Chapter Fifteen #2
“Nah, I can deal with most bugs. Remember that plastic terrarium thing I got for Christmas that one year? I’d fill it with grass and dirt and twigs and catch bugs?” She smiled at the memory. “Grasshoppers and beetles, mostly. The occasional salamander. That was so cool.”
“Yeah, until you ran at me with a cricket in your hands,” I replied, though the warmth of recollecting wrapped its way around my heart too.
She cackled. “Remember the one that escaped and jumped right on you?”
“I wish I could forget. It scarred me for life.”
Phoebe beamed with the sort of pride only a little sibling could conjure at the expense of their older sister and fell back against the comforter, arms splayed.
“Thanks for doing it,” she said after a moment.
It shouldn’t have been so shocking, those words coming out of her mouth, but they sent a bolt through my body and I dropped the T-shirt I’d planned to change into.
“The hike,” she added, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“I know you hate pretty much all things nature, so you know, I appreciate that you went and didn’t complain the whole time. ”
I swallowed hard. Embarrassingly enough, I’d fantasized about Phoebe saying things like this to me during restless nights: something as innocent as a smile, at first, and then the optimist in me would reach further for thank yous or a you’re not as terrible at this as you think.
I love you, I figured, was out of the question in a world without our dad.
This had to be a product of the conversation I’d overheard in the car.
All day, I’d fought to keep it in the back of my mind, knowing full well if I gave it too much thought, a canyon would open inside my chest. But now, I couldn’t deny how much it meant to hear Dex defend me and, even more, to hear Phoebe agree with him.
She didn’t hate me. It wasn’t fair to her, what a revelation this felt like for me.
Of course she was angry at the world and taking it out on the only person left.
Still, after nine months of wishing at my bedroom ceiling for a sliver of kindness from my sister, revelation seemed like an understatement.
And now here she was thanking me, unprompted. Tears rushed to my eyes and I bent to grab my T-shirt, giving myself a moment to get it together.
“No problem,” I said, hoping she couldn’t detect the hitch in my tone. She pursed her lips, sliding her feet up the bed until her knees pointed to the ceiling.
“Dex hated it.”
I choked out a laugh. “Yeah. He did.”
“I feel kinda bad,” she said. “We’ve only been doing stuff I want to do.”
“Dex would rather pull a tooth without novocaine than admit he wants something,” I replied unwittingly.
I flinched as Phoebe turned her head to look at me and busied myself with folding my shirt.
“And anyway, this is your trip. We want you to do all the things you want to do. When are we gonna get the chance to hike in Wyoming again?”
“It’s our trip.” She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. “All of us. It’s not fun if I’m just, like, dragging you guys from place to place and you’re rolling your eyes at each other like parents when their eight-year-old watches the same movie over and over.”
“That’s not what we’re doing.”
“I just—” She cut herself off with a sigh. “I want everyone to enjoy it, you know?”
I sat down, sinking into the mattress, clutching my shirt to my chest. “We are,” I said emphatically. “I mean, I can’t speak for Dex, but he was laughing on that mountain. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
She let her chin rest on her knee. “Maybe.”
“I’m enjoying this,” I told her. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but seeing you have fun is fun for me.
Genuinely. I hate the outdoors and that hike today was the best. I had fun.
I had fun at Coney Island and I had fun at the gay bar.
Fun is the last thing I expected from this trip, but it’s the most persistent feeling so far. ”
She pressed her lips in a line, trying not to smile. “You’re so boring.”
I shrugged. “I know.”
“I was thinking about it,” she said, then paused. I waited for her to continue with the thought, but she left her words hanging in the room between us.
“Me being boring?” I prompted.
Her mouth quirked into a small smile. I wondered if the thrill would dim eventually, or if the last nine months had permanently warped our relationship into these arbitrary give-and-takes.
Fourteen years of my heart existing outside my body, this tiny toddler trailing behind me like a shadow growing into her own person and still wanting to follow me.
Until the day of our dad’s accident, Phoebe texted me every day about her life and her friends, asking me to come home so we could see a movie or go to the mall.
I’d taken it for granted. It would break me to mourn my relationship with my sister.
It broke me to realize I may have been doing it all along.
“No,” she said. “I was thinking about how we’ve only been doing stuff I want to do, so I did a little research. Did you know there’s a meteor shower happening right now?”
A year ago, I would have. I would have plugged the date into my calendar months in advance, driven down to the beach so there wouldn’t be light pollution, and spent a few hours lying on my back, counting the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stars soaring across the sky.
Arden would tag along sometimes, and Shawn too if he felt like making the trip, but my dad always made a huge deal of it.
It was a little thing, something I’d taken an interest in since a high school astronomy class.
Things had been so upside down lately, I hadn’t taken the time to even look at the sky, let alone research upcoming meteor showers.
“No,” I said quietly. “I had no idea.”
Phoebe bit her lip. “I know you’re probably sick of outside, but I thought we could check it out. I mean, it’s Wyoming. Big open sky and all that.”
“Do you mean ‘big sky state’? Because that’s Montana.”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s Wyoming.” She cheesed a grin. “You wanna?”
After the post-gay-bar meltdown and especially after the conversation I overheard in the car, my sister reaching out meant everything to me.
I’d spent months concocting tiny joyful moments like grabbing her favorite pastry on my way home from work or remembering which songs she’d been enjoying lately and playing them in the car in the hopes they would mean something to Phoebe, only for her to turn around and offer me the same thing.
I knew the courage it took to go there. And maybe for her this wasn’t a step forward, or even all that meaningful—maybe I was looking too hard at something with an honest face, but dammit, that’s who I was.
An optimist, constantly seeking the bright side. Just like our dad.
“Yeah,” I said. “Of course. Let’s go.”
Phoebe hopped up, a few pieces of hair coming loose from her short ponytail. “Cool. I already checked the weather. I know you’re big on the visibility,” she mentioned, making her way over to her shoes piled haphazardly by the door.
“I’m not ‘big on’ visibility. You can’t see without it.”
“Uh-huh.” She pulled on her shoes and waited by the door for me to do the same. “So, are we inviting Dex? Is this a thing we think he’d like?”
God, I hoped not. The thought of Dex caring about meteor showers would be too endearing for me to handle in my current state.
“No idea,” I replied. “I don’t care either way.”
She eyed me for a moment, lips in a tight line. Then she smiled and threw open the door. “You totally do.”
“What? What does that mean?” I spluttered, following her out into the dimly lit hallway. Initially, I’d been surprised by Dex’s choice of a smaller country inn, but I’d since decided I preferred the busy wallpaper and vanilla-scented candles to the corporate hotels.
Phoebe moseyed down the hall, casting a glance at the rusty vintage bicycle hung on the wall.
“This is what you do. When you say you don’t care, you’re usually, like, losing your mind from how much you care.
It’s not a bad thing. It’s just who you are.
You care and you want everyone else to care too,” she said, stopping in front of Dex’s door.
I rubbed my sternum. “You don’t have to do this.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I want to do this. But how many times did you suggest having my birthday party at the planetarium?”
“Too many, apparently.”
“Way too many.” She rapped her knuckles against the door. “Don’t feel bad if he’s like, ‘Why would I waste time looking at the sky?’ I already made him spend too much time outside today.”
I snorted at the uncanny Dex impression as the door opened. Phoebe straightened up with a salesman’s smile, practically shouting the word, “Hi!”
My brain stumbled at the sight of him in a heather gray tee and jeans, hair damp and wild, droplets of water dotting his shoulders. The scent of his soap struck and, as if trained by Pavlov himself, I could’ve sworn I tasted strawberries.
“Christ,” Dex said. “Not another gay bar.”
“There’s a meteor shower,” Phoebe announced. His gaze shifted over her shoulder to me, surely clocking the blush. Hey, I might’ve gotten a sunburn on top of that mountain. He couldn’t know I was still thinking about the elevator.
“Perseids,” he said with a nod.
He knew it by name.
Oblivious to the turmoil screwing with my entire world, Phoebe bounced on her heels. “Wanna see it with us?”
His eyes snagged mine. My haywire brain was pelting me with a myriad of shit, so I had no idea what he saw there that softened the slight tightness in his eyes. “You go ahead. I’ve spent too much time outside today.”
“Loser,” Phoebe replied fondly and walked away. I toyed with the zipper of my hoodie, taking a small step after her.