Chapter 1
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A hand, one finger pointing straight in the air. The other fingers were half closed, curled, but the index finger pointed straight up. She was wearing a sweatshirt, but I didn’t know what color it was. Pink. Was that one of my sweatshirts, or one I used to have? It was heavy – I could feel that. Heavy, cold. Winter, maybe. It was a wintertime sky, just flat white. There was a storm coming.
I scribbled down a few sentences in my notebook, yellow and spiralbound and patterned with bees, then tossed it back on my nightstand and covered my head with a pillow in one clumsy motion. I think it was a real dream, and not just an idea. Sometimes it was hard to tell in the morning.
I think I had been dreaming (real dreaming, not just imagining or pretending), but I knew I had a hangover. My brain felt shriveled and wet, and some malicious synapse was keeping me awake when all I wanted to do was sleep for another hour. But I had been looking at my watch for ten minutes and nothing was happening at all except a trickle of guilt and shame filling up my insides with brackish wet and making me sick.
I tried to piece together last night, and I could remember most of it. I think. I don’t exactly remember going to bed. I threw my comforter off, first step to getting out of bed. I smelled like sweat, bitter and thick, damp under my arms, the backs of my knees, between my thighs, the little crease under my chin. I didn’t do anything last night. I just drank too much. I ate too much, I’m sure. For no reason other than to do it. But I didn’t do anything I needed to feel guilty about. I must have been dreaming.
I sat up, the bottom of my pale belly resting on my bare thighs. The belly that hadn’t been there a year ago, six months ago. I sighed and dragged myself to the bathroom where the light was harsh and stood on tiptoes to look at my face in the mirror. Tired and puffy, blonde hair tangled flyaways. I drank from the sink gasping until I couldn’t drink any more.
I opened the bathroom and took a right. The stairs were ahead but I paused at a closed door. I listened for a beat, hearing nothing, then walked down the carpeted stairs. The ground floor was long and open – a kitchen on my left transitioning to a little dining area, then to a living room with big windows. Evidently, it was all a bit of a mess.
After putting coffee on I tried to fit a pizza box under the sink and put the empty cider bottles into the recycling without clinking and making a racket. I slid a half-finished box of M&M cookies back in the pantry. Shoes in the living room, a hoodie on the floor, iPad sticking out of the couch cushions.
I was pouring half-and-half into my coffee when I heard that dreamy familiar sound, shuffle-slide, shuffle-slide, sock-covered feet bristling the static electricity all down the carpeted stairs.
***
My family could be difficult at the best of times. Especially Mom. More than anything she was unpredictable. Weeks would go by where she was chill and focused on her job and the house and her kids and her marriage. We would cook dinners together, she’d check our homework, she and Dad would actually get along and go on dates and be a normal couple. We’d be a normal family.
And then some weird, haunted tide would come in and she would just be the worst.
Anxious and stressed, she’d bark at us for the littlest things. When she would be mad at something or someone she’d just stop – stop packing lunches, stop taking us to music lessons – stop being a mom, basically.
Dad was better but looking back on it he was totally checked out. He spent more and more time at work, and then met Marianna and that was that. It was me and Lis and Mom.
There was five and a half years between me and Lis, so for a lot of this time she was…just little. It felt like she almost didn’t exist until I was 11 years old, but then there she was, this electric tidal wave that needed so much attention. As she got older it was attention she wasn’t always getting from our parents, and that left me.
When I had to step up as Big Sister it meant making sure she had clean clothes, her hair was brushed, and she had lunch to take to school with her. Homework done. And being there to hold her and cry with her when Mom would be vicious.
Dad moved out, eventually. We could have, would have moved in with him, but he started a new life in California and the idea of that big a change was scary. And I don’t know if he really wanted us. He said he did, but he had a new life and a new wife, a stepson. A new family.
I got away as soon as I could. Went to college, got a full-time job, started saving money. Once I had a degree and had both feet into having a real career Dad helped me put a down payment on my condo. It’s not great and the payments have been tough, but it was mine and I felt safe.
Lis was older by then, but I always felt guilty leaving home. We talked every day and she would stay with me in my dorm room when things were bad, or later on in the condo. I’d drive her to school in the morning. She’d usually come home to her room torn apart, Mom getting the idea she was on drugs or hiding who knows what. She’d call me crying before I even got back to my place. She got thin and invisible.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the pandemic broke Mom. She fell right in that hole of paranoia and conspiracies. She was never, like, violent – but her anger was a constant presence in the house for Lis. Sometimes she was delusional, and it absolutely terrified Lis. But by some crazy luck, Lis’ school went completely online, and she was able to move across country with Dad and still take all her classes. There was a crazy time zone change to deal with, and she had to get up at the crack of dawn, but all of a sudden, she was one of the best students in her class. The brilliant, sensitive, artistic young woman I always knew showed herself to the rest of the world.
Without the constant crises, Lis and I talked a little less often. It wasn’t sad, though. It meant that she was in a less crazy world than she had been. I mean, we still talked, obviously. We’d text and message, Facetime sometimes. I was able to focus a little more on myself and work, and she focused on trying to be a normal high schooler, I guess.
At the end of the day, though, Dad and our stepmom didn’t want Lis living with them in California. When she turned 18 and then graduated, Dad said he’d pay for school (he didn’t say how much) and he’d pay room and board or rent if she wanted to get an apartment. It was pretty obvious where she was going to stay. There was an open invitation.
***
So, it’s not that I didn’t recognize her when she stepped out of the terminal. I felt her energy, for sure.
Okay, her hair was a little bleached out from the sun and she had something of a tan, that’s true. But she still had those pale blue eyes I used to see staring at me when things were bad, and the full lips that would smile when I did impressions of her teachers, or quiver when she was about to cry. But – the last time I saw her in person she was – not skinny exactly, but something speaking the same language. And shorter maybe? The girl running towards me was at least my height and curvier, smiling, confident.
Her hug was a force of nature, lifting me off my feet and forcing the air from my lungs in surrender. We held each other in the middle of the terminal as a wave of travelers flowed around us and washed over us, pulled by that kinetic gravity, and of course I recognized her.
Magical Realism
Friends/Family Reunion
Mutual gaining
Humiliation/Teasing
Helpless/Weak/Dumpling
Feeding/Stuffing
Romantic
Female
Bisexual
Weight gain
Mummy/Daddy/Family
First person
X-rated
Graphic novel
7 chapters, created StoryListingCard.php 1 year
, updated 5 months
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