austin oakley | ten | fin

"Ain't you havin' fun?"

You're seven. It's summer. There is no school, and Daddy said your only chores while he's gone working are helping Autumn with the chickens and taking out the trash. There's a whole farm you could be playing in, but instead you're standing on a plushy, cushioned stool in the vanity room, wearing your older sister's dress while she circles around it with a case of pins, looking for damage to be repaired. You're a mess of shimmery blue fabric and feathers and beads.

"Nope. Pageants are dumb."

In fact, you couldn't care less really, but you've made that abundantly clear in the last few minutes already. Your sister knows; what she really means by asking is that he's pouting and he should stop.

Autumn rolls her eyes back. "If I gotta, you gotta." To hear it, Austin thinks Autumn doesn't like doing this any more than he does. There's a simple solution for that then, as far as he can see it. Maybe things are different when you become a teenager- more complicated, like grown folk are always saying. But as for you, when you doesn't wanna do something, well-

"You're the one who still does them with her." Her is obviously Momma, who is the real culprit for why any of this is happening in the first place.

"Instead of doin' what exactly?"

"Quittin'."

"Tried that," she explains, clenching a pin between her teeth for a moment to snip a stray thread with some scissors, "she made me go anyway."

This is at least a good enough argument to make you consider. But not a strong enough argument to win.

"Well she can't make you try."

Autumn laughs, "So I should get up there and make a fool of myself on purpose?"

She finishes what she's dooing, unzipping the dress as if it's necessary. You're fully holding the gown up with your armpits: all it would take is you raising your hands in the air to get out of it.

"Sounds like you feel bad either way. I dunno, I'm gonna get a popsickle and see if Cash and Sophie are home."

---

You don't think about that again for a long time. Years even, maybe. But standing in front of her grave now- you think about it every single time. Not that you tend to spend a weird amount of time at the graveyard: you don't. Even before one of them became the final resting place of your older sister, you got spooked once during a hayride when a man in a mask chased you with a rubber knife and ever since then you've had a reluctance. But you steel yourself against it for special occasions.

"September 27th," you note, peering down at the headstone and the fresh marigolds you stole from Momma's flowerbed. You're only five years younger than her now, already taller than she ever got to be. You outgrew her marks on the door-facing in the living room this summer, flat-footed with no shoes. You still gotta take out the trash. You feed the chickens on your own, too. And of course, more responsibility as age often sees to. Honestly these days, you get why she used to wake up so early in the day: it was the only time left for herself.

A pause.

You should be getting back soon. At the last second, you place a blue feather in the vase, plucked right from the dress she fixed all those years back. It's your way of saying sorry, maybe: that you were too young to understand, but that she taught you a lesson you won't ever forget and now no one will ever, ever make you do something you don't want to do.

"Happy birthday."

You leave without another word.