So it turns out Mateo did care that she spray-painted her wall. He cared a lot actually. And the expression on his face right now is… interesting to say the least. It's like if anger, frustration, exasperation, sadness, and constipation were all rolled into one emotion. He's bouncing his knee so fast that the fork resting on her plate was vibrating. Skye knew that he wouldn't be happy, but she honestly didn't think it was this big of a deal. It is just paint after all; not like she ruined his car.

"Why did you ruin your wall? What was the point of doing it?" Skye thought it was pretty obvious why she did it, so at this Mateo probably just wants to argue for the sake of arguing.

"I-"

"And HOW did you get spray paint if you're underaged?"

Shit. She didn't think he would think of that. "When I went and bought it the guy didn't ask for my ID or anything." Monica snorts in response and that just seems to make Mateo even more agitated.

"Oh come on Mateo, it isn't like she set something on fire or broke in somewhere. She just spray painted a mural on her wall."

"Abstract mural." Skye mumbled the correction.

"It doesn't really matter what you call it Skye! You ruined the wall in your room without permission. Dad would have never let you do this."

"No he wouldn't of wanted me to Spray paint it, but he wouldn't have cared if I painted my wall. He would have let me do it if helped me relieve stress! Which if you remember, is what my therapist suggested."

"She suggested drawing. NOT defacing our house!"

Our? Is he really saying our? He's barely lived here, and he didn't even visit often before all of this. Sure he called Dad three times a week, but he visited max two times in the three years we've lived here.

"I've literally lived here longer than you. I know you own it now, but this is more my home than yours. You've barely even been here."

"Well we live here now. So you're gonna have to get used to the change." Mateo's phone started ringing. Before he answered it he looked back to me and said, "you're grounded for a week."

Skye looks to Monica as he walks away from the table, "honestly, I'm surprised It's only a week."

She shakes her head a little with a smile. "He's mad, but I think he's just trying to establish himself as the authority figure." She collects her and Mateo's dishes to put in the sink and Skye follows her with her own dishes. "I know you guys aren't close. But he is trying, this is new to all of us."

"Yeah I know." As annoyed as she is, she'll admit that he is trying. Fifty percent effort, but he's trying.

"Go get ready. I'll take you to your appointment since I have to use the car today."

Getting ready is probably a loose term since she's just going to put on her set of soft sweats and put on sunscreen and brow gel. She heads back upstairs trying to decide if she should braid her hair or just leave it in the bun it's in now.


The office always smells like eucalyptus oil. Dr. Pahal said that she picked eucalyptus because it soothes physical discomforts and that it makes people feel like they're at a spa. Her logic is that mental health, specifically one's mental comfort, is just as important as their physical health. So why should therapy not be seen as a mental spa? Well Skye has a few reasons why not. Therapy is more draining than it seems. Experiencing something and then having to talk about it to someone and delve into it is exhausting. She gets that you have to talk about traumatic losses, but a lot of the time she just wishes she doesn't have to talk about it again. She really hopes the eucalyptus oil is working today, because last week Dr. Pahal and her agreed to talk about her family bonds, so she's gonna need an excess of oil today.

Skye gets comfortable on the small couch across from where Dr. Pahal sits in her chair, with the oil diffuser that sits on a table behind the couch Skye is on and running.

And so, let the emotions being.

"Last week we both agreed that we'd talk about your family relationships and where you think you stand in them. Is there anywhere you'd like to start?" A good amount of silence followed her question.

The only relationship Skye has with a family member that would benefit from therapy is her relationship with Mateo. "Do you mean like bad or good relationships?"

"Whichever you want to discuss." She hates it when Dr. Pahal does that. Sometimes she should just give a straight answer.

"I think Mateo is a good one to start with. I feel like my other relationships and their problems will steam from that." Or at least it feels like Mateo and her relationship is the center of the mess.

"Ok do you want me to ask prompting questions or do you just want to talk?"

"Prompting."

"When you were younger, what did you think of Mateo?"

"I thought he was so cool, but he was already twenty-three when I was eight, so we almost never interacted. Now that I think about it, he was more of a distant uncle than an older brother. He come back home during holidays and some random drop ins, but he was already in law school when I was a kid and before that he was a teenager and didn't really want to spent time with a baby."

"Describe your emotion to him visiting as you grew up."

"Always happy. And excited. I don't think I've ever actually changed much in relation to spending time with him. I want to, but when ever we actually do it's either awkward or ends badly." She shifts to lean more forward. "It's like I'm an only child. I every time there's a chance for us to spend time together or do something that normal siblings do, I get so excited, deep down." She gestures towards her chest. "I don't know how to describe it other than I feel in deep down, like I want it so badly, to experience all the sibling pros and cons my friends talk about, but it never happens. We never connect." She swallows. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder if he even thinks of me as a sister." She's never said any of this to anyone before.

"In what way do you mean?"

"I don't think he knows me. And I don't think he ever really tried too. Since we're so far apart I feel like we never really developed that bond. Like I said it's like I'm an only child, but not. It's weird. I always wondered why we didn't bond at all. I never wanted to ask anyone about it."

"Well what questions did you want to ask?" Dr. Pahal asks as she shifts in her seat.

Almost instantly, a lump forms in her throat. This is why she never asked. Because whenever she tried to form the words, she could feel the wetness in her eyes and the dry lump in her throat forming. "Is-" She pauses to take a few deep breaths and try to blink away her tears. "Is the wedge between us because I have a different mom? Did he even like me for the first years of my life? Because he's barely in my childhood videos."

The session went on form there touching on some aspects of her and Mateo's relationship in relation with their circumstances.

"I think you need some family time, but easy into it. Maybe start with more of a group activity and slowly work into building a relationship with your brother one-on-one. We'll touch more on this next week. Which reminds me," She stands up to walk Skye out into the waiting room, "would you mind moving our weekly appointments to Sundays instead of Saturday?"

"What times are available? Because I have church on Sundays." She asks as they reach the receptionists desk. Dr. Pahal goes behind it to look through her appointment schedule on the computer.

"Do Sundays at 10:30 am work for you?"

She normally goes to the ten am serum, so now she's gonna have to wake up and go to the 8:15 one.

"Yeah that works." Oh god. She's definitely going to need some coffee.

She tried to have a "group activity" where her and Mateo would spend some time together, but in the car back home Monica was talking about how it was date night for them tonight and how excited she was to try the food at the restaurant they are going to. So She decided to wait until tomorrow night.

Skye hated Monday mornings. She wasn't a morning person to begin with, so waking up the morning after sleeping in during the weekend is always the hardest. She saw Mateo heading out as she walks down the stairs to go get her usual breakfast burrito and coffee at the café by school.

"Hey Mateo." He turned to her. "Do you and Monica want to watch Chernobyl series with me tonight? I was going to make snickerdoodle cookies too."

"Sure. I'll probably have time for that tonight, but text me to remind me around lunch ok? Bye Mija." And he was out the door.

She went to school as usual and by lunch she had texted Mateo, reminding him of later and asked Leo if he wanted to do homework with her after school.

Mateo just answered with the thumbs up emoji. She chuckled a little as she was sure to tell him that that response not only showed his age but also the fact that he and Monica need to have a kid to match his lame dad aesthetic. His response? Another thumbs up. She actually snorted at that.

"What are you snorting about?" Jewel asked her in between bites of her lunch.

"Mateo just texts like a middle-aged man, so what are you guys doing after school?"

"We're gonna go to the café and work on homework. Are you gonna hangout with Leo?"

As she was asking, Skye's phone light up with a notification. The notification banner showed Leo's reply: "Can't I'm busy."

"No. I'll probably just go home. I'm hanging out with Mateo and Monica later tonight."

"You should come with us to the café. We can work on the human geography project." Vanessa said as she sat down at their lunch table.

"Ok. Meet at the café or the front?"

"Front." They both replied.

Skye started texting Leo back. Joking seemed like the good way to try and ask what he was busy with. She didn't want to seem to intense by asking what he was doing, so she went with: "Lol did you accidently delete a whole song again?"

After she puts down her phone, her, Jewel, and Vanessa talk about how many fingers you could loose and still be able to function normally and wait for the rest of their friends to make it through the lunch line and get to the table. When Christine sits down at the table, her phone lights up again: "No I'm just busy."

She doesn't send a reply, but it is weird to her that he didn't want to tell her what he was doing. Normally if you wanted to or even didn't care about telling someone you were busying doing something, and that person guessed the activity wrong, you'd probably correct them and just say what you're doing. Which Leo didn't, he just continued with being busy. Maybe he's just being weird. Leo gets moody sometimes and whenever that happens, she just gives him his space. She just continued with her day and spent that night trying to keep Mateo from eating all the brownies himself.

The rest of week was much of the same. Tuesday and Wednesday nights Mateo, Monica, and her finished watching the Chernobyl series. Mateo let her do some homework with her friends even though she was still grounded for spray-painting her wall, she just couldn't go any where besides that. Today is Friday, the day of her ungrounding. Skye barely noticed being grounded to begin with, it isn't like she has much of a life during the weekdays anyway, but it is nice to know she has the option again.

She had asked Leo if he wanted to hangout again, but he was busy again so she's hanging out with Jewel, Christine, and Elora. Her and Elora are friends, but they're not close. They're the type of friends that hangout in groups, but they're not about to call each other up to hangout alone. She doesn't know what they're gonna do tonight, but if it includes food then she doesn't care too much what they'll be doing. They told her to wear shoes she can run in, so it should be interesting.

Sorry it took so long. I lost inspiration, moved into another year of my chemical engineering courses, and got an internship; so I'm glad I got it out at all. Also, the lowercase and nonexistent spacing in the title is intentional. Hasta luego!