Silverkey Crossing

Little Sister - Part V

The day had been a long one. The homework assignments had been hard ones. With Sally's aversion to math class, he had to study a little more than the others just so he could give her reliable answers. Yeah, he was probably enabling her in a fashion that would bite her in the butt down the road, but hey... the way she looked at him when she got those answers. Some of the guys had to manage their lunch money so that they would have something to spend on their girlfriends just to keep them. Aiden? All he needed was math answers.

Besides that, the day had just found so many other little ways to tax Aiden's energy above average. Night time found him with heavy eyes and limbs. Lauren would be getting a short bedtime story.

Nightfall.

Lights out.

Her soft footsteps creaked into existence right on schedule.

Aiden gazed at her. She was pretty. Even with those ghoulish eyes. He wished that there were baby pictures of her in the family album. He had his favorite pictures. With Dad at the run-down Burger Man in the town Dad was born in. The joint was practically one big showcase of fifties and sixties fiberglass sculptures. Like someone tried to turn their cartoon nightmares into three-dimensional beings. Cows especially -- then pigs, farm animals... and naturally, one large anthropomorphic cheeseburger. Dad wore big glasses and a chestnut colored mustache, and the white rim of a diaper peeked over Aiden's "big boy" pants.

Then there was the picture of Aiden on the Slip N' Slide at a neighbor's birthday party. It wasn't even Aiden's party and the photo made it look like he was the one kid having the time of his life.

There was the rather placid Spring photo of a four year old Aiden picking dandelions as big as sand dollars.

They were all missing something.

A little dark-headed girl with gray freckles on her nose. A friend, a shadow by his side. A little sister. Someone that would experience the snapshots and discover life with him.

She lifted herself into bed with Aiden and lay beside him, looking into his eyes with her icy black marbles.

"Hey." He smiled at her and ran his fingers through her hair.

She started babbling.

Her mouth ran ninety miles an hour without a single breath. Strange words without the remotest semblance of English. Syllable after windless syllable.

He looked at her with confusion in his tired eyes. He tried telling her about his day but his words were swept under her torrent of speech. He pulled his pillow over his ears. Her voice was just as clear. After so much time, he got up and paced around his room. She followed. The little mouth prattled away footsteps behind him. He gazed out the window at the sky. The night was thick in the darkness of a new moon.

He lay back down. Not only feeling irritated, but strangely light-headed. He felt disconnected from his body and his thoughts displaced by her voice. A trickle of meaninglessness that slowly pushed his mind, his thoughts, his soul out of the grotto of his core and into the deeper recesses of cold narrow caverns beyond. He found himself having to consciously focus to keep from being dissolved out of his own physical frame.

Stop it, he wanted to say, but was afraid to. Why afraid? He didn't know. The night wore on and he had to stay present to keep the torrent of words from sweeping his mind away.

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Did he sleep last night or didn't he? It could only be measured in minutes if he had. His mom troubled herself every morning for the last four years over the possibility of once again finding a wax skinned shell in her son's bed. This morning she only found this frail exhausted thing with dark blue/green circles around his eyes. Which was fine by her. Nothing to warrant calling the nice men in the white coats.