A Breath Too Late - Rocky Callen Page 0,19

finally cornered them and told them to give me an answer and they flat-out said no. They knew all along they would say no and they just made me wait!”

I looked at the way your face scrunched up into angry lines. “What did they say no to?”

“They won’t let me go to art camp this summer.”

I sat up straighter. You had just won the art award at school. You had a collection of paintings hanging in our school hallway. Every single notebook you owned was framed in elaborate pencil drawings. You had been talking about going to the art camp in the city for two whole years. You were finally old enough.

Maybe I didn’t like your parents either. “That’s so stupid!”

“I know!”

Art camp would mean you would be away for six weeks in the summer. I bristled the first time you talked about it because I knew I would miss you. But I never wanted it taken away from you. You belonged there.

“We have to figure out a way for you to go.”

“It’s impossible. It costs nine hundred and fifty dollars. Where can I get money like that?”

This is where I would’ve liked to remember how we came up with some ingenious idea and the whole community rallied and then we said our sniffly farewells as you headed off to camp. That is the movie version. But we didn’t live in the movies. I scooted closer to you and leaned my head on your shoulder. You were plucking the seeds off the flowers—pinching bunches, tearing them off, and tossing them in the grass beside you. It didn’t look like you were making a wish. It looked like you were throwing it away.

“Tell me a story,” you whispered.

This had become our game over the past few months. I would tell you stories and you would draw me promises. We wrote and drew our way out of our worst days. Sometimes I didn’t understand your anger. Sometimes the things that wrecked your day seemed so small in comparison to the bruises on my back. But still, I wanted to take all of that hurt away, even if I didn’t understand it, because it was yours and I didn’t want it to be.

“There was a b—”

“No, start with ‘Once upon a time.’”

“Why?”

“Isn’t that how the fairy tales all start? That way we know it will be a happy ending.”

Not all fairy tales have happy endings, but I didn’t tell you that.

“Once upon a time,” I began.

You closed your eyes to listen and I whispered a tale about a boy who painted things into reality. A drawn door that was a portal to anywhere. A painted star you could sit on and dip your toes into ocean sky. An acrylic wishing flower whose seeds could be ridden to what you desired most in the whole world. A magic boy with a paintbrush who was ridiculed until he showed the world what he could do.

You were smiling by the end. I was too. You opened up your eyes and searched the patches of grass around you. “What are you looking for?” I asked.

You tugged on one fluffy wishing flower.

“We will both get out of here, Ellie.”

“We will both get out of here,” I repeated, because sometimes you have to say things out loud even if you don’t know if they can be true.

“Let’s blow out this wishing flower together.” Saucer eyes. Big smile. “If the fuzzy flowers fly away, then we’ll know that our wish will come true.”

I sat back. I didn’t want to blow out the flower. I didn’t want to squeeze my eyes shut and heave out a long breath only to open my eyes to see a cluster of seeds still stuck there, mocking me for dreaming too big. I’d had that happen before. I didn’t want to know that the wish wouldn’t come true. But you raised the flower in front of my eyes, all wild and bright hope, and you started to count down.

“Three.” Inhale.

“Two.” Hold it.

“One.” Eyesshutandblowallthebreathoutandkeepblowinguntilyourlungsache.

Open eyes.

The seeds were parachutes of promise that teetered in the air.

The dandelion was bald.

We both smiled as we stared at it.

* * *

August, I don’t quite remember when I locked you out of my life or forgot about our promises. As every memory slams into me, I taste the bitterness of regret. I walk into your home and go up the stairs. Your bedroom door is locked now, but that doesn’t keep me out.

You don’t go to school. You don’t even leave