absence makes the heart grow fonder

The silence is unnerving. The room across my own has been uninhabited for the past three days, with the bed unusually neatly made. For the past three nights only three people have sat down at the dinner table, with an extra seat gaping like an empty tooth socket.

As of the moment, my brother is five hundred miles away in Houston, sleeping with three other teenagers in their own dormitory room. He and fifteen other classmates from Science Academy are attending a science camp of some sort, wherein they get to immerse themselves in actual research laboratories in Rice University.

Before he left, I half-seriously told him that the next two weeks will be bliss for both of us: he gets to travel, I get to enjoy him gone.

After a mere three days' worth of nobody to squabble with while driving home, of nobody incessantly chanting "Fatty" and "Pimpleface" into my ears, of nobody shoving me away from the computer to play Eve Online, I'm beginning to think that the peace and quiet that I so earnestly wished for when my brother was here wasn't a good idea after all.