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My sister wasn’t always like that. She daydreamed, forgot stuff, had an edge sometimes, but she wasn’t always that mad. That defeated.
***
The day before I died, I sat on a lumbering yellow school bus, it farting diesel all the way around Pine Lake to the Junior High. As I stared out the window, my breath made the tiniest vapor cloud on the window, it being January and all. It was a morning of murmurs, kids slumped in the green bench seats, the first day back from Christmas break.
At the dip in the road, where 24th crosses 212th, right before the fire station, frosted alder trees, all soggy footed and insulated with swamp bushes always made me smile, and that morning got me pining for summer, when I could ride my motorcycle and my dad and me would camp at Kachess, like we used to do when we were a family, before Mom left the last time, and Will and Maelon grew up.
Those reminder-bushes are tall wild things, with small leaves and these pink scalloped-cloud flower thingies that start blooming sometime in July, when the blueberries are still green and rock hard. I’ve never cared to look up what they’re called, though Mom probably knows both their common name and their latin name. Dad doesn’t think she’s as smart as I do, I think on account of her leaving him. He’s kind of mean sometimes, at least to other people.
But for some reason not to me.
I used to think I was a weird kid, having constantly separating parents, but I have heard other kids talk about their parents' divorces too. This one girl in my geometry class said the police came and took her mother away, hands cuffed behind her back, and that she watched her mother sitting in the back of the police cruiser, tears rolling, head shaking. At least my mom and dad weren’t like that. If I did glance around the bus that morning, I bet my eyes would have landed on another kid in a position just like me, and maybe their mom had even moved halfway across the country with a boyfriend like mine did.
Actually now that I think on the swamp bushes more, Mom probably doesn’t know their name because they’re wild, not actually something adults would care about. She’d know all about more legit flowers like tea roses, rare irises, and different species of rhododendron, which she always calls “rhodies.” You know you’ve made it as a flower when you ‘re given a nickname.
My swamp flowers smell like a kid’s summer, and they’re projectile-shaped, something you could break off and stab your sister with, and since they’re not really sharp, it doesn’t hurt, but is still satisfying, because she screams and cringes. Girls. Actually a cringe is probably an involuntary reflex, which we learned about in health class. It’s like if something is suddenly thrust near your face and your eyes blink all on their own.
I now know more than I want to about that―what your body does all on its own.
The swamp flowers, since it was January, were crunchy brown dead things. Really you had to know what they were to pass by them on a school bus and be a dork like me, imagining them not only as flowers in summer, but containing a whole story.
My sister Mae calls their scent something softer than lilac, all poetic-like. I think she talks that way partly because she’s stuck up. Well maybe also on account of their shape and color, and because she too really likes the flowers.
My sister Will on the other hand probably never notices them at all, just an obstacle on the way to the blueberries. Will thinks with her stomach.
Those blueberry bushes are the opposite direction down 212th from our house, roots anchored into a floaty peat bog pocked with five ponds, two that are square, because apparently someone cut a couple sections out of the bog, like if you were super rude and cut chunks out of the middle of a chocolate cake. Weird I know. Seems like a lot of trouble just to amend a garden. And the water, so weird down there, matched the color of the bog―brown as the peat. Or Dad’s coffee. Whichever makes more sense to you.
Two girls, ninth graders, sat behind me that morning, whispering about some boy and what one of them let him do. Gross.
My middle sister Will, she never talks about that kind of stuff. There’s also a lot that goes right past her, even though she’s smart―like the fact that her best friend Soren had these half-mast eyes and gripped things weirdly hard, like she wanted to crush whatever she was holding into tiny pieces. Whenever she came over I always found my cat Roger, made sure the old boy hadn’t come upon some weird accident, if you catch my drift.
The kid slumped in the bus seat next to me, snored with his mouth open, a booger caught on his nose hair. It flicked in and out with each breath. I stared, only slightly grossed out―having grown up with sisters.
The first day back from Christmas break was always that way, all of us kids slogging around, out of sync with alarm clocks, early school busses and seeing each other en masse. That’s a French term Mae taught me a couple days ago. Or months ago.
Time is different, since...you know.
Come to think of it, maybe our slogging situation is partly due to a treat-hangover, but even so, I think dessert is part of Christmas, almost better than presents. Almost. Mae now brings over the cookies and pies, which is nice, because Grandma used to do that, before last Thanksgiving’s heart attack took her out. She and grandpa lived on the property between us and 212th. Actually Grandpa is still there. Who would have thought he’d outlive grandma, because he was thirteen years older?
But he also outlived me, his youngest grandchild.
One thing that was on my mind that day―a girl. I was fourteen after all, and my braces were finally off and I was getting taller, 5’-4” as I recall. Dad’s got it marked on the kitchen broom closet’s rough cedar. Really I was just starting my growth spurt; thought I’d break 6’-2”, which was fun to think about.
Emphasis on was.
Back to the girl. I wasn’t necessarily super good at talking with girls, but I could be funny, or at least a girl named Tara thought I was, though I think I was funnier in letters than in real conversations, because I could think about what I wanted to say and write in pencil, and erase if it was stupid. I thought about Tara that morning, her curly brown hair and squirrelly bangs, and her eyes, the kind that couldn’t hide anything.
I liked that about her. I never felt like a dork around her.
I noticed her one day right before Christmas break. She sat behind me in chemistry class and when I handed her the worksheets, her pupils got big and her neck turned pink. At the time I thought she was kind of weird, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I hope she cries a little about me, but I won’t be hurt if she doesn’t, because we only wrote a few letters and hung out at school.
Now Ben is another story. He’s my best friend, or was. Maybe still is. I don’t think dying changes everything. He’s like me, not a straight-A, but does a more than decent job at most things. We met playing soccer in the third grade, or maybe it was the fourth. You’d think I would remember, not having stacked up that many years to keep track of.
Fourteen. Actually fourteen years, two months and eight days. I won’t do the hours, because that would be weird. My Dad, if he knew for sure, would tell you the hours. Maybe even the minutes. Later, at the trial of my killer, my dad will tell the jury, the judge and the prosecutor, that it took about 17 minutes to get to our house from the police station on the island. Not 15-20 like Mom. Or 15-plus like Mae. Or shrug like Will. But 17. I think he’s a good cop, like me he does a good job. At least he did. I think he got shook up pretty bad, like in a permanent way, finding me like he did.
I’m not sure what to think about all that, the reason I don’t have a body anymore. But when I try to remember the details, it all goes a little out of focus, like I’m trying to remember a movie, when I fell asleep just as the bad guys were closing in, you know, the exciting part.
Of course that day on the bus, I didn’t know they were closing in on me.
***
Our driveway is long enough, that if you jog as fast as you can and if you’re a runner like me, you’re a tiny bit winded by the time you jaunt up the three concrete steps to the door, slip through the living room and then whip open the pantry cupboard in order to grab the box of brown sugar pop tarts, the only ones that don’t taste like something made in a factory. When Mae and Will lived at home, Dad wouldn’t get them. Called them junk and a waste of money, which made no sense because Captain Crunch was on his okay-for-consumption list. Maybe it was okay because it had the word “cereal” on the box. Anyway, after it was just the two of us, I talked him into it.
So, there I was, sitting at my giant dad-made desk with my warm pop tart, feeling like a CEO or something, except the desk was made of plywood and had the old pulls from the kitchen remodel: shiny, stainless, plate-shaped chrome jobbies. I actually think Dad built the desk so I wouldn’t get model glue on the eating counter. I’m pretty careful with my model building, laying down newspaper and stuff, but for Dad one drop was too much.
Anyway there I was, nibbling on the tart, considering algebra homework, but actually rereading Tara's letter, when the phone rang. I knew it would be Ben, because he’s super punctual, AND we had something fun to talk about―skiing! It was supposed to be our first season. We’d both let soccer go, and though I ran on the track team at school, I wanted another sport. Also, after this hot-shot ski instructor came to our school and showed us this cool video, we both looked at each other like “give me some of that!”
I just heard somebody say that in a movie, maybe that new one with Eddie Murphy, so thought I’d use it. Anyway, we saw these super-skiers jump moguls, and it reminded me of what I do on my BMX bike―catch air!
Me and Ben talked, I put away the letter and eventually I really did do my homework.
***
Since my dad’s a cop, he takes his turn working the night shift, which he says is the best one because not only is it quiet, but he gets to see me when he wakes up, shortly after I get home from school. So, after I got done talking to Ben my dad came out of the shower and asked what I wanted for dinner, like he usually does, which usually means, what did you make? It was mostly my job since my sisters grew up and moved away, and since it was just the two of us, we pretty much rotated between fried beef patties with mashed potatoes and canned corn; or spaghetti with burger and half a jar of parmesan, maybe a salad; or pork chops with hominy, extra salt and pepper; or macaroni and cheese, homemade, because Mae thought I should know how and taught me one Saturday.
Actually I think she was bored because she’d just broken up with her Navy boyfriend and figured hanging out with me was better than nothing. I didn’t care. I never told her, but I found a secret ingredient―dijon mustard, like two inches, just enough so it’s tangy but you can’t tell what it is. If Dad knew my secret, he probably wouldn’t eat it, so I kept shrugging whenever he’d ask.
Now that I think about it, maybe I should have risked it, because now Dad’ll forever wonder why his macaroni and cheese is never as good as mine.
***
My dad and I might have watched some detective show. We usually did. Might have talked before I went to bed. Usually did that too. Might have even worked on math or social studies. Honestly I’ll be remembered as a better student than I actually was, I think because people want to be nice to you once you're dead, which is weird because how would you know if somebody decided to dis you if you aren’t there? I figured I’d try harder once I got into the 9th grade, when it would really count. Riding my bike or talking to Ben was more fun.
Anyway, I can’t remember much else about that night. For some reason the evening, at least until I was suddenly bolt upright in my twin bed, Grandma’s brown quilt around my waist, wondering what I just heard.
Never mind that.
I started this whole thing talking about my sister Mae, so I'll go back to that.
I don’t know if it’s how I died that made her so angry, or that I’m dead at all. All I can tell you is like I said, she wasn’t always that way. And also, that I feel something coming, the ground shaking the way it does when a loaded train is barreling down the tracks, which I don't actually know anything about from personal experience. I know this only remembering Mae's quiet voice in the middle of the night. She used to wake up scared, scramble down the steep stairs from her room over the garage and crawl into my tiny twin bed and start whispering stories, pretending like I was the one who needed to distract myself.
That I was the one who needed to forget the bad dream.
I'd give anything for one of her stories about now.
To be continued....