A Sky Full of Stars (Mylee)

The morning sun that rears its ugly head is not a welcome sight. I turn over and groan in annoyance, pulling the pillow to cover my head as voices slowly but surely fill the house, seeping through every crack and crevice intruding past the barriers with which I’ve surrounded myself. Eventually, the disturbances pile up to such a level of disgust that I roll out of bed, leaving the covers wadded messily in the middle (what’s the point of making the bed anyway? I’m only going to mess it up again tonight). That’s my rule for my entire side of the shared room: if it’s going to be used again in the next twenty-four hours, there’s not much use in putting it away. My system works, for the most part, as somewhere between falling out of bed and almost running into the door I stumble across a shirt that doesn’t smell that awfully bad and a pair of shorts that have definitely seen better days.

The walk down to the kitchen is one that I dread with every rising sun, and for that reason, I delayed my going down there for as long as possible, waiting for the shower to start running and for the voices to die down before peeking around the corner to make sure there was no one lingering behind. I’m met with the pleasant sight of an empty kitchen, and I smile to myself as I pull out the leftovers from this morning’s breakfast and settling down at the still dirty table to eat. I’m disturbed briefly by Nora, who informs me that Russell has been “chewing everyone out from the moment he woke up” and that I “should really go set him straight.” I only wave her off, dismissing her annoyance and laying its cause on the fact that he probably got onto her for blowing something up, however major or minor it may have been.

The rest of the morning is an obstacle course of avoiding whoever I can, and I manage to keep the numbers low, only encountering Danny once as he made his way back to his room, and to my joy, he doesn’t acknowledge me with anything more than a “good morning” before disappearing around the corner (and this was because we were headed in the same direction, for I longed for the solitude that my room brought about). The door swings back with more force than I account for, and I shudder as the doorknob hits the wall. I pause momentarily to see if anyone seems to have paid any attention to the sudden noise I’ve caused, but no response is heard, so I sigh in relief and shut it much more quietly than I had opened it.

Somewhere after post-breakfast and before high noon I fall asleep with a book draped over my face. It falls to the floor with bang before jolting me awake, and it takes most of my energy to keep myself from falling off the bed at my being startled. I rub the tiredness from my eyes as I attempt to put the previous couple of hours back together, only being able to remember that I had made my way back into our room in hopes of doing something relaxing, but alas, the only thing I could find were a couple of old books that most likely belonged to Russell (they sure didn’t belong to me). I had picked one up with no intentions of reading any further than the first page, but little bits of curiosity sparked as I thumbed through the chapters, eventually settling on one that interested me to some extent before actually taking time to graze across the lines, catching most of the information it tried to provide. However, even the most interesting of the topic caused boredom to invade my mind with intentions of dozing off, and once I’ve really come to my senses, I realize that the sun that so bitterly shone through the window earlier has been replaced by a blanket of night.

I plod out into the hall and brace myself for being met with the sight of all the siblings, and I’m not disappointed, for Russell’s standing at the head of the scene, passing out plates and forks to the eager hands that grab at them. I lean against the wall and watch on in amusement, chuckling as he rolls his eyes at Rachel and Maggie as they sit back to back. He takes no food for himself before making his way around the table and heading back in the direction from which I just came. I duck back before circling back around to follow him, and it comes to no surprise to me as he heads to our room.

I stand in the doorway as he gathers a few things before whirling around, and his name is the only thing to leave his mouth as I smirk in response before blurting out, “Yeah, Russell, last time I checked that was still my name.” He only smiles in response before calling out loudly, “Ian and I are gonna go for a walk. Charlie, you’re in charge for right now!” I begin to express my thoughts about his decision, but he cuts me off, speaking in a quieter manner as he pulls me out the door, “Let’s get going. I want to show you something.”

Protest filter through my mind, for it’s late and the thought of having to drag myself around for a considerable amount of time doesn’t sit pleasant in my thoughts. However, I don’t dare say no to Russell, so I nod in response and yawn before plodding after him, ignoring the annoyance that radiates from each and every one of our siblings.

The night air is cool against my skin, and I let a shiver pass through my body as I wrap my arms about myself. The thin shirt I’m wearing wouldn’t have been my first choice had I known this is what the day’s adventures were to lead me on. We walk in silence for a bit, but the night hangs heavy over us and I’m desperate to get some kind of relief, so I stick my hands in my pockets and turn to him again, “So, do you really have something to show me, or were you just trying to find some reason to get away from the rest of the household? Because I don’t blame you if that’s the case.”

“I don’t want to throw this on you or anything. I’m worried about you. I’m worried that one day you’re just gonna decide to leave me with our crazy family. Are you doing okay at home or do I need to tell someone to back off?”

There was not one ounce of my body that wanted to tell my brother the absolute truth, so instead I opted to watch the stars flicker above our heads and pretend that I heard none of what he said. But the beginning reverberated in my mind like a shout in an empty hall, refusing to dwindle off until the meaning had sunk into my mind at a level in which I would not forget.

(You’re worried, Russell, and rightly so).

But part of the task of being eldest was that you took punches as they came and smiled through it all, hiding any emotion of the negative tone until no one was watching, even if the one who looked upon you was one who was genuine. And so I turned to my brother, whose heart was right and his mind true, and I put on a smile that crossed from corner to corner, a smile that spoke of lies whispered through gritted teeth and requests that would not be made known.

“I am one hundred percent fine, Russell. They just get on my nerves, as I know they do to you as well. It’s nothing to be concerned about at all.”

The broken bottles and ripped wrappers would say otherwise. For these spoke of an anger that did not match my tender words, and if any damned soul in the house was going to see through the transparency of this, it was the one who sat in front of me now, and it took every ounce of internal will and self-control to not give away the one thing I had left going for me.

(The truth was I had already lost it, but even I was too oblivious to realize this in its entirety).

For indeed I knew I was already lost and missing something, but the fact that it was sanity loomed out of my realm of thought. And indeed Russell was right to believe that I had considered the fact of leaving for I certainly had, but I was never brave enough to carry through, often packing a bag that would get me to the edge of the district before emptying it or tossing it in the corner. No, Russell was the courageous one, the leader and the commander, whereas I was nothing but a follower with a severe case of confliction and anxiety, and that was indeed not a nice combination.

I could rattle off to him now, telling him each problem that irked me and came from each sibling that filled our household, in fact, I could write him a paper on the topic, giving a paragraph to Danny and his inability to breathe well with his on two lungs and passing at least three paragraphs on the topic of Maggie and Rachel’s skirmishes. I could tell of Nora’s setting fire to my favorite book or Jason’s nonchalance on the topic of missing siblings and I could even expand upon the problems I had with Russell himself.

I could tell him all about the problems that stemmed from my own heart, yet now was not a time in which I would choose to do so.

Now I would choose to lay back upon a blanket that I had never seen before and watch the sky pass by my fingertips, tracing constellations as if a pen held firm within my hand and I had the power to draw upon the world (of course, this could never be so, for I had the shakiest hands in the world). A quivering hand could not draw a straight line, much less a universe with an order to it. And indeed we all shook, for my trembling hands did not match Russell’s inconsistent heart or Danny’s lack of ordered breaths. We were a family unstable and no one dared to contradict this, for within each of us lay a quality that indeed stabilized what we could show in the qualities that were our downfall.

I knew the qualities of each of my siblings like a definition marked by their own thumbprint, yet I could never pin my own down.

Russell had compassion teeming from every pore, even if he put on a face of discomfort and annoyance in the morning sun. He pulled more than his own weight, and I never offered assistance in the slightest. He never said he needed me, and so I never thought it was a necessity.

But Russell’s selflessness had taught me one thing indeed, and it was that unless one was to blurt out exactly what they desired they would not get it. He taught me that being straightforward was the only way to accomplish a goal and as hard as I tried to be direct—to fling myself straight into a conflict in which I did not belong, I could never do it with a stone still expression etched upon my face in the same way that he could.

He promised consistency and comfort and he never failed to deliver, yet I was the complete opposite. And, oh, how I heard the whispers that flickered about the house, how I was a bomb with only seconds left until detonation.

(“I’m not going to crumble, though I just might explode.”)

And I suppose this was Russell’s reasoning into bringing me out to see the stars, as if the dark of night would calm the same color within my soul, and to an extent it had worked. Somewhere between the walls of trees and palette of night a calm washed over my mind and tranquilized it to a certain extent, marking fears as of no sudden dangers and worries as something that could be put off to another day. If this was procrastination, it was most certainly a quality I would be looking forward to and doing more of in the future.

There would always be a tomorrow, even if I didn’t live to see it.

I knew that my lie had been noted as soon as it had been spoken, so for now my only task was to draw the attention from myself and push it upon the only person I could.

“So are you—are you okay, Russell?”

If I was a betting man (and this in itself was the joke, for indeed I was), I would place money that I could just about match Russell’s answer word for word. He’d tell me that he had no reason to be anything but okay, that he was just as fine as ever, that life was as consistent as it had always been, that he was on a rollercoaster with neither up’s or down’s.

He’d tell me everything was fine, and I’d be harsh enough to believe it.

And it only takes one more glance at the infinite sky above our heads to realize that no matter who spoke truth and who did not, we all swore under the same moon, and the lie I had not hesitated to tell only minutes ago would travel across the expanse of that sky within a matter of seconds, and soon guilt would set in and not leave until the last drop from a glass bottle had accompanied it, and only then would I be lost enough to tell a truth I didn’t dare tell otherwise.

We were all liars underneath our sun-spotted skin, only some of us were better at covering it than others.

Russell fell on the light end of this spectrum, for he read like a book at even a single syllable of dishonesty, whereas Nora spoke with sugar so consistently that even she must be questioning the authenticity of every word she speaks.

I wanted to fall somewhere in the middle, and with my last question aimed at Russell but spoken to the stars above, I sure hope I managed.