Something of a Kind - By Miranda Wheeler Page 0,15

as Owen slung an arm around her waist. He tossed her over his shoulder, bolting up another trail and back again. Nearly buckling under his own laughter at her protest, his arms slacked.

She pulled away in escape, dropping into the space at Noah's side. He grinned, tucking a final match into the tinder, stuffed beneath an array of sticks. As he gently prodded, the modest collection lit up.

The last time she had seen fire was during witness cremation. Though seeming both aloof and grave, Greg was curious. Aly needed the finality, to know her mother was no more. The process, of course, was traumatic to attend. Smoldering doubts in Vanessa’s absence left her wondering if her mother lingered within the broken flesh, waiting to awake for healing that would never come.

A balding man in an oatmeal suit popped a cardboard top over her box, offering a grimacing pat as she rolled into a fiery machine, like a cheap assembly line. For three hours, she watched an angry red scorch the glass with a cold stare, arms and legs crossed, perched on the edge of a stained waiting chair. No dust to dust, only ashes.

Aly had shredded herself at the wake, a patchy red face, hiccupping tears. Greg hadn’t purchased a funeral and Lauren refused to push. They had unassuming farewells days before. Coworkers set up the open-doors of a small denomination. She took a seat in a plastic lawn chair beside Vanessa’s photograph, stilted with an oversized, gilded frame. The outlet-mall church managed dying flowers, an inflatable baptistery, and a unisex bathroom. Her mother’s taste was rich, but her life was modest. It suited the times.

Vanessa was terminal. They gave an almost accurate six months. Greg flew in from Alaska, but left the week before she passed. There was an exciting lead, too ambiguous to share, and doctors claimed she was momentarily stable. He never did say what kept him.

Visiting hours missed Aly by three minutes, but they whispered gut-wrenching goodbyes the night she went comatose, forty-eight hours prior. The five year fight ended at 6:52 AM. The morning was unremarkable, pre-sunrise, of an abnormally snowless New York December. It was silent while it rang, a quiet end her mother would’ve been unimpressed with.

Aly belonged to Lauren, according to Vanessa’s will, but her father had never been present enough to require relinquished rights or revoked custody. An online validation overlooked the misstep, and after two visits to state court a judge handed her father her chains. Aly had no fight, and no one ever argued. Her aunt never fought, always glancing away with guilt when Aly’s pained eyes pleaded silently.

A father wasn’t part of her plan, not in a near or distant future. She would live with Lauren and Vincent until she was eighteen, and finish high school in Kingsley. When she met the age minimum, her mother’s life insurance would get her started at reasonable art school. The plan was what they talked about. Vanessa’s last direction became Aly’s rigid outline. Greg was the only one to question it.

She didn’t plan for Alaska. She certainly didn’t expect to be perched on a log in a state park of the last frontier, sitting around a fire and thinking of death. With the soreness of playfully rough arms throbbing at her waist, the wind blew smoke into the faces of strange instantfriends. Her lungs burned with laughter she didn’t deserve. She hadn’t prepared for Noah, either.

His reflexive shiver sent her spiraling down to earth. She jumped, and he apologized quietly, studying her alarm.

He’s looks at me like a person reads a book.

“No, really, it’s okay,” she assured, unsure what to do with her fluttering hands. Finally, she tucked them behind her knees and nibbled her lip, waiting for a break in the silence.

“You’re so jumpy, girl.” Smirking, Owen’s hands were crossed, gripping a hairy knee. His long legs were bent up to comfortably sit in a low place, his heels digging back and forth in the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust in drier patches.

“Oh, don’t mind Noah. He just thinks he’s better than everybody else” Luke ribbed, his attention finally pulled away from the flames. The way he chewed his cheek and stared, occasionally chucking handfuls of grass was troubling.

“I do not,” Noah groaned. Betwe en his tone and the instinctive drop of his head into his hands, it wasn’t difficult to tell it was a reoccurring taunt.

“-because Gabriel took him out of town for burgers on his birthday