1. The Exception #2
Six years younger and built from entirely different clay, Katie had been following Charlie into the garage since she could walk.
She'd sit on the cold concrete with her legs crossed and her chin on her fists.
She'd watch Charlie's hands disappear into whatever machine had found its way into the garage that week with the absolute focus of a child who didn't understand a single thing she was seeing and trusted it completely anyway.
Because it was Charlie who was doing it.
Charlie included Katie every time. "Hand me the Phillips head," she'd say, and Katie would study the tool chest with intense concentration, then hand her a pair of pliers, or a socket wrench, or once, a pencil.
"Close enough," Charlie told her with a grin when Katie handed over the pencil, and Katie had smiled so wide that Charlie made it a permanent policy.
Whatever Katie handed her, the answer would always be close enough.
Charlie talked to the machines she worked on, no matter what kind.
She'd been doing it since the toaster, a low and steady murmur, similar to how someone would talk to a nervous dog or a child who'd been crying too long.
"Come on. What's wrong with you," she'd say, soft voice and gentle hands working on the machine in need.
She'd have grease up past her wrists with her fingers reading the parts the way a doctor reads a pulse.
"There. You feel that? That's where it's catching. Hold still. Let me fix it."
Sometimes it was gentler than that. Sometimes it was less gentle.
A radio that had been chewed on by something she really hoped was a squirrel got a solid Buddy.
Who raised you. A blender that had been running loose for so long the blade had started carving its own housing earned a long, low whistle and a that's ambitious of you.
But the tone underneath it was always the same. Charlie paid attention.
It wasn't mystical. It was how she processed, narrating the world until it made sense.
She talked to carburetors and circuit boards and vacuum motors, and they told her things in return.
Click-pause-click meant a misaligned head.
A high whine meant a bearing going. A rhythmic knock meant something loose and getting looser.
Katie would talk, too. To Charlie while she worked, not the machines.
She'd ask what each part was called and what it did, and Charlie would explain it in the simplest terms she could find.
Katie would nod like it all made perfect sense.
It didn't, but that wasn't the point. The point was they always talked, that it was the two of them in the garage with the radio on low and the overhead light buzzing while the rest of the house was somewhere far away.
On Saturdays, when Ed was at the golf course and Diane was at whatever luncheon or church committee had claimed her afternoon, Charlie and Katie were left with Mrs. Linden from two doors down, who sat on the couch in their living room, watching soap operas, not bothering to check on them as long as they didn't scream or bleed.
This was perfect for the Wickett sisters, because it meant the house was theirs.
They built things. Not machines, not yet.
Katie things. A birdhouse out of popsicle sticks and wood glue that Charlie engineered to have a hinged roof so Katie could easily put bird seed inside.
A race track for marbles made from cardboard tubes and masking tape that ran from the kitchen all the way down the hall to the front door.
A crown for Katie's stuffed bear, assembled from aluminum foil and a coat hanger that Charlie soldered together at the joints because Katie insisted it needed to "last, Charlie.
Not like the tape ones." The bear wore that crown for three months solid.
Charlie let Katie direct. Katie would describe what she wanted, waving her hands around, and Charlie would figure out how to make it work.
It was the same thing they did in the garage, just in reverse.
In the garage, Charlie led and Katie followed.
On Saturday afternoons, Katie led and Charlie built.
Both of them knew what they were doing together was special, and that suited them just fine.
One Saturday, when Charlie was finishing the last touches on their garden hose kingdom in the front lawn, Katie rode her bike up and down the driveway, showing off her newfound skills at riding without her training wheels to whomever walked past the house.
But in one moment, Charlie heard a thump and small crash sounds come from the bottom of the driveway, where she saw Katie on the ground with the bike lying on its side next to her.
She ran to her sister who had just sat up and started crying.
There was blood running down her shin and gravel embedded in her knee.
Charlie didn't hesitate. She slipped her arm under Katie's knees and wrapped her other arm around her waist, hoisting her off the ground and walking to the front door.
Moving as quickly but as carefully as she could, she listened to Katie sniffling the whole way, little, sharp intakes of breath anytime her shin bounced against Charlie.
Charlie was sure there would be blood on her shirt to speak for later, but it was no matter to her.
Her parents would be more concerned with the clothes than Katie.
They made it to the side kitchen door and into the house, Charlie settling Katie in a chair at the breakfast table.
Charlie grabbed a wet paper towel and patted Katie's shin, cleaning off the blood and dirt, ensuring the bleeding had stopped entirely.
Then, she ran warm water over a washcloth and held Katie's ankle steady to pick out the gravel with the tweezers she'd sterilized with rubbing alcohol.
She plucked each piece out, one at a time, while Katie gripped Charlie's shoulder, trying not to cry harder.
"You're doing great, Kit-Kat," Charlie said, her voice soft and gentle, but not looking up from her work.
"Almost done," she continued. "Okay? Just one more.
" Charlie pulled the final piece out and held it up for Katie to examine.
"There. See? That wasn't so bad, was it?
" Charlie grinned at Katie and, through a sniffle or two, Katie returned with a small smile of her own.
"You're better at this than Mom."
Charlie didn't say anything to that. She just finished the bandage, but the words sat in Charlie's chest for the rest of the afternoon.
Charlie was even the one who followed Katie home from school the first time she walked alone.
She was nine years old, chin up, backpack bouncing, so determined to prove she was big enough that she never once looked behind her.
Charlie stayed two blocks back, cutting through Mrs. Henderson's side yard and ducking behind the Petersons' hedge, looking ridiculous and not caring even a little bit.
She'd rather be late to her own dentist appointment than let her sister walk six blocks without someone watching.
Because Katie was the exception, and the world was large.
Katie made it home just fine that day. When she arrived, she went inside and closed the door, and Charlie, standing behind the oak tree at the end of their driveway, let out a breath she'd been holding for four blocks. Minutes later, she followed her sister into the house.
"How was the walk, Kit?"
Katie beamed up at her older sister. "Pleasant."
"Pleasant?" Charlie teased. Katie rolled her eyes.
"Yes, pleasant."
"Why 'pleasant'?"
"Because no one was there to bother me," Katie said, shooting dagger eyes at Charlie. Charlie returned her gaze with a raised eyebrow, but the slight twitch at the corner of Katie's mouth was threatening to break her sneer.
This went both ways. There were times that Katie found Charlie in moments of needing someone as well, even at a young age.
She was the one who sat next to Charlie on the back porch the night Charlie was thirteen and furious about something at school she wouldn't name.
Katie didn't ask what was wrong. Instead, she went inside and came back with two popsicles.
She handed one to Charlie and opened the wrapper on hers, sat next to her sister in silence, and waited until Charlie was ready to talk.
She was seven years old, but she already understood that, sometimes, the best thing you could do for someone was to just stay.
Charlie was someone who had nightmares. They started young and happened without pattern or warning. Often, they left her gasping in the dark with the sheets twisted around her legs and her heart beating so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
She never told anyone. Instead, she would pull her pillow over her face and wait for the shaking to stop. She'd go to school the next morning like nothing had happened.
But Katie found out.
She was five. She'd gotten up to use the bathroom and heard something soft through the wall.
Walking through the bathroom door, she followed the sound until she reached Charlie's room.
Pushing open Charlie's door, she stood there in her nightgown, squinting in the dark, and saw her sister curled on her side with her face wet and her breathing ragged.
Her fists were clenched around the edge of the blanket.
Charlie startled at her door opening, wiped her face, and sat up straight in her bed. "Go back to bed, Kit."
Katie just looked at her.
"But you're sad?"
"It's okay," Charlie whispered. "I promise. I'm okay, Kit-Kat."
Katie watched Charlie before deciding she wouldn't go back to bed. Instead, she padded across the carpet, climbed up onto the mattress, and wiggled under Charlie's covers. She pressed her back against Charlie's chest and pulled Charlie's arm around her like a seatbelt, not saying a word.