Where the Heat Doesn't Reach

The house was cold and unforgiving, chilling Lena to the bone. She wished she could have stayed on campus for winter break, but her scholarship didn’t cover housing during the breaks. So here she is. Back in a home that was dead even before he was gone. The heater is turned off to save money. Dirty dishes fill the sink. Bags of half empty chips and discarded ramen packages litter the kitchen counters. They would have belonged to her brother, but they must be from her mother. Lena opens the pantry; filled to the brim with miscellaneous food items, but nothing she can make a healthy meal with. Costco sized bags full of chips that are stale and expired from being open cover the bottom of the pantry. Cans of condensed milk, peas, and packages of instant mac and cheese lie haphazardly around the pantry.

“Are you hungry?” A voice asks behind her.

“I just got home from a 5 hour train ride. I need to eat.”

“Take my card. You can get Chipotle.”

Chipotle was her brother’s favorite. When he had his good days, they would take mom’s car out, and he would spend the little money he got from his part-time job at Mcdonald’s to treat Lena.

“I’m hungryyy. There’s no food at home.” Lena would wine, tugging on her brother’s sleeves.

“Ugh, fine.” Her brother would say, giving in eventually.

Lena takes the card out of her mother’s hand, refusing to look at her. She walks out the door and to her mother’s car. The door is locked.

“Damnit!” She says. The cold wind bites at her as she walks back to the house, head bent down like a turtle to escape the wind. Her mom always leaves the keys in the car. Except for when Lena comes back, of course.

“I need the keys.” She says, her voice clipped, the door slamming behind her. Her mother is sitting at her desk, typing on the desktop computer. Her mother looks tired, ragged, like a victim. Lena feels like spitting on her. How could she pretend to be so powerless? Even now, when he’s already gone, she refuses to be better. Her mother holds out the keys, and Lena takes them.

“Be safe.” Her mother calls out as Lena exits the room, as if she’s a normal mother who checks on her kids and wants them to actually be safe-as if she’s not fulfilling a check-list requirement on what it means to be a mom.

Lena turns the car on. She lets the car idle, fingers aching against the icy wheel. Paolo should be here in the driver’s seat instead. She should be a passenger princess, scrolling on her phone and nagging her brother to hurry up. She feels the empty space of the car like there’s a ghost next to her. Hollow and bare, the same temperature as it is outside.

Eventually, she gets to the Chipotle. She orders a burrito bowl with white rice, no beans, chicken, cheese, and lettuce- her brother’s favorite. She sits down at one of the bar-like tables with the rounded stools, and watches the outside world around her.

This isn’t your fault. He says in the note she found 2 years ago in a boyish scrawl.

She replayed what she was doing during that time over and over again like a broken cassette tape. She had just started middle school. She threw herself into clubs and sports- cross country, student council, robotics club. Anything to get away from the house. She had left him behind.

She remembers the day it happened. It was 7PM on a Thursday night. Lena was walking home from school after helping decorate the gym for the homecoming dance the next night. The night was a little chilly, but Lena had always been sensitive to the cold. After a 20 minute walk through the neighborhoods and past the 7-eleven, she reached her home. The house was small, with cracks in the white paint covering the house. Lena wadded through overgrown grass and broken twigs like an explorer in the Amazon.

She opens the door, and a blast of cold air hits her. She could never understand how the house was always colder than the outside. There’s nobody home-as usual.

Lena heads to the freezer, pulling out a frozen pizza. She sets the temperature to 375 degrees, waiting for the oven to preheat. While she waited, she decided to see if Paolo wanted any pizza. That was where she found him.

“Lena, is that you?” Someone asks. Lena flinches, and then turns around, half a bite of chicken still in her mouth. It’s Vinny, Paolo’s best friend. Correction: Ex-best friend.

“Hey Vinny.” Lena says, offering a small smile.

“How have you been? I heard you got a full-ride to U-Champaign.”

“Yeah, I did. It’s so different there.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad I got to see you. It’s been-how long already?”

“Since the funeral.”

“Right, yeah…since the funeral. I know he would be so proud to see what you’ve accomplished.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got to live a life full enough for the both of us, right?”

“That’s a great way to see it.” Vinny says.

“Vinny!” A girl says behind him, holding the door open for him.

“Well, I got to go. Stay safe, Lena, okay?”

“You too, Vinny.” Lena says, then stuffs her bowl into her ridiculously large paper bag. She gets back into her mother’s car, waiting for the car to warm up again. There’s a photo of Paolo sitting in the cupholder. She picks it up. He’s smiling in this one, but even then she can see the signs. The smile is fake, the kind that people do for yearbook photos; not too personal, but not a mugshot either. His curly black hair dips around his face, venturing into forehead territory. He was never too enthusiastic about taking pictures.

When Lena gets back, she compiles a heap of blankets to throw on the couch. She grabs a small, portable heater, and plugs it in. She sits on the couch, and turns the T.V on to a mindless television series to numb her brain from the burnout of keeping her grades up.

A few minutes later, her mother sits on the couch next to her.

“I miss him too, you know.” She says.

Lena feels an influx of irrational anger, and then immediately a sense of guilt and shame. She could blame her mother all she wants, but she did the same thing. She ran away. She neglected.

But I was only a kid. I didn’t know what else to do. Her middle school self says, on the verge of tears.

I shouldn’t have been given that responsibility. She says, sobbing into her brother’s limp body.

But he was my brother. Lena thinks back.

Lena takes her heap of blankets, dumping them in her childhood bedroom. She goes back to unplug the heater, her mother still sitting on the couch in the grey dim light of afternoon winter in Illinois. She goes back to her room, closes the door, and turns the lock.