like toy soldiers, the calloways.
it was always cold in the calloway home. nothing out of place. everything always perfect. his father was talking about something, but it’s muffled behind the wooden door. something was going down, they just didn’t know what. but it was a normal day. dad was doing business as usual. maxie was outside playing with the neighborhood’s cat. his mom was in the kitchen making them all breakfast. everything was the same. but everything was different. very different. they say you’re supposed to know when something bad was going to happen. they say you can feel it. but even though everything was the same, but different, he never got the feeling. everything was how it was supposed to be. he was woken up by a shove on his shoulder later that night, a distant look in his uncle’s eyes and that’s when he knew, something bad had happened. he turned to look at the time. 2:12 am. everything went in slow motion after that. maxie waking up, standing in the doorway. morgan taking her back into her room and telling her to wait there while he spoke to the cops. how do you explain to a twelve year old that mom and dad were fine this morning, but now lying in a morgue somewhere? that everything was changing right before their eyes and that your brother was going to become your father now and you were going to have to grow up faster? he didn’t want her to hate him but she was going to, anyway. it was inevitable. because he was his father’s son. dad was hardest on maxie, training her from the age of eight. never let up. told her to keep getting back up every time you were knocked down, and she was knocked down. every time. until she was sixteen, and her brother was the man of the house. and she learned that standing up tall was better than being doubted. she wanted a normal life. she wanted to go out with her friends, she wanted to sleep over their house and paint each other’s fingernails. she wanted to go to prom, she wanted to go on dates. instead, she worked. baited men in the club her family owned, taking every enemy to their ultimate death. that was a familiar concept for her now. mom and dad were dead and so was she. she was complicated. she was tough. he was cold. he was strong. but family was everything in the calloway household. and no matter how many times she ran, he’d always be there to bring her back in. like toy soldiers, they all fall back in line.