Chapter 20: Atmosphere

I kissed my sister goodbye on the walkway. It was the most public event in our relationship. Any of our neighbors could easily see our tongues battling. There weren’t any words to describe how I felt. One of the most important two people in my life, one of the two women on the planet I was capable of loving was leaving.

I had met my sister just over a year ago, and now she was leaving my life again. She was going to be a minimum of three and a half hours away. It would be weeks or months before I got to see her again. I sputtered out, “I love you, sugar-spun.”

“I love you too, baby brother.”

She turned and stepped out the gate. She got in her overpacked orange Volkswagen bug and sped off. My sister was gone. I turned and walked back into the grandmother’s house. I felt a slight twinge of pain in my chest. The Grandmother and GG were still waving at her behind me.

Hours later, I sat on the roof of the grandmother’s house, my moon was a sideways smile, a perfect crescent stabbing the sky, an earring to the stars. There was the slightest bulge in the center of the crescent. She was swollen, pregnant with my discontent. Mindy was gone. All the promises we had made, all the thoughts we’d whispered felt hollow.

How can emotion compete with distance?

It had been a hell of a year. I had made friends, found a place I was comfortable, and fallen in love twice over. Mindy and Susan were gone from my life. They had been cynosures to me and now, I was near rudderless.

August was coming and with that a school year and I had made deals with my mother and Robert, that would ensure I wasn’t in my comfort zone. I still had Alex. I still had Scott, Daniel, Beth, and the girls less Angie. The wind was blowing me in a direction, I just didn’t know where. I did know that my moon, my capricious crescent moon, was there for me.