Buckley's Chance_Level 1

My stomach made a sound that belonged in a kid's cartoon.  I glanced down at it, then lifted my shirt to flash my appendix scar at the room.  No one ever noticed when I showed skin anymore.  They used to form queues, so my ego took it as a bit of a blow when no one even blinked at me.  I would have taken my shirt off to see what would happen, but then I remembered that I was by myself.

So probably nothing would happen.

I yawned, letting my mouth open in a long gaping hole that made my jaw creak.  It was… Friday.  Maybe.  Or it could have been Saturday.  My calendar needed new batteries, but the guy at the watch shop always looked at me funny when I tried to explain, so I'd given up.  I pried my head out of its depression in my new leather swivel chair, then used the extra mobility to lurch forward and hit the power button on my main workstation.

"Hello, Ando," a pleasant female voice droned.

"Mgrrr."  I usually insulted it, but my teeth were stuck together.

It clicked, whirred, then replied in a deadpan hum, "Asshat."

I chuckled as if it was clever instead of a stale drunken joke, and then swiveled the chair so that I nearly broke the keyboard tray again.  It clanked and made the leather squeak, then went silent again when I swung the chair back around.  I mumbled something that was supposed to be 'oops' but had too many z's in it.

A digital copy of an embarrassing old photo splayed itself on my desktop, the victim of my masochistic album runs.  It was completely ancient, dating back to before the Important Thing, and I was mostly not in it.  My hand showed up in a corner, but I could sort of remember what I had been doing.

No one ever touched my gear, so it was up to me to screw with it and pester myself.  I didn't have any sisters or brothers to howl at, and my parents… well, that's enough about them.  Today was probably a grocery day.

I started to push myself out of the chair, then got a quick lesson in why I should not try to do that.  Some of the guys in my old crew had small sections of plastic or even wood for their chairs to set on, all in the name of being able to roll about like a hedgehog on meth.  I didn't need that kind of setup.  I had hardwood floors.

My cheek said a sharp and very loud "HI!" to the floor, mercifully missing the entire collection of old Boo Koo cans and Gordita wrappers I'd been amassing over the weekend.  Beer bottles were on the other side of the room, so I would have to scratch that up to my luck for the rest of the year.

For a second I just laid there, grumbling at the world with squished and forcibly pursed lips.  My ass stuck up higher than anything else, and I was positive I had lost a sock, although I had no idea how that had happened.

No worries.  I'd just get another one.  Maybe.  When the room stopped spinning like a kid who really really intended to vomit.

It never actually did, but I had to give it credit for holding out that long.  Kristy Yamaguchi didn't have that kind of record.  However, I couldn't keep up.  Even when I closed my eyes, I could still see the neon blue of a gutted tower I should have thrown out, just looping its way around my thickened head.

Something in my house was dripping.  I couldn't hear it, and I certainly couldn't see it, but a twitch in my bones was reacting.  There were four and a half bathrooms in the damn house, I was never going to find a drip.  I ground my teeth, then had to stop because the sound was deafening.

Ginger tea.  Stat.

Someone plodded carefully up the stairs without making much noise—I think it was me—and stopped to lean on the kitchen door.  It was shut, which was good, since I didn't really want to break my teeth falling on another floor.

I'd meant to check my email, hadn't I?  There had to be a reason for turning on the Big Lady.  I didn't have any homework that I could remember.  I rubbed my face, then rested the heel of my hand on my right eye as I searched for the doorknob.

There it was.  And the ginger was there, and tea… needed boiling water.  That could happen; in a world where God is infinite and policemen can read, I could boil water.  So I did that, holding my head very carefully in place.  I didn't want it to go anywhere without me.

While I waited for the kettle to kill me, I popped a few silymarin tablets and counted to fifteen with my eyes closed.  Fifteen was a better number than ten, simply because it took longer to get there.  I needed the extra time.

It took a few more counts of fifteen before I wanted to open my eyes, but I got there too.  The kitchen was still there, which was rather a pity, but I let it alone.  We had to change the little things first.  Like the hangover.  That bastard needed to get the hell out.  Eviction notices had been issued, and…

The firing squad had let loose.  I groaned and gripped my face again, reaching for the bloody kettle with my free hand.  I had to kill something very soon, and I lived almost entirely more or less by myself.  I didn't even keep white mice or a snake.  Probably because of mornings like this.  And the whole cage-cleaning concept.  Thomas Crapper did the world a favor, but he should not have stopped at the larger two-legged animals, in my opinion.

A knock at the door did nothing for my homicidal urges.  I set the kettle on one of the unused burners and growled my way to the front room.  If it was not who I thought it was, then I was probably going to shock the paper boy.  We'd never got along, especially after the Important Thing, because he was a little asshole, and I had a tendency to shut the door in his face come collection day.  So if it was him, then he'd get a chance to count the stripes on my boxers.

I opened the door, then looked up at the visitor through my bangs, peering past the black and green to glare at a very large brown cup of coffee.  "Damn you," I grumbled.

"I love you too."  Jussi pushed his way in by handing me the coffee and waiting for me to yank him in by his annoying pressed shirt.  It was white today, which meant he was not going to visit his sister.  She had a passel of ankle-biters, and they were apparently allergic to the color white.  I assumed this was true by the sheer number of times they had changed it to many different colors in both my personal and secondhand experience.

The room seemed to shrink to a comfortable size as I gulped down the coffee.  It burned my tongue, but it was better than the ginger tea that was still waiting for me in the kitchen.  After I'd gone through about half of it, I realized that Jussi was holding a paper bag.

I narrowed my eyes at him, thinking of things he used to try to do.  "Aren't you a little old to be packing a sack lunch?"

"It's not for me."  He started to hand it to me, but there was not a chance.  This guy never ever learned.

My remaining sock slid on the wood floor—all the floors in the house were hardwood, my mother had gone through a phase a while back, and it never really passed properly—but I still managed to back up and lean on a chair that had a permanent father-butt-print.  "Then it had better be for someone whose name is not Ando.  The last stuff you made me take was like chugging sewage."

"Getting healthy can often feel like the opposite."  He seemed to live in a permanent shrug sometimes.  Jussi was like a duck's back.  That is, he caught the interest of total weirdies and didn't look as greasy as he actually was.

…I probably had that too twisted up to make sense, but I was allowed.  I sighed, letting my shoulders slump down to my knees.  "Fine, I'll bite—I mean, just tell me what you dragged over here."

He held out the sack, as if he actually expected me to take it.  Moron.  I didn't even need to shake my head or scowl at him, he'd known me for years.  After a second, he moved the bag out of my very large personal bubble and unfolded the top.  The crinkling paper grated against my nerves until my head felt like prahok.  It probably smelled just as bad.  At some point, I would shower.

If I could get Jussi the hell out.  This was not worth free coffee.

"Here you go."  He reached out and grabbed my hand, then forced my fingers to uncurl and set something in my palm.

I looked down at it, expecting to see a bottle of nasty vitamin supplements with a stupid name, or something worse, but…  "An orange."

"You like them, don't you?"

Like an idiot, I nodded.  Sure, it was true, but I liked Florence too, and you didn't see me leaping off to vacation there.  "Why…?"

"You need to eat something a little healthier than—well, what did you have for breakfast today?"

Technically, I'd only just woken up for real a few minutes ago, but there was that bad rehearsal of waking up that had happened around half past five.  I scratched my chin for effect.  "Rum and Coke."

Jussi's face curdled, which was my favorite expression of his.  "That's disgusting."

I nodded happily.  Disgusting Jussi was a better hangover cure than anything clinically proven.  "Actually, it might not have been Coke.  I mean, it was in a Coke can, but you know how easy it is to refill those."

Of course he didn't, and it wasn't anyway, but I let him nod absentmindedly without commenting on it.  "What was it then?"

"Probably vodka."

"Oh god.  Rum and vodka?"

"Yeah, it wasn't that good."

He shook his head at me.  "Eat that orange right now."

~+~

Notebooks were scattered all over the floor.  It was bad enough during school when half of them were for school, but this was just stupid.  I sat up straight and bent my back into a crescent moon curve that would have made a chiropractor swear and hit me with a roller table.

My hair was held back with a handkerchief, which I didn't do often, but I was busy and something really had to be done about it.  It was well past my knees now, and although it was silky and full of bragging rights the higher up you went, it was coarse and almost like horse hair if you started at my knees.

"Riley!"

I rolled my eyes so sharply that I gave myself a headache.  "Riley is busy, mama!"  Busy being a confused duck.  I stared at the notebooks and dared them to make sense.  It used to be a game—try to remember what each had been for without opening them, but now I was just trying to save time.  I had to leave in twenty minutes or we wouldn't have a proper dinner and my mother would ground me until the next technological age.

And I never went anywhere without a notebook.  But it had to be the right one or what was the point?  I hovered a hand over the bluest one, then snapped it away.  That was poetry and it was three years old.  That one went into the trash can.

"RILEY COLUMBIA!"

The shout triggered something in the back of my mind and I grabbed the purple notebook.  Ooh.  It was the Swing Set Mystery.  I actually had ideas for that one.  Perfect.

I leapt to my feet and pulled the kerchief off my head, then shoved the notebook in my bag.  If Mama's foot healed in the next three seconds, it wouldn't be soon enough.  She always complained about the ingredients I brought home, and when I actually managed to keep her out of the kitchen, she insisted I hadn't stewed such and such long enough, or used enough cream in that sauce.

I mimed whining at the hall mirror as I passed it, then just sailed down to the front hall.  Mama was sitting on the couch, her foot propped up on a pillow, and a crisp copy of the morning paper in her small hands.  She was reading the sports section, feeding her baseball addiction, which always lifted my mood.

"Don't forget the tengusa," she said, without putting down the paper.

Once, two years ago, I had done that.  No one would ever remember the thousands of times since then that I had not forgotten.  However, I was down to ten minutes, so I just assured her I wouldn't forget, then grabbed my keys as I shoved my feet into my shoes.  I didn't even like tokoroten much, but dad did, so it was going to be dinner.

As soon as I was out the door, I gave in to a bit of silliness and jumped off the top step, letting my hair sail behind me.  It was a windy day, which meant I was lucky to get grocery duty and further dinner duty.  I grinned up at the house before I slipped into the car.  Kevin was going to be stuck feeding the animals, and I was going to have a whole day of not smelling like rabbits or dogs.

Unfortunately, it never took long to pick up groceries.  And it wasn't really time to start cooking anything, except maybe lunch, and only Mama and I would be home and awake for that.  Kevin had stayed at a friend's house, and Yuu was probably still asleep.  I shook my head and leaned on the car, trying not to remind myself that I had to at least get the groceries home to put them in the refrigerator.

It was a quiet moment, still early enough that not many people aside from the really bushy-tailed tourists were wandering around, a blue sort of breeze drifting over from the pier.  I leaned my elbows on the roof of the car and looked out at the scene, taking it in and getting ideas.

Which notebook had I grabbed in the end…?  Oh yeah, the purple one.  I reached through the half-open car window and slid the notebook carefully out of my bag, then took a pen out of my pocket.  I always kept a few clipped to myself in case of emergencies.  Although I rarely was in such an emergency that required writing on anything other than paper, which suited me just fine.  Ink had a way of sticking to my skin.

I mumbled the words as I scribbled them on a blank page.  "Cold air condensed on the metal bars, forming tiny beads of dew that would later be swept away by a chubby hand or absorbed into a pair of jeans.  The swing's seat swayed very slightly in the almost still air, not moving quite enough to make the metal squeak, but working up to it."

A hand on my shoulder made me jump.  I didn't drop anything—I was holding a pen and a notebook, you do not just drop those things—but I did gasp like a landed fish.  I spun around, ready to hit my assailant.

"Whoa, easy there…"  An Williams held his hands up in mock defense of his face.  "You just looked so intense leaning over that thing."  He pointed at the notebook and made a face.  "Is it another murder book?"

I rolled my eyes and flipped the notebook shut.  "Still squeamish after the last one?"  An had read one short story of mine a few months ago, and he still complained about the ending.  He was not allowed to be a sounding board.

"Don't even bring that up.  You are a gruesome lady."  He winked at me, grinning in spite of his own words.  "I thought you were on a ball and chain, though.  What are you doing out of the birdcage?"

"You're mixing metaphors," I said, leaning back on the car and trapping my hair.  Some of it still blew about, but most of what was near my face was pinned.

"Pardon my English."

He opened his mouth to go on, but I stopped him, laughing already.  "Don't!  Your Japanese is awful.  You sound like a drunk zombie tourist."

"Hey, I resemble that remark.  I'm half drunk zombie tourist."

An was always making up things he was half of—if anyone actually put them all together, they'd have something very large with lots of accents, tails, and horns.  I reached back to put the notebook back in the car, then poked him in the chest.  "You're half loony.  Now get out of my way, I have to go home."

"Already?"

"You know how it is."

But he didn't, and we both knew that.  He nodded and shrugged anyway, then stepped back and waved.  He was probably busy anyway, just wandering around looking for ways to procrastinate.

With that in mind, I paused on my way to the driver's side and said, "Are you working on anything lately?"

It was a stupid question, An was always working on things.  He used to say he wore a hat to keep his brain in his head.  This made a kind of sense, but the nature of the hat never could.  It was blue and shaped like the top half of a teddy bear's head, stopping at the snout to let his face exist.  He grinned at me, teeth gleaming.  "Not anymore.  Just finished a major commission for Absinthe."

"Who?"

"Game company.  I think it gets released in a few weeks."

I wrinkled my nose.  "Oh, you and games."

"It was work though!"

"Bet you get a free copy."

He just winked and tapped the side of his nose, as if that meant something.  I rolled my eyes, then waved and pulled out onto the street.  It would have been nice to just stick around, but I did have food in the backseat.  And Yuu might have gotten up, just because that would mean I had to make lunch.  My little brother was the most demanding twelve-year-old on the planet.

And you don't seem to understand~

The car jerked, apparently sensitive to what I was feeling.  My phone was going off.  I fished for it in my pocket, encountering only lint.  Other pocket.  A shame, you seemed an—there.  I flipped it open.  "Hello?"

"Hey, Riley-wa.  Are you in captivity?"

What was with my friends and assuming things were so much worse than they were?  I would have rolled my eyes if they weren't busy watching the road.  People were starting to go to work, and I had to get out of the rush before it carried me all the way to Warrenton, which, incidentally, was where my call was coming from.  "I am under my own recognizance, thank you, Ando."

He laughed, which with him, could mean absolutely anything.  "Okay, but for how long?"

"Reason?"

"I want to borrow you tonight.  That's okay, right?"

In theory, it should have been.  However, Mama did not let theory get off the paper it was written on.  She just didn't like the idea of me hanging out with a single guy who lived practically on his own far from town, especially if it was later than mid-afternoon and I didn't call her every five minutes.  "Of course," I said, smiling at the tricky turn just before home.

"Great!  Just meet me at my house around seven o'clock."

"Okay…  See you then."  Maybe I could make Yuu make the tokoroten.  He owed me a few favors.  And he was sitting on the porch doing nothing.

As I pulled in to the driveway, he ran up to the car, waving something over his head.  I couldn't see through the window, especially when he got really close, so I just rolled it down and stuck my head through.  "What's wrong?"

"Nothing!  I found my book!"

"Oy, Yuu…"  Blindly releasing the catch on the safety belt, I used my other hand to get through the window.  Doors were for other people.  "I'm so very happy for you.  And since you are in such a wonderful mood—I need you to do me a favor tonight."

~+~

Whenever I had a big check burning a hole in my pocket, I did something boring.  I paid bills, or just deposited it.  I wasn't a boring person by nature, something I tried to reflect in everything, including the easy stuff, like clothes.  No one else I knew had a hoodie with only one sleeve, and my one sleeve used to be on an entirely different shirt.  I'd even sewn it.  Most of the guys I knew who could sew—and didn't do that lame bird-nesting mess of stitches—were sailors or long-time bachelors.

I was not really either in the traditional sense.  I mean, I was single, and I had a boat, but it was a houseboat, and I'd only been a bachelor for about a year.  My reasons for knowing how to sew were more embarrassing than that.

The weather was nice, which was why I'd kind of hoped to do something not boring with my new paycheck.  Work was going to be slow for a while, though.  Most of my regulars were either going back to school for the summer term, or just not in need of new art, and Absinthe had been the last business on my very short list.

Not having work didn't bother me.  I knew how to save money and live on a very small amount in a long time period, my mom had taught me that.  And no, she didn't teach me how to sew.  That wouldn't be embarrassing at all, that would make a kind of sense.

In the end, I just deposited the check and then headed over to the pier.  There was time to read now, and see one of the movies that were beginning to gather dust and dusticular paraphernalia on my DVD player at home.  I leaned forward and pressed my chest against the wood, looking down into the thick water.  I'd never fallen in, but I always wondered how that would play out.

It didn't work if I did it on purpose, though, and it was too cold to touch the water.  I rubbed my bare arm, careful not to rough up the tattooed skin.  It was a few years old, but habits take a while to die off.  The water collided into itself, talking in bluppy laps and ga-loops, gossiping patiently about the horizon.

There weren't any fish or birds hanging out over here, which wasn't odd or normal, just a way for things to go.  I rested my arms on the bar and then set my chin on my arms, letting my shoulders rise up to meet with my ears.  It wasn't even early afternoon yet, more late morning.  I had nothing to do but stare at the sky and wish I had something to do.

But that wasn't true, I could go home.  And do things there.  I wrinkled my nose at the air, then stood up.  I could always go to one of the internet cafés and see who was hanging out.  The Seafoam had decent coffee, and it was next to a sandwich place.  I wandered in that vague direction, hands in my pockets.

The bell on the door chimed my entrance, and the barista, a pregnant blonde lady wearing a mauve blouse, waved to me.  "Hey, An."

"Hey.  Are you Patricia or Lucy?"

She made a face at me.  "I thought it was my job to tease you for not coming in more often."

"I never let people tease me if I can beat 'em to it."  I wasn't kidding either, even though I sounded like I was.  It was a basic survival tactic.  When you were an adopted Asian kid with a name most people pronounced wrong—if I could only sue everyone who called me Anne—and also a bit of a total geek, you learned to make fun of yourself faster than everyone else.  "Can I get a brain freeze, Linda?"

The answer was the squort of the relevant machine.  I sat at the table closer to the door and picked up a newspaper.  It was current, but there was nothing interesting going on.  I liked it that way.  Interesting often meant bad, the way newspapers were.

After I'd paid for my coffee, I returned to my seat and flicked the newspaper away from me.  I had to find something to do that didn't involve going home.  "Hey, can I grab one of the consoles here?"

Linda tossed a straw at me.  "You can use one of the computers if you stop talking Nerd at me."  She was only here for the work and to be around the smell of coffee.  I was pretty sure she was deliberately ignorant of how the computers worked, and she seemed to like it that way.

Personally, I thought it was madness.  I sat on one of the incredibly uncomfortable barstools and navigated straight to my current favorite forum.  All of the threads were over-bumped nonsense, but sometimes someone said something that glimmered with intelligence.  That someone wasn't me as often as I would have liked, but at least it wasn't 4chan.  I had outgrown that three minutes after taking a look.

My email was more interesting.  Dad had sent me a few vacation pictures, and promised to be home in a week.  With seashells, as if I couldn't just go get some.  He'd gotten a tan, and Mom had sunburned so badly that her skin matched her hair.  She looked like a crayon in the photo, but Dad promised that she was wearing hats and lakes of sunscreen now.  I smiled and shook my head, leafing through the other stuff.

It was all… dull.

Everything was going samey, and I was letting it.  I grimaced at the screen, then signed out of all the windows I'd opened and hopped off the stool.  "Hey, Linda.  Am I boring?"

"Pay up first."

I rolled my eyes, digging a bill out of my pocket.  "Come on, I'm serious.  Am I a boring person?"

"You stand there and ask that like it's a sensible question."  She rang me up and handed me the change, clicking her tongue all the while.  "You're a weirdo, so just be proud of it and don't go all angsty on me."

The bell on the door chimed again, and the café was suddenly crowded.  Four people had walked in.  I stuffed my change in my pocket and then made for the door as soon as it was possible.  "Thanks, Linda."

"Don't bother me."

"I love you!" I shouted over the chatter of teenagers.  It was an old game.  Linda was at least seven or eight years older than me, and practically married, but I loved the intentionally sour look she put on when I said things like that.

A few of the teenagers shut up and stared at me, but I just winked at them and let the joke stay as it was, not pushing or pulling it in any direction.  Linda could deal with any nosiness, after all, it was just a joke.  And I had to get home.  Lunch awaited me.

Yes, I could cook and sew.  I was a regular little Holly Hobby, aside from the whole not being a girl thing.  That probably ruined the image.

In any case, I plodded back to the dock to jump into my boat.  It was little, and sort of broken in nonessential places, and very, very old, but its name was Wilson, and it was where I lived.  And I never had to make the bed.  I had an excellent life.

Or I would, as soon as I made some cookies.  That's what was missing, after all.  I needed a big fat plate of cookies that I could throw at the bloody seagulls.  That would keep the stupid birds out of my airspace.  I could make dwarf cookies if I had enough bran.  Or anything else that would make them heavy and inedible.

My hat went off my head and onto a hook I'd screwed next to the window near the kitchen sink.  Then I found an apron and pulled it over my head, then tied it around my waist.  It was green and had a peeling sticker somewhere on it, unless the sticker had fallen off.  Grease stains were plentiful, which showed how often I cooked, but didn't really give any clue as to what I cooked.  This could be distressing when I thought of the number of times I'd indulged in gastronomical experiments, i.e., drunk cooking.

There was plenty of random ingredients in the cupboards and the ice box, so I just started throwing things together and made a mystery vegetarian sausage.  It was mostly normal things, so far as I paid attention to what went in to it, but it smelled nice.  That was the important thing.  My mom always said the first bite was with the nose—and then I'd bug her by pointing out that noses don't have teeth.

However, the second bite was with the eyes, and I had yet to master that part.  At least I'd stopped burning things.  There was enough charcoal in the world, and I didn't have a barbeque.  And the most important bite was the one that did involve teeth, that one I had a fair handle on.  I'd find out if I'd managed this time in a minute, I had to peel the layer of cooking off of my sink and counter space.

"Hmm…"  I dusted white something into the rubbish bin and scowled curiously at it.  "You were flour, right?  Oh well.  I doubt you were sugar."  I licked some off of my finger anyway, then made a face.  "Woo hey.  Yeah.  Ugh, definitely flour."

I grinned at the mess of food in front of me and cleaned up the edges, then transferred lunch to a plate.  It wasn't going to win any beauty contests, but it did taste good.  I poked it with a fork and named it Doris Applethwaite Junior.

~+~

Today was the day I would go completely nutso.  I was standing in the backyard staring at a point high enough to make my neck hurt, and my sister was standing on the roof, holding up a sticker-swathed pink umbrella and shouting about Peter Pan and flying.

God damn Peter Pan.  Damn him to hell.

"Don't move, Claudia!!"  I'd been shouting that for five straight minutes.  My throat felt like scuffed pavement.  "Please stay still!"

Of course she didn't listen.  She twirled.  Claudia was only eight years old, almost half my age.  She was a fertility treatment miracle baby, and so our parents spoiled her to death.  Oh man, choice of words…!  I was close to tears.  Of course Dad was at work, and of course Mom had to be at a yoga class.  It was probably one of them who'd gotten Claudia to think she could fly with nothing but an umbrella covered in stickers and her bunny slippers.

The ladder she'd used to climb up was still in place, but I didn't dare run to it for fear that she would jump the moment I moved or took my eyes off her.  My knees felt like almond jelly.

"I'm gonna fly, Brant!  Watch me!"

Claudia called me by my nickname most of the time, except when it was important.  Then I was back to being Brant.  Right now was really not a moment in which I wanted her to be serious.  "No!!  No flying!!"  I swore under my breath and flew at the ladder, colliding with it as I kept my gaze locked on my sister.

"Do you wanna fly too?"

I actually wept in premature relief.  "YES!  Yes I wanna fly too, wait and let me fly with you.  Please, baby sister, do not move…!!"  My voice was shaking, and I couldn't breathe right.  Thank you, Asthma, you have such ingenious timing, you great big festering butt-pimple.

The ladder was metal, but it still found a way to scrape my arms, especially when I sped up.  Claudia was leaning over to glance at the lawn.  "I see bugs, Squid."

Less serious, this was good.  "Yeah, they're icky.  We can catch them later if you just wait for me."

"Wait so we can fly together, right?"

My vision blurred.  "Yeah.  Hold still, baby girl."

"I'm not a baby."

But she was.  I hauled myself onto the roof at last, ripping the knees on both legs of my jeans and tumbled towards her.  I forced my body to right itself before I reached her, but then I grabbed her and held her close to my chest, carefully finding a way to sit down.  Just feeling her crinkly pink dress scratching lightly at my skin made the stupid weeping stop, and it was all I could do not to start shouting at her.  "Never ever do something like this again!" I hissed, relief lodging in my throat and choking me.

She blew at her bangs.  "Aw, Brant.  We aren't going to fly, are we?"

"Not like this.  People don't fly like birds and bugs."

It was going to happen.  I could feel her thinking of it.  She took in a deep breath and said, "But Peter Pan—"

"Claudia."  I couldn't tell her it wasn't real.  Mom would kill me, and Claudia would be heartbroken.  This week, her life's ambition was to become Tinkerbell.  She'd been wearing fairy wings every waking moment for the past five days—the only reason she took them off was because she'd crush them if she tried to sleep in them.  And I was not going to ruin that for her.  I wasn't that guy.  "Peter Pan has a fairy.  We don't.  If you want to fly, you tell me, and I'll hold you over my stupid head, set you on my shoulders, anything that does not involve very high places and falling."

She giggled, which could mean any of a million things.  But she wasn't trying to get out of my lap.  "Silly Brant.  Your head is not stupid.  It's a nice head with smarts inside."

I couldn't help smiling, although most of it was part of the hysterical laugh that was boiling in my chest.  "Right.  Now we're going to climb down the ladder and we are not going to jump off of anything at all."

"Not even the bed?"

I moved her aside a little to glare at her.  "Especially not the bed.  You almost hit your head on your night table the last time you tried that."

"But you caught me."

"I'm not always there!"

That was apparently funny; she giggled again.  "But you're always there."

It was pretty true, but I knew it wouldn't always be.  I was going to graduate next year, and I already picked out the college I wanted to go to.  It was in Portland, farther than I could bear to consider right now, with my sister threatening to jump off of roofs.

Claudia patted my knee, then kicked her umbrella.  It crashed to the ground, hitting the concrete patio with a clatter that gave my bones goosebumps.  "Oops," she said.  "I'm going to climb down the ladder now.  You come behind me, okay?  You're all shaky, so you have to get your inhaler."

I nodded.  "Okay.  Just be careful.  If you're not, I won't make you any pink Jell-O."

The gasp made me want to sag as all the worry was siphoned out of me.  I watched her start down the ladder with exaggerated care, then followed.  My legs were more than a little shaky, and Claudia was right about the need for my inhaler.  By the time I got my sneakers back onto the grass, I had to lean on the ladder to stay upright.

"Are you okay?"

My chest felt like the house was sitting on me, and no amount of gasping would push the feeling away.  I sat on one of the lower rungs of the ladder and tried to pull in air.  It didn't help that Claudia was hovering about a foot away from me, chewing her bottom lip and whimpering.  I tried to tell her I was fine, but it wouldn't come out.  "Backpack…"  I gasped.

She ran in the house.  For a second I wondered if she'd understood what I'd meant, or if she just remembered the lessons I'd given her about dialing 911 in an emergency.  But then she ran back out of the house wearing my backpack and letting books spill out of the open compartments.  Never mind the books, she was making me proud.

As soon as she was close enough, I reached for the backpack and fished my inhaler out of it.  A few puffs and then the world started again.  I slid to the ground, scraping my back on the ladder as I went, then banged my head on a rung.  The universe had such an opinion about me.

Claudia sat on the grass in front of me, the ruins of her umbrella creating a sort of horrific backdrop behind her uninjured-ness.  She looked terrified, but in the controlled way that she displayed when I read her the exciting parts of Treasure Island or Charlotte's Web.  She was okay.  I was okay.  Similar things would happen later on in the week.

Heaven's sake, what I wouldn't give to be bored.  Just for one entire day.

"You're not allowed to do that, Brant."

"No, I'm not."  And when Mom got home, she'd probably freak out.  We'd have to clean up the books and then I would decide whether or not to tell her.  At this point, I was still ready to shout at her about the whole flying issue.  "Will you help me clean?"

The sprinkles on Claudia's wings seemed off-kilter, which made me realize that they'd gotten crushed.  Between me grabbing her and her putting on my backpack, the poor fairy wings had given up the ghost and said farewell to their material coil.  My face fell.  Claudia wasn't even complaining about it.  She'd already gotten to her feet and started picking up my Chem II textbook.  "I'll help."

I stood up slowly and gathered up the heavier books.  "Thank you.  When we're done, I'll take you to get some new wings.  Whichever ones you want."

Our parents spoiled her so much she should have been a total brat, but she wasn't.  And I spoiled her almost as much as they did.  After all, she was my miracle too.  Sometimes I just felt like I was the one in charge of keeping her safe and on the right track.  But that didn't mean I couldn't supply her with sparkly pink things.

She beamed at me and I forgot about being mad at anybody.  "Can they be blue?"

"Why blue?"

"Because blue is like you."  She handed me my binder and waited for me to put it in the backpack, then beat me to zipping it up.  "Like your pretty hair."

I let her climb into my lap and tug gently on my bangs.  "Oh yeah."  Dying my hair blue had originally been a stupid plea for attention, but my dad hadn't noticed, and Mom had just thought it was cool.  "Then we can match."

"Yay!  Will you get wings too?"

My eye twitched.  As much as I loved my sister, everything had a limit.  "Um.  No.  Let's get going before Mommy comes home…"