Oh, crap, they were late!
"Raivis! Raivis!"
The boy had his mouth open, soaking the pillow with his saliva, lost somewhere pretty in the land of dreams, but he was supposed to be somewhere else.
"Toris!"
"Mmmm, what's up?" he asked, annoyed, turning around and placing his hands on his face.
"We overslept! It's eight in the morning!"
"What?!" that was enough to make the oldest get out of bed as if it had turned into a catapult. He ran to Raivis, who still didn't react to the noise and shook him. "Raivis, wake up!"
"Ayyy, leave me alone!" he complained, wrapping himself up in the sheets.
"We're late!"
"What…? Late for what…? What are you talking about?" the boy mumbled.
"High school! College! Late!" Eduard summed it up, stopping for a second in front of the mirror to try to untangle the mess his hair had turned into using his fingers as a haircomb.
"Right! Shit! It's Wednesday! Why didn't you tell me anything?!" Raivis finally reacted and jumped out of bed in such a way his gym teacher would have given him a different grade if he had seen him.
They trotted down the stairs, making an infernal noise, like a cavalry. When he saw them running into the kitchen to get anything to eat on their way, their father smirked, cellphone in hand.
"What did I say about going to bed so late?"
"Yes, dad, you're always right" Eduard grunted, grabbing a pineapple juice brik. Not enough for the whole day, of course, but he couldn't stop to make himself a sandwich.
"Forget it, dudes, we'll eat something at the cafetería! Let's go!" Toris hurried them up, who lost no time combing his mane, as he did every morning and just tied it in a simple ponytail.
"Hey, wait for me!" Raivis yelled, and grabbed a toast his mother had made for herself, and ate it as he ran.
"No 'good morning', no 'goodbye', no kisses" she complained, sighing. "My, these boys!"
"They have their head in the clouds, only thinking about computers and video games, and that's what they get" her husband said, scrolling down.
"They are old enough to know what they're doing."
Mr. Petkus nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.
Their neighbor, Mr. Braginsky, used to go to work at that time. He was about to get into the car when he saw the boys rush out from their house and before getting into it he came out and called them.
"Hey, boys! Where's the fire?"
"Good morning, Ivan!" Raivis said to him. Even though their parents still called him Mr. Braginsky, after having lived next to him so many years and taken care of them more than once it was impossible to them to address him formally. Furthermore, he had told them himself he didn't want them to call him 'mister'.
"If you're in a hurry, I can take you."
How could they reject that offer, being in such a hurry? So the three of them got into the car.
"You saved our asses..." Toris puffed, but he still didn't consider it a victory. He checked the hour in his phone all the way.
"And your poor parents thought you were becoming responsible adults..." Mr. Braginsky smiled.
"We are responsible" Raivis replied. "Our father is in a hurry many mornings, and he works at home."
"Come on, man, don't tell us you've never stayed up late some time" Eduard smiled.
Mr. Braginsky smiled letting out a giggle.
"I do that all the time."
"I'm sure they do it too. We have to tell grandma. She will be on our side. She's always saying 'enjoy your youth'."
"Still, I'm not staying up till three when we have to get up early the next morning" Toris said. "And you won't, either, eh?"
"Alright, Raivis and Eduard, here we are" Braginsky announced, stopping the car by the sidewalk next to the most depressing building Raivis' mind could conceive: high school.
The youngest two got out immediately.
"Thanks a lot, Ivan! We owe you one!" Raivis said to him.
"Oh, well, now that you mention it, this summer I have to paint the house. Just saying..." the neighbor smirked.
"Hehe! You can count on it!"
"See you!" Eduard said.
The two of them ran inside the building.
"Good, now off to college" Mr. Braginsky said, starting the car.
"If our parents find out you've picked us up..." Toris said.
"Why? Don't they trust me?"
"Of course they do. But they'll surely start with that 'they have to learn to face the consequences of their actions' stuff."
"Well, if you don't tell them, I won't, either."
"You're the best, seriously."
Mr. Braginsky chuckled. Not even by car they got to arrive on time, since at that time there was traffic jam, but at least it took them much less time than if Toris had taken public transport, as he did every morning. When they got there, Toris was about to jump off the car while it was still moving.
"It's fine here! Thanks for everything!"
"My pleasure, kid."
He stared at him as he ran towards the faculty before shaking his head with a smile and leaving.
"I've been experimenting a little bit with the design, something a bit more minimalistic. What do you think?"
It was the twentieth anniversary of the extinction of the Baltic nations, so the History teacher had shown them a documentary about the matter. When Raivis got to high school, luckily for him the lady was struggling to make the DVD, a really prehistoric object, work, so his late arrival went completely unnoticed, thanks heavens. Using the darkness in the classroom in his favor, he spent the hour drawing.
"Hey, it's good. I like it better than the one we had in mind" Eduard said, taking the piece of paper.
Toris peeped at it placing his head on Eduard's shoulder as he munched his sandwich.
"Yeah, me too. What do you say? Shall we get this one done?"
"Fine for me."
"Okay then."
If their parents had heard them talk about the tattoo, they would have started again with the 'you want to mess your skin up? nobody will hire you if you go around painted like a coloring book, blah, blah, blah'. Even if they had explained it to them a hundred times, it would be just one and a discreet size. Luckily, that forest was far away from home. It was a place frequented by families, since it was relatively close to the city, an oasis of peace and oxygen, and there was an area with picnic tables. The perfect place to take a walk. Years before they used to go biking there, all together. In one of those rocks Raivis got the scar he had in one of his knees, the day he decided he was old enough to leave the training wheels behind. They liked to stay there for a while after high school and college to talk about those things they didn't want their parents to listen. All siblings had the right to have their secrets, right?
They were having a good time there, with a fine temperature, some soda cans and sandwiches.
"You have no idea the trouble I was into this morning" Toris sighed. "There was exposition today, I interrupted some classmates, unwillingly, of course, and the teacher told me off so bad."
"And we still have to be thankful that I had the urge to pee and looked at the hour" Eduard said.
"Also, Mrs. Jonaitis is mental today and has tried to hit me with her cane...But, on the bright side, today's payday! Four hundred euros more to the piggy Banks!"
Instantaneously their sleepy faces woke up.
"If we keep going like that we'll go to New York this summer!" Raivis exclaimed.
The sole mention of New York made the three brothers go back to the clouds their parents said they never jumped off from. They were so near their objective! It had taken them many years, but they were starting to gather the money they needed for it. And as if usually happened, they started talking about what they planned to do once they were in the city. They even had a diary with all their plans. As soon as they got home, Raivis would include the new design of the tattoo they would get there.
They were so absorbed by the topic they didn't realize what the family near them was doing.
Like, Toris had seen them from the corner of his eye, but ignored them. They had nothing special. A father, a mother, two kids. There were plenty of those in that green space.
It was true that anyone would have felt curious seeing them stop in a certain place, the mother crouching down to place a bouquet of flowers tied up with three ribbons of different strips of colors on the grass, the incredible solemnity of the moment. But they were so busy daydreaming about the hamburgers they would eat, the pictures they would take in places which had appeared in movies, the quarters they would visit, that the world around them seemed to have vanished.
They wouldn't have paid the smallest attention to those four people if it wasn't for one of those children. When they were leaving, he stopped to stare at them, his eyes opened disproportionately and suddenly he let out a scream.
When Raivis wanted to turn around, he was already on the ground and the kid was on him.
"LATVIA! LATVIA! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!"
"W-What?!" Raivis stammered.
The child looked at all of them. His eyebrows were think and his eyes, the deepest blue any of them had ever seen in their life.
"YOU'RE ALL HERE! WHAT THE FREAK! YOU'RE THE BIGGEST LIARS I'VE EVER SEEN! EVERYBODY THOUGHT YOU KICKED THE BUCKET! HOW DID YOU DO IT? OH, WHO CARES? I WAS STARTING TO MISS YOU! AW, LATVIA, SAY SOMETHING, STOP LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY!
The boy wouldn't stop yelling and squashing him, Raivis could barely say anything. His brothers witnessed the scene confused and he wanted to tell them he had never seen that boy in his life.
"Peter, for the love of God, what are you doing?!"
His family approached, but instead of getting him off him, they just watched. Something happened to them. The father, a blond man with a bushy beard and penetrating eyes (so penetrating they didn't know why but they felt intimidated) stopped dead in his tracks and stared at them with his eyes wide open. The mother, a woman with blond hair, covered her mouth with her hands. The other boy who was with them, a ginger, stayed behind, looking at all of them with a frown.
There was an incredibly awkward silence. Then the lady approached but didn't ask the boy to stop crushing Raivis, as his brothers expected her to do.
"...Es...Estonia? My God, am I hallucinating? It is you? Are you really here?"
What did she mean by that? Of course they were there. But...wait a second. Estonia? Did she call Eduard Estonia? And the boy had called Raivis Letonia?
"Look at them! It is them! They were not dead!" the so-called Peter exclaimed. Finally he let Raivis stand up and as soon as he did he hugged him. "Twenty years pretending you were dead! And we believed it, like idiots!"
"Excuse me, but...W-Who are you?"
The boy went very quiet, and looked at him confused.
"Eh?"
"I'm really sorry, but I think you got the wrong person..." Raivis insisted, pushing him away softly and seeking refuge in his older brothers.
"Come on, don't act stupid! We're been worried and sad! We just left every year's offering!
"Really, I don't know who you are..."
The boy smirked.
"Ah, sure! It's the disguise, clearly! Yeah, I know my hair didn't look like this before! It's dyed! And these are Ladonia, Sweden and Finland! It's...!
"Sssh! Don't shout..." the woman begged him.
"Ah, sure...We've had to hide, of course, but it's still us. Look, mum still has a weenie. And me...Why are you looking at us like that? We haven't changed that much! Can't you see it is...?"
Finally the boy was interrupted by his father, who placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Sorry. We were mistaken."
And started to drag little Peter away from there.
"But...! Daddy, it's them!" the boy insisted.
Raivis gazed at Toris and Eduard and they shrugged.
"It was them!"
The boy let go of his father's arms, snatched something from his brother's pockets and ran back to them. He grabbed his arm, pulled his sleeve up and hurriedly wrote something on it.
"When you stop playing, meet us here! We'll only be here for a while, so hurry up!"
After that, he returned to his family, leaving the three brothers incredibly confused.
"I don't understand a thing..." Raivis muttered, watching his arm.
"Did they call you Estonia and Latvia or was it my impression?" Toris commented with his hands on his hips.
"I guess we have pretty common faces, this had to happen sooner or later..." Eduard said. He stretched his younger brother's arm to read what was written on it. A phone number, the name of a hotel and what he guessed was a room number.
"Well, I've never been called Latvia before..."
"It was them!"
"Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are dead."
"Yes, but...they looked so alike! They even talked like them!"
"I know, but you were there. You saw..."
"Yes...D-Don't remind me...I wish I hadn't seen that..."
"Those were only people who looked like them."
"...Yes, that's it...They only looked like them, Sealand, dear..."
"...But..."