonist was one of my lit terms in Freshman English last week. Your junior high is stepping up its game."

"Yeah, Nick,” Lottica sneered, “for a twelve-year-old, I guess I know a few things. Everybody at this new school keeps telling me how smart I am, and how mature I seem. I think they either pity me because of what happened to mom and dad, or they just don't get many kids whose parents encouraged them to read at home."

"Are you bored at school?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Not really. My classmates and teachers are generally nice, and I’m now in some of the honors classes. So, it's going okay. How about you?"

"No real complaints as long as they let me take upper level science courses." He hesitated. "I do miss some of the people at our old school though."

Lottica thought she knew who Nick was talking about. Never one for revealing much about his personal feelings, Nick had started taking extra care last year to shower every morning and comb his hair. Lottica had also noticed an increase in his rather liberal use of the deodorant.

Her brother, the introvert, the one who seemed so fixed on his own little universe, did really notice the world around him. Or, at least, one of the girls in his classes last year.

Nick’s admission about missing people reinforced for Lottica the need to make some breakthrough with their grandparents. It was now early October and their parents had died on the first of August. They had not seen any of their old friends since the funeral, over two months ago. A few friends of their parents had visited them to check in, but those had been a bit awkward and tough.

Their mom had been an only child and her parents had died many years ago, so they had virtually no relatives on her side of the family. Their father had also been an only child. He apparently had important relatives in Lebreima, but, other than their grandparents, what clan was left in the old country did not feel compelled to visit them in America.

It occurred to Lottica that maybe Grandmother Breima’s was grieving in her own Old World way. She had lost her only son. What might she be feeling? Lottica pondered her grandmother’s deep, unreadable eyes and wondered what memories, stories, and dreams they might hold. Lottica saw how she and Nick had drawn closer after they risked being more honest and open about their loss. Maybe the same could work with their grandparents?

“Nick, what would you think about having a bit of a heart-to-heart with Grandfather and Grandmother. Tell them how we’re feeling about missing our old friends. Maybe they’d take us to visit them once in a while. Or let us have our friends visit us here.”

“Yeah, maybe they’ll run right out and get us hooked up with a family phone plan, so we can reconnect with friends.” Nick laughed. “It’s hard enough to explain to my new classmates why I don’t have a phone. Can you imagine our grandparents with cell phones? It was hard enough convincing them we needed an internet connection to be able do school work at home

Lottica smiled at the image of her grandmother thumbing away on a smart phone. She wondered what would make a good emoticon for the evil eye, and then an even funnier thought came to mind. “What would her ringtone be?”

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“Most definitely a polka,” Nick answered.

Once she stopped laughing, Lottica persisted with her original idea. “Don’t you think we need to keep in touch with our friends who knew us before…?” Her words trailed off as her eyes strayed to the window where the trees outside were steadily losing their leaves.

Nick felt wistful like she did, but his voice was firm. "Listen, Lottica, as much as we want to go back to the big Before, we're now a long way from that. Not just emotionally, but in actual distance. And proximity matters. Think about the people you hang out with.

“My best friend at my old school was Jake Borden. I’m a Breima, so Jake and I were always next to each other alphabetically. We sat next to each other, we lined up by each other. That’s how we got know each other and become friends. Now, we live miles and miles away at different schools.

“I’d like to stay friends with Jake and we connect online, but it’s getting tougher when I don’t see him at school every day. So, we may want to keep our old friendships, but we’re out of that loop now. We’ll eventually be forgotten and we'll forget. I’m sorry. That’s just how things are, and we’re going to have to move on from where we are now."

Nick’s intensity caught Lottica off guard. And she was quiet for a moment before responding. "The real upshot to all that, then, is that it's not only our friends we will forget, but Mom and Dad too."

And with those last words, her voice cracked and Lottica cried the first real cry since her parents had died. Tears welled and spilled. Her face turned red and splotchy. Her shoulders shuddered with each sobbing breath. Lottica dove to her bed, burying her face in her pillow.

Making his little sister cry was something that Nick had occasionally done. Most times it had been unintentional, accidental, like flicking a piece of Jell-O into her eye or calling her Little Lottie in front of his friends. But Nick could not remember provoking these kinds of tears from his sister. In fact, he couldn't recall the last time he had seen his sister reduced to full out blubbering.

He fled their room and stood outside the door listening to Lottica sob. He didn’t know how to console his sister. Compassion. Empathy. Nick knew what they were, but standing outside their room in the narrow hallway, he felt helpless. He found himself staring at one of the many framed pictures that lined the hallway.

He’d never stopped to look at any of them closely. Most were old portraits of stern-looking people with serious expressions. A few were taken in the countryside with large manor houses in the background. The pictures meant nothing to Nick.

But they meant something to his grandparents.

Inspiration struck Nick. If his grandparents had brought these pictures all the way from Lebreima, they wanted to somehow stay connected to their past. To their family, their friends and neighbors, their people. Their Old World.

Given this new understanding, Nick began to formulate the words he’d use to persuade his grandparents to let them visit their old neighborhood. Nick would convince them that he and Lottica needed to see their old stomping grounds, their friends, and most of all, their house. The house their dad and mom had built for them.

They'd been kept from the house since the explosion, and Nick only held hazy and anxious recollections of that fateful night in August. Very little of what he had once possessed had been salvaged. They went through boxes brought to them by officials, objects like trophies and knick-knacks that had been blown clear and survived the fire.

Lottica's telescope had been the most miraculously saved of these objects and she had clutched it tight—a piece of her former life risen from the ashes. But nothing tangible was left to him of the house he had been born and raised in. He felt a keen desire to see the house. To go home.

Resolute, he stepped gingerly down the narrow staircase, focusing on what he’d say. He would be straightforward and unrelenting. He would be courteous and gracious. He would be cleverly subtle. He would whine and stammer. Whatever it took. He would—

Nick stopped in his tracks at the bottom of the staircase. In the kitchen, his grandparents were having what sounded like a heated exchange. They were speaking Lebreiman, their native tongue, and Nick tried to get a sense of what they were arguing about.

The only Lebreiman he knew was his last name. Breima. Which he always had had to tell his teachers was pronounced "Bray-ma" not "Bree-ma." In Lebreiman their name meant stone, though his father had one time explained that the nuance of the word breima was more like bedrock or foundation. Nick knew his dad’s reluctance to teach Lottica and him to speak Lebreiman had been a point of contention between his parents and grandparents.

Nick hesitated. He did not want to interrupt his grandparents, but he felt compelled to find out what was ging on. Cautiously, he inched down the hallway, sensing that their exchange was building to some kind of crescendo. In mid-step, Nick froze when the unintelligible words abruptly halted abruptly, and his grandfather commanded in English: "Say it! In English!"

The silence of the house deepened, if that was possible, until Nick heard his grandmother's clipped, cold voice, so different from the music of her other language, parrot back to her husband: "Children, we will return soon to Lebreima. Our homeland. Your birthright. You will be happy there. We have told your schools. We leave in two months."

As Nick backed slowly away from the living room and up the stairs, his granparents resumed speaking Lebreiman. Outside the door to their room, he listened for Lottica’s sobs, but heard nothing. He hesitated to go in, wondering what he would tell his sister.

He searched up and down the hallway for inspiration. All he found was irony. This old house that had appeared so gloomy and threatening only moments before had become infinitely more homelike than anything he could imagine in the Old World where their grandparents were secretly plotting to take them.