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Sitting on a damp deck chair on the moist wood of your parents' deck, a misty breeze dances around you just enough to wish you had a jacket, but there's no way you're going back inside the house. You're not leaving this moment, she's not leaving this moment, nobody's allowed to leave anything.
Your sister's hand is warm around your fingertips, and so is her knowing little smile, but that feels condescending. She doesn't know. You want to hate her for what she said, what she told you she's going to do.
You hate the sunshine burning down under the passing clouds, thick yellow godrays under roils of grey canopy. You want to fight it, to pull the rain clouds back and smother the breaking sun. You don't want it to dawn of this new phase of life, one where your sister is gone, out of the country, one where you're all alone at home without her, stuck with parents too busy with a toddler to remember that they even have a middle child.
You want to hate her like you seem to hate everything else right now. But you just can't. You need her. You were never supposed to, but now you do, and now she's leaving, and now you're going to be left with nothing.
You finally break the glass of a moment she let glaze between you. "A million dollars."
She shakes her head. "It's 120,000, that's not how the math works."
"I know." You're bad at jokes at the best of times, but right now, with anger sheathing fear and a need that you resent having, you sound like the petulant child that she must see you as now. You want more sincerity to come through, to be tender and convey more need, to make yourself sound so vulnerable and heartfelt that she'll change her mind, but once she told you some kind of scalding frostbite started in you that's colored all your words, and you can't seem to warm it up. You sound like you're seething when you say "I was joking…", and when you feel the unwanted hiss in your voice your volume immediately tapers off. You're not doing yourself any favors by being a total bitch.
She reiterates "120,000 dollars, a year. After tax. Do you know how much that means?"
Of course you know what it means. It's just money. She's ready to leave her family for money. Leave you. Just for money.
You stand up from the deck chair without making eye contact and walk back inside, the breeze suddenly too cold for you to tolerate. She follows you, asking "What is so hard about this? I thought you'd be happy for me?"
You wave a hand in the air as she trails behind you. "How could I be happy about this?"
"It's my big break! I never thought this moment would come, you've been hearing me talk about moving since you were twelve, you're my sister, you should be happy for me!"
You reach your room and almost slam the door behind you, but you leave it open for her, like it's been open to her for years, ever since that night when you touched each other for the first time. You throw yourself into the corner of the bed, wrapping your arms around your legs and sitting back against the wall, cushioned by two oversized plushies that your parents bought you as a non-apology for announcing their new pregnancy. Your sister sits down on your bed and tries to force you make eye contact, moving her head around as you repeatedly push your gaze away from her, finally giving up with a sound of annoyance when you bury your face into your knees.
She sighs. "What is it?" Her exasperation grows as she continues "There's clearly something you're not telling me, and I can't help unless you tell me what it is."
"You could help by not going…"
"Nice try, now try again. Please."
Your face goes red with the pressure of disobeying her, but you make her wait. She finally asks with more patience "Is this about what we did?" There's a little more tenderness in her voice, the heartfelt tone returning from when she first told you about her job offer.
You wait for the burning in your cheeks to recede, but it doesn't. She takes another turn. "That was just messing around, I don't see what the problem is… Do you regret it or something?" You shake your head. She reaches to take your hand again, but you pull it away. She rests a hand on your knee instead, and more emotion saturates her next plea. "C'mon Sandy."
You've always been a sucker for your sister using your name. Especially after hearing it repeated in the dark, breathy and hushed to not reach past your door in the middle of the night - just hearing it makes parts of your body tingle that you want to have nothing to do with the situation. She pushed that button and now you have to say something, but you hate admitting the truth too much to just use those three words. Instead, your brain finds a clumsy phrase that you heard in an old movie a week ago. "I… caught feelings…"
She exhales, long and hard. You can almost hear the guilt in just her breath, more overt than any she showed when she first broke the news to you. She turns and scoots to sit against the wall next to you.
The air between you is somehow both a vacuum and full of static, ready to spark into dry energy that could be angry, or sad, or… who knows. You've barely been able to admit what was growing in you to yourself, and it burst open when she told you she was moving, splitting your skin into lacerations that are already turning to angry red scars. Now you've gone and admitted it to her, and the dead air between you feels acrid.
Eventually she breathes it out, only a notch above a whisper. "You caught feelings."
Your bursting, vulnerable tone is a violent contrast to hers. "Of course I caught feelings! You're perfect, how could anybody not?"
She breathes it out again after a few moments. "I'm not perfect. I'm doing this."
You remember sitting on this bed with Misty a year ago, coughing weed smoke into the fan pointed at the open window, each of you half-clothed and sweaty. And now she's an office lady. Straight laced, with an office job. Headed to an office across the world.
You want your big sister back. She's not gone yet, but you still want her back. You can't remember when you started to want her to stay in your bed instead of sneaking back to her room in the middle of the night to not get caught, but you can remember the last time it happened. Nothing felt special that night, what happened between you didn't feel any different, you were just left with that weird ache that didn't let you settle into comfortable sleep like you used to after nights spent touching each other in the dark.
"This is my fault." She puts a pin in the fact, fastening it to the wall in front of you, right next to the retrowave band posters and framed certificate for freshman year academic excellence. You can't argue with her. What you can argue with is when she says "I never should have started it. God, what was wrong with me-"
"No." You reach over and grasp her hand, probably a little too hard. You don't want to give up those nights, you don't want her to regret them, you just don't want her to go either. You look up from your knees at her again, and she turns to look back. Her eyebrows are pulled a few millimeters closer together and it looks like she's on the cusp of saying something, but she holds it in. You croak out "I wanted it. It was… so good, I… loved it." You're right on the edge of your own complete admission, but that was as close as you were able to manage.
"Sandy…" Her lips purse, and she adjusts to lean onto you, fingers interlaced on top of your knees as she stares into your eyes, so close that you can smell the chocolatey scent of her favorite hair spray.
You're still left in the flux of her wishing she could take it all back, and that truth might hurt more than the flight she's about to take. You stammer out "Don't… take it back…" Tears are starting to prickle at you, and you can already feel your sinuses starting to get blocked.
She whispers back "Okay. I won't take it back." Your heart starts to brighten, but then she says "I won't leave this room until you're okay with me going." and a brick smashes that brief flicker of light. She continues "It doesn't matter how long it takes. I'll do whatever I have to. Anything." You can hear the implication made available by those words. She finishes with "The one thing I won't do is lie."
You murmur back "Then I'll never be okay with it, and you'll never leave."
She just stares at you. Waiting.
12 hours go by, and Misty stayed with you. She left the room a few times, using the bathroom or getting the front door to accept the food she ordered for the both of you. She promised each time that she'd come back, and she did. You each spent some time on your phones, some time sleeping. You put on a movie for a while and almost managed to pay attention to it, then found a video game that actually captured your attention for a few hours. She lay on the bed behind you while you played, staring up at her phone, and from the sound of harried breathing that you caught through your headphones in a quiet moment, you almost thought that she might have been doing something indecent. Instead of taking the bait, you turned up the volume and committed yourself even harder to never giving in, picturing the things you planned to do to her in retribution for putting you through all this. Images of synth music on the speakers, sunlight streaming over her naked body, free to make each other moan for real on one of the rare days you have the house to yourselves.
You eventually laid down on the bed with her again. You had your big sister in your arms, the little spoon that you wish could live here in your bed every night until the sun comes up.
A moment finally came when you couldn't handle the silence, so you brought it back up again. Asking her about hours, time off, medical benefits. What the application process was like.
You'd have expected her to say something like 'I'll just make enough to get experience and enough money to come back and let us live comfortably together' at some point, but she didn't. The way she talked about it, you can tell she plans to go forever, and you're starting to fray at the seams.
There's equal fear and resolve in your words when you ask "Why can't I go with you?" While you wait for a response, you can hear the possible reasons in your mind as clear as if she'd spoken them aloud:
'Because you don't have a passport.'
'Because you don't speak the language.'
'Because you're sixteen.'
'Because we couldn't ever be public.'
'Because mom and dad wouldn't allow it.'
'Because you would have to leave all your friends.'
'Because you have to finish high school.'
'Because you wouldn't have a job.'
They're all reasons you're prepared to fight, and you run through rehearsed responses to each that you know you'll butcher, all in an expanse of silence that makes you think she might have fallen back asleep. You're committed, you'll do anything to make it work, to still be with her, to show her that you'll fight to make a life together. You're ready for anything-
"Because I don't want you to."
Something starts to warp in your chest, immediately exceeding the structural integrity of its frame. You prop yourself up and place a hand on her bicep, squeezing and leaning slightly over her to plead "Don't you love me?!"
Your sister is silent for a long time. Too long, you shake her. "What? That answer should be obvious!"
"It's obvious for your sister. But not for Misty."
That sinks in with barbs delivering motes of poison into your most vulnerable places. You can feel limpness creeping in inches along your body, and you collapse backwards to stare up at the ceiling. The darkness of defeat is starting to seep in along the edges, and the longer you push back at it, the longer you'll be stuck in this unceasing limbo. Misty doesn't have to leave on her flight for another month, and your parents are gone for another week and a half at your aunt's with your little brother.
Nothing is going to bring an end to this except you.
You can feel acceptance sucking something out of a cavern inside yourself that you never knew was full until it started to painfully empty. Finally, you resign yourself to just asking what concessions she'll grant you. "When will you come home?"
She rolls over to look up at the ceiling with you. "Holidays. If I can afford it."
"You're getting paid a million."
She coughs out a tiny little laugh. "Yeah… if I can get time off work."
The answer plops indelicately in the unresponsive jelly of your emotions, and you lie there without taking it in for a long time. When you summon the energy needed to push past the inertia of defeat, you can feel the vibrations in every molecule of your cheeks, eyes, tongue, and jaw when you ask "When you come back, can we still… mess around?"
She adjusts to rest the back of her head on one of your splayed out arms. For the first time since she came home today, her voice sounds completely certain, but it comes after a pregnant pause. "… yeah."
Another peak of vibration, deeper in you now, in your throat and chest. "Can we… mess around now then?" You're on a rickety wooden bridge, one misstep away from falling into an abyss and pushing her to never ever return, even for a visit.
But… "Can we go all the way?"
Your sister rolls over and gets up on her elbow to look at you. "Is that what you want?"
"You said you'd do anything."
She stares deep into your eyes. "And you'll be okay with me leaving once we do?"
The inside of your lip stays pinned between your teeth for long moments. You can feel your heart screaming 'no' and it's so loud, you can't ignore it...
… but then you nod anyway.