June
He lands in a Chicago airport with only a briefcase and the clothes on his back. They're worn hand me down clothes too, the kind that people donated to kids in needs-kids like him- and they still smelled funny after washing them in the bin twice over. Remus doesn't like them. The denim trousers are a bit too long for him and he has the bottom cuffs rolled up twice like he was from the seventies. The jumper he wears is itchy and not his favorite shade of grey. He doesn't even like the color grey in the first place but it was better than the yellow monstrosity the social worker had chosen for him in the first place.
"You alright there kiddo?" Says a very large woman who sits across the aisle of the airplane. It shocks Remus out of his daze. Her American accent is thick and so strange. He quickly learns that they all talk so loud and all with smiles on their faces. What was there to smile about?
He just nodded meekly and continued to stare at the seat in front of him. The plane had landed but it was taking ages for the bloody stewardess to let everyone off.
"You comin' home or you on vacation?"
They call holiday vacation here. Remus takes note mentally.
The woman is kind looking, with bright blue eyes and orange hair. She seems motherly and kind.
"I'm visiting family." Remus says quietly but loud enough so that the large woman across the aisle can hear him. Her eyebrows crinkle at the sound of his British tongue. Most people asked if he was from London. Did Americans not know there where other cities and territories other than bloody London?
"Ah, and your parents just sent you here all by yourself?"
Remus shrugged. His parents couldn't send him off to do anything if he tried now.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Boys shouldn't be traveling alone, especially on planes." The woman wagged her finger at him like she knew something that he didn't. Remus only looks at her with a pained and confused expression. Why where Americans so intent on making conversation? It made him miss home even more.
"Oh." Is all he says. Can the woman just leave him alone?
"The traffickers," The woman continues on, dismissing his uncomfortable face. "they get the kids travelin' alone. Your parents 'ought to have a screw loose, kiddo, cause I wouldn't ever in my right mind send my little boy on a plane from London alone."
And there it is.
Can't I be from Surrey or somethin'?
Always bloody London.
"I see." Remus bites his cheek from saying anything else. If his father was here he would have scolded him from talking to strangers on planes at all. Most especially American strangers.
"Well its on them then, innit?" The woman keeps blabbering. "if something happens to ya? I mean God forbid but it could happen. They got snatchers everywhere nowadays..."
"Mhm."
"...so maybe your parents are just dumb then. You poor kid, you don't deserve being off all alone here. You parents fault that is of course."
Remus rolled his eyes and just kept his eyes on the seat, hoping that the woman would just leave him alone. He would know a dodgy bloke if he came across one. Stranger danger and all that, his mother had taught him that in primary school. He wasn't a complete idiot now. He didn't want to interact with this woman any more than he had too, she was really beginning to bug him. Calling his parents dumb.
Who was she to say that anyways?
"Do you have anyone picking you up here, sweetie?" The woman asks, his beady blue eyes narrowed onto him with so much concern its awfully frightening actually.
"Yes." He smoothed his wrinkled trousers with the flats of his palms. "My aunt."
"Well why don't I speak with her? She 'ought to know too, that your parents sent you here alone."
Remus couldn't take it anymore, but he didn't want to yell and cause a scene. He turned his head to her, and maybe it was the surprise of seeing his poor, scarred face or maybe it was because he snapped back, but she looked quite shocked.
"My parents are dead, thank you very much."
He clutches his briefcase tighter, it has all of his possessions and he had heard from a boy down the ward in the hospital that American cities where notorious places for pickpocket. Not that he had any money to be pick pocketed from, but he still clutched the briefcase tight in his hands. He felt like he was going to barf. Maybe it was the medications he was taking, they always upset his stomach, but instead he chalked it down to nerves.
He was in the United States.
They called football soccer here. They had notoriously hard tests but he had heard that most American students didn't know their rights and lefts all that well either. They drove on the other side of the road. The steering wheel was on the other side. They drank coffee instead of tea. Well, these where all the things he knew. He didn't know much else.
When everyone stands to file out of the plane and into the airport, he feels like he's going to throw up even harder. He hadn't seen Aunt Holly since his parents funeral, which he wasn't even able to go to. Stuck in the ward in the hospital with wires sticking out of every knobbly joint and vein they could find. He barely knew Aunt Holly. His mothers half-sister. Who had always lived in America, who only visited every other Christmas and sent him birthday cards every year.
He limps when he walks down the aisle, people notice but don't say much. He limps because of his bad hip now. The doctors say that with additional rehab it will get better, but he saw the concerned looks on their faces. He saw the looks and the anger refilled his chest like an overflowing basin.
Remus makes it down the airplane and into the airport, it's as busy as London midday on Christmas Eve. People where bustling and hustling. Carrying suitcases and dufflebags and children. All dressed differently, talking in different languages. He was sure he heard Spanish and French and something he had heard of in school, French Canadian. He spotted a man with a purple turban and a girl wearing a long white dress that resembled something of a wedding gown.
There are windows and seats everywhere. A intercom voice announcing the arrival of flights, where to get to baggage claim. It was hard not to feel overwhelmed. It seemed there was so much of everything, everywhere. There's a hazy smell of cigarette smoke and a thousand different types of perfume and cologne.
He was in America.
The feeling wasn't like how the films portrayed them back home. One time he had seen a film with his parents at a trashy cinema just on the outskirts of their town. A group of men coming to America to start a new life, one full of hijinks and great comedic timing. The feeling wasn't freeing, it wasn't one that ripped away all of the darkness from his chest.
No it made his chest tighten and hurt, and his head spin on his shoulders.
He was in America.
He was in America.
I'm in America.
"Remus!" Shouts a familiar voice, and he is jogged back to Earth in time to see his aunt running to him, her bouncy blonde curls now short and jutting just past her chin. The same blue eyes that his mother had and same warm smile. But the similarities ended there. Where as his mother was tall and lanky, Holly was short and stubby, with curves and a round face. She was about fifteen years younger than his mother too, without any smile lines on her face or crinkles around her eyes.
She threw her arms around him, and he just stood there, stiffly unable to move. She smelled like ripened mangoes and leather.
"Oh Remus, I was so worried. The social worker said you'd never been on a plane before." She pulled back and examined his face, searching for any signs of distress. All he could do was stare blankly, his jaw didn't seem to work all too well.
"It was fi-fine," He stammered. He tried to sleep on the plane, but the rolling pains in his chest, shoulder and hips where aching and there was nothing he could do but sit and wait.
"Are you hungry?" Said Holly worriedly, noticing his pale sickly skin and knobby elbows. Being in the intensive care ward of the hospital for three months would do that to a boy like him. All skin and bone and scar tissue.
Remus shrugged. "Not really."
"Honey, you need to eat," She pinched at his jumper, noticing how loosely it hung from his shoulders.
"I'm okay," He says stiffly, he just wants out of this busy airport. It was too much, making his head swim with colors and his mouth taste funny. "Can we go?"
Holly pinched her eyebrows together, he was close to her height already even at eleven years old, so she didn't have to bend down to speak to him like some of relatives had.
"Okay we can stop by baggage claim and get your things, first."
Remus shook his head and held up his briefcase, making Holly's brows knit together with more concern.
"This is all I brought."
He's sick of the pitiful looks everyone gives him. It makes him angry and bitter down to the bone. The way they give him a second glance when he shuffles by or eyes skim his tattered rundown clothes and marred face. He knows what they're thinking.
Poor boy.
Where are his parents? They must be dead, at the state of him.
Just look at him! He needs to be tossed to the cleaners.
"Well that's just fine then. There's a nice store down the block from our house. We can go this weekend." She pats his shoulder, smiling after him.
She says our house like it had been their house all along. Like he was returning from a summer camp or boarding school and she was taking him home where he had a bedroom with bookshelves and red painted walls and a big window. He doesn't know how to feel about it yet. This isn't home. This is a country three thousand miles across a vast ocean from home.
"Okay," He mumbles, his hands clenching around the handle of the briefcase so tight it makes his knuckles go white.
"Are you alright, sweetie?"
"Just tired."
He knows his aunt doesn't believe him, because he isn't just tired. His chest is on fire, the medication had worn off on the plane so he felt every stitch and staple that had been sewed and stamped into his skin. The left side of his face hurts and his neck burns and burns and burns.
She doesn't believe him when he winces when getting into her small Ford Fiesta(a mate of his in the hospital ward had showed off his small toy car collection, so this was the only reason he knew what kind of car this was) and when his breathing is a little sharp as he sits down.
"You're going to love Hallows Point," Says Aunt Holly as she revs the engine, but not before lighting a cigarette and putting the bud between her teeth. "it's a bit of a small town but it's got plenty to do. Bowling alley, laser tag arena, a big park on the end of our block."
"I bet," Is all he says as he keeps his gaze out the window, clasping his hands on his lap and ignoring the pain in his shoulder.
"I'll be working most days," Holly says in between puffs of smoke. "down at the clinic. But you can roam free as much as you want. Just don't go outside town."
"I won't." Remus says miserably. Why would he need to venture when he had no friends? He glanced down at his shabby clothes, which had patches and holes in them. The jeans fraying at the bottom, his sneakers where stained and worn so thin that he might as well walk on his bare feet instead. Why would anyone want to be friends when they saw the state of him?
Holly frowns again and tosses her cigarette bud out the window. "Sweetie, do you wanna talk or sumthin?"
"Not really,"
He kept his eyes out on the windshield as they drove away from the bustling airport. He could see the famous Chicago skyline against flamingo pink clouds, the sun setting gently into the western sky.
The sunsets here are prettier than they are back home.
"I'm here for you sweetie," Holly patted his knee gently. "I know this is a big adjustment. A really big one. And I think that Hallows Point is a perfect place for you to settle in."
Remus didn't know what to think at all. He didn't want to settle in. He wanted to go home, back to Wales and back to his parents. He wanted to wake up to the smell of earl grey tea with the little bit of sugar his mother sprinkled in. He wanted his dad to play football with him in the yard out front and he wanted to wear that shoddy school uniform because that would mean he still had a home to go to after school ended.
Aunt Holly kept driving, humming to herself and glancing over at Remus occasionally, a worried look still in her eyes. He had to remind himself that she was only in her late twenties so of course she'd be nervous, by the way she tapped her hands on her bouncing knee and kept tucking an invisible curl behind her ears.
"Do you like music, Remus?" She asked suddenly as they turned onto a long winding highway. Remus nodded, but wasn't too keen on listening to American rock like he had heard they all liked.
"Well then pop in a disc," She pointed to the sleeve of CD's hanging above him. Remus carefully slipped the sleeve off and took it gingerly in his hands. He had dropped and scratched discs before, some of his favorites too. He would never forget the look on his moms face when he had shattered her second favorite David Bowie disc. She had loved David Bowie so much that Remus hadn't been able to listen to him since.
He sifted through the CD's, he recognized a few names like AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and Micheal Jackson. He had never listened to any of them except Micheal Jackson, and only because Dad had a framed poster of him above the toolbox in the garage. He liked music but wasn't an avid listener, not like his mom was. The radio was always playing something, always buzzing along to some tune or some man ranting about football or the state of the government.
"You have The Smiths?" Remus exclaimed as he landed on The Queen is Dead. A timeless British album that his father had loved. Like Bowie, it was always somewhere in the background of the house.
Holly smiled. "I did spend my summers in Wales with your mother when I was younger, you know."
"Can I listen to it?"
"Pop it in! We can go through all their albums, I have them. Your mother made sure I listened to "the right kind of music" as she put it."
He eagerly slid the CD into the player and turned the volume up. As the riff of the guitar started, he felt his muscles relax and the pinch in his shoulders disappear. He had been so nervous, so on edge the past twelve hours that he had forgot to relax.
(Oh! Take me back to dear old Blighty)
(Put me on the train for London town)
(Take me anywhere, drop me anywhere)
(Cause I don't care)
(I should like to see my)
(By land by sea)
The music feels like home, it feels like he's walking down the long hallways into the quaint kitchen where his mom is cooking and his dad is humming along to the radio. Days spent under a hot sun and drinking cold lemonade that the kids next door sell on the corner. Aunt Holly begins to sing along, her voice off pitch and a little high but she knows all the lyrics like they're written on her hands.
"Sing, Remus!" She shakes his shoulder and belts a laugh as she turns the music up and cranks the windows down a bit.
The way she smiles at him, so carefree and at ease he tries for a smile back, but it doesn't quite cross his lips. So he opts for singing quietly instead.
So I broke into the Palace with a sponge and a rusty spanner
She said "Eh, I know, and you cannot sing"
I said "That's nothing, you should hear me play the piano"
We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
"You 'ought to try out for the choir this year,"
"Huh?"
"The choir!" Holly said over the music. "You'll be in sixth grade and they have a choir. You have a voice in those lungs."
Remus just shrugged. He didn't know what sixth grade would even look like here in America. Would he have to wear another scratchy uniform? And besides, singing in front of strangers sounded like a version of hell he didn't want a part of.
"I don't really sing much."
"Well you should," Holly looked over at him brightly. "Your grandmom could sing, she was a good one too. Sang for the church 'n everythin'"
"Oh, I didn't know."
"Well you do now. Just think about it sweetheart, joining the choir would be good for you."
Remus just shrugged and kept singing and looking out at the passing landscape in front of him as the sky darkened slowly. They drove for what seemed like hours, but it could have only been a couple. They passed a large, bent green sign next to the highway that had Warm Welcomes to Wisconsin! painted in white an hour ago.
He must have drifted to sleep at one point because he woke up to Holly poking him and his neck bent at an odd angle. His chest and shoulder still ached from the need to take his medications, but they where stuffed away in his briefcase.
"Remus," Holly said in a quiet voice. "We're here sweetie."
He blinked, a funny taste in his mouth and looked up. They where parked in the driveway of a small house, with the garage detached and off to the side. A basketball hoop stood next to a row of thick hedges. Behind the hedges was a big yellow house that must have been the neighbors. Holly's house was green with white shutters and he could see a little kitchen from the side door.
Stretching, he got up and out of the car, looking at the house, which was hard to see in the dark. There was a little garden past the garage and a second story with several more white shutter covered windows.
Holly grabbed his trunk and they walked into the house. It smelled like lavender and pine trees, not all like clean laundry and linen sheets back home. There was a breakfast table in a nook in the corner, a long kitchen island with a tiny oven and awful green and yellow wall paper.
"You can stay in the guest room until we get yours set up," Holly says as they trudge up the stairs to the second floor. He had never lived in a house with a second floor. He wondered if there was a basement too, he had never had one of those either. She pushed opened a door at the end of the hall where there was a room only big enough to fit a dresser and a bed with fluffy green pillows and a thick grey duvet.
"Well here you are," Holly said, and he hadn't noticed how tired she looked until now. "I'll be getting ready for bed. I'm just down the hall, so if you need me you can come and get me, sweetie."
Remus nodded, the funny feeling in his mouth hadn't gone away.
"Alright," He said quietly.
"Goodnight sweetie, I'll have a big welcome breakfast for you in the morning before I head to work."
He nodded, and she dropped his briefcase on the door, giving his shoulder a tight, motherly squeeze before turning around and disappearing down the hallway.
Before the reality of being so far from home, so far from his parents and everything normal and real could set in, he dropped onto the bed, clutching a fistful of blankets in his hands. Remus closed his eyes, not even caring that the lamp was still on or that he was wearing his itchy clothes when he saw a pair of pajamas laid out on the dresser. But the persistent feeling of homesickness weighed heavy on his chest as he fell asleep in his itchy clothes and with his shoes still on.