Trevor and Agitha

By Thea

Why is Trey screaming? Why are things flying everywhere? His curly hair was flying around along with everything else in the room. His hands were on his ears and he was crouched down on the floor in our room while nothing from the cyclone was touching him. 

“Trey?'' He didn't even look at me. I held on tighter to my blanket and took a step forward. “Trey, you're scaring me. It's not funny!” I started screaming when I noticed the blood on his arm. Then something passed through my head.

I woke up to Trey shaking me. I stop screaming. Why was I screaming? I start shaking when I remember where I was before. 

“Are you okay?” I heard myself say. He giggles. 

“Am I okay? You're the one who was screaming.” 

“You were too!” I protested. “You were screaming and everything was flying around! And and, and you were hurt! There was blood!” I had trailed off at the sight of his disbelieving face. 

“Come on Agi! Don't be like that on our birthday! It was just a bad dream.” he said, trying to drag me down stairs. “I wanna see what mama made for our birthday breakfast!” 

“Okay.” I said letting him drag me down the hallway past the bedrooms of our parents and 5 siblings, already forgetting about that terrifyingly realistic dream. 

         -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

That was four years ago. When we were happy. Before dad died. Before Trey killed him. Before anger issues. Before I had to figure out what was in the present and in the future. Before I had to carry a shield around the house so I wouldn't get hit with stuff. Before mom fell off the balcony and hit her head, suffering a traumatic brain injury. Before Obsidian (our oldest sibling) had to move back from their renowned literary school to take care of us. Before every. Single. One. Of our 4 other siblings slowly left for boarding schools. 

Leaving Obsidian to take care of me, who mostly wanders around the house, taping my hand against things every few minutes to make sure it's reality, Trey, who spends most of his time out in the wood of our house, sometimes screaming, and mom who likes to sing little lullabies and call out for her husband, before realizing that he's dead. 

Today I am working on a diorama of a huge building that I keep seeing Trey in. This building fascinates me. It shouts authority (as does treys outfits) but is also only majestic in some parts. The rest of it is the picture of a building that was once impeccable but know one longer cares how it looks. It looks almost like a palace? 

The diorama is tricky because my visions are very tricky and I'm sure that I haven't seen most of the building. I've started carrying a measuring tape in my pocket because anything that is directly on me also shows in my visions in the same dimension. This allows me to take measurements of rooms in the building when I'm in my visions. So I have made a fairly accurate depiction of this weird and wonderful building. I see more of it everyday though so it is always a work in progress. 

“Agitha!” I hear Obsidian shout from downstairs. “Time for lunch!” 

“Be down in five.” i shout back before turning to finish the bit of the vast garden that I was working on.

When I get downstairs Obsidian has made grilled cheese and tomato soup. My favorite. 

“Thanks.” I say, stuffing my mouth full. “It's delicious.” Then Trey shows up for lunch for the first time this month.

“Obsidian?” he says. I pause for a second. I haven't heard him speak in over a week. 

“Yes?” Obsidian says after a second, sounding surprised. “What is it Trey?”

“Didn't you say that Esex was coming home?” he says, staring at the soup that Obsidian gives him. Obsidian pauses. Esex is the sibling that is closest in age to us even though he is still several years older than me and Trey. He and Trey had been best friends back in the day but they hadn't seen each other for three years. 

“Yes he is. His school is having what they call a spring break and he will be home with us for 5 days.” 

“When?” he says, still playing with his soup.

“In about two or three days.” he nods at this like he has plans or something but doesn't continue. After that we are silent for a while. Me and obsidian will often talk about stuff while we have lunch but with Trey here we are afraid of provoking him. 

After about 5 minutes Obsidian murmurs something about giving mom her lunch and walks off into the living room with their arms full of food, leaving me and Trey to chew in awkward silence. Trey eats quicker than me and gets up. He walks slowly to the door. I watch his every movement carefully out of the corner of my eye and am internally sighing with relief of not having to talk to him when he says quietly and ominously to the floor:

“Nice castle you got up there. But don't you think that I would have the walls be a lighter white?” He walks out the door before I can formulate a response. 

He is right. The walls should be a lighter white. Why didn't I realize this? For our fourth birthday he had wanted mom and dad to paint the walls a slightly lighter white. I had thought that the walls were a perfectly fine color of white and mom and dad had watched in befuddlement as me and Trey had argued for about 20 minutes about the color of white in our bedroom on our FOURTH birthday. In the end mom and dad had ended up painting half of the room an almost indistinguishable different color of white. To this day one of the bedrooms is two different colors of white but you can't tell. 

I walk over to that bedroom. It is now empty because when we were six me and Trey had to move to different rooms because of all of the damage that flying objects cause to walls. Trey's new room was outfitted with metal panels that are more flying object proof. But he practically lives in the forest anyway. The room was repaired so there aren't any more holes in the walls but no one re-painted it. You can still see the two different colors of white if you really look for them. I run back to my room and grab a wall from the diorama that isn't attached yet and go back to our old bedroom. He is right. Of course he is right. The piece of the wall is painted in the darker white. My white. I put the piece of wall in my pocket so I can compare it to the color of the wall in the building. I'm getting up to go downstairs and check to see if we have Trey's white in the basement when I see dad strode up the stairwell. 

No it's not dad. He looks slightly different. His face is angled slightly differently and dad doesn't have a scar on his arm. I let out a breath when I realize that it's Trey. I reach out to tap my hand on the wall but it sinks right through. A vision. Wonderful. I have never seen Trey more than 10 years older in normal clothing. I had never considered it before but in prospect that is slightly weird. He walks into the room I've just left and goes over to a crouched figure. The person is hunched in the corner with their head in their hands and is shaking slightly like they're crying. They have long golden blond hair like me. I gasp and stumble back when I realize it is me. 

I've never seen myself in a vision before. Not once in 4 years. I walk over to myself to get a better look, suddenly curious about what I will look like when I'm twenty. The older me looks up at Trey and says something to him, brushing a tear of her cheek. I find myself suddenly wishing that I could hear what they are saying. Which is funny because before this I had never wished for my visions to be any more detailed than they already are. Trey says something in response that scares me even though I can't hear what he's saying. Something about the calmness in his expression sets off warning bells in my head. Then the future me stands up so quickly that I jump back, she's screaming at him with her fists clenched in rage. Then she picks up some sort of book that was on the floor where she was sitting and stalks out of the room, not daring to look at Trey who looked almost befuddled, contemplating what she had said.