Peter's room was dimly lit and always smelled like cinnamon and apples. Clothes littered the floor and Peter always played old Nirvana and Pink Floyd songs through his Mac lap top, which was always on his bed, plugged into charger. Every once in a while, a pop-up would come onto the screen that said, "You need to restart your computer," and the music would stop so that whatever note has been playing would repeat over and over until he pressed the restart button. I usually sprawled myself out on his bed, and he sat next to me as he kept the lap top by his feet so he could change the music every once in a while. We both preferred free hand, so we would just stay their together for hours, holding our notebooks, staring out in front of us and clicking our pens to write down any ideas we got that were worth saving.
I sat on Peter's bed and ran my brush through my long blonde hair. I used to have dark hair, but it bleaches with the sun and I decided not to dye it back, seeing as so many people in the world seem to long for natural blonde hair. As I run the brush through my hair, a million different scenarios play through my head of girls brushing their hair- modern stories, stories from the 80's, stories from the 1800's, stories from all different parts of the world. I caught Peter looking over from the corner of my eye and could almost see the same stories I was imagining reflecting back at me in his eyes. We both sat in our usual silence, watching as long strands of hair broke free from my scalp and knotted themselves with the brussels of my hairbrush.
Peter had a tendency of walking toward the door and pushing it open for me before leaving the room. He did this now, and I walked in front of him until we reached the end of the hallway, at which point I moved so that he could lead the way to whatever room he wanted to go to. He took me into the kitchen, and I sat down at the counter and closed my eyes, putting my head down on the marble countertop. It was cold and I listened to my breaths as Peter walked around the kitchen, making us food of some sort. After about ten minutes, he pushed a plate underneath my arm and I sat up and looked down at a sandwich. I smiled at him and took a bite, and he kept his same solemn expression as he sat down next to me and ate.
The following day was Saturday. Peter came to my bedroom door at 7 am and
knocked, and I jumped up in bed, startled. For whatever reasons, I had barely slept that
night, and when he came I was sitting in bed, staring at the wall and thinking about a girl
with long, black hair and a large amount of money on her name. I looked at Peter and he
held up his backpack. I got out of bed and realized I was wearing my silk pajamas. The lights
had been off in my room when I changed into them the night before, and Peter had been
showering in his bathroom. When he came out, I had already gotten under the covers, safely
out of his view. I felt like I should blush as I jumped out of bed in the pink silk short shorts and
lacy pink silk tank top, but Peter didn't even glance away from his backpack, which he was
searching through, as I hurried over to my closet. Peter wasn't like a brother to me at all. But
he was as close to me as I can imagine my brother and I would be if i had one. Maybe even
closer. ...In a distant sort of way.
© 2010
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