marble soda { lysette&avery

{ l y s e t t e .

It's past scratching heads and whispers of wondering if he's okay -- I've never been good at these kinda things. 

My arms sway, ignoring the fact that his sister is buried. Ignoring the fact that he's suffering and I'm fine, I'm perfectly fine. I sit at my moth ball neighbor's house, sketching lines into the wall with the sharp edge of a nickle; what if that was me? I can't help to think anything else, would my mother be disappointed? She's loved me with as much as she can for years, and even daring to leave her is scary. How would my father have felt, my hands course on his tombstone -- at least I wouldn't be the first.

The wallpaper crown stills sits on my head, and I think about telling Olive. Telling him that childhood innocence can still exist, that even in the face of death, life continues. But I can't, and I know that. I'm past the stage; I know he's hurt, and I know I can't care. 

Not a single pulse of my origami heart pulses for anybody but myself, and that's what I tell myself. 

Celia was a name to be whispered, I think, I think. People admired her for some reason or another, and my mother never cared for the games. The market men bet dimes on her name and cursed when she died, and when her killer's killer made it home instead of her's, or instead of her. That was weeks ago, the number little enough to count on my hand -- Celia Mortuus. Dead, and if I was in her spot I wouldn't have had a chance. If I volunteered, or if by some god's hand I was pulled, I would be dead on the spot. 

("Lysette Mortuus!") I say to myself in the echoed abandoned room of my aunt's mothball house.

And I'm frozen, the crowd's eyes on me and Olive doesn't scream, I don't have a family to cry my name out. Just a single gasp of my mother, and my eyes are on her; somebody volunteers in my place and I collapse. And I hate it. Death doesn't just take one soul, it takes a piece of many as well. And who cares for me? The tiny flower girl and her ghost hunting friend, he has sisters, ten or more at least and my heart drops as I open the window, my right foot already out of it. 

He had ten at least, minus one. 

Our conversations this past year have been scarce and sacred. He mutters the name, "little monster,"

"yes?" 
I can't remember the responses. 

My size seven leather boot slams into the gravel. I scratch my hair, walking away from the mothball house and back into my origami world -- in my dreams I crafted this. I folded the creases of this small town, and I brushed paint into the coal mines and erased the death toll. We're happy, beating in my origami heart and I pretend we're all safe. I mutter in my sleep, "little monster?" 

"Yes? And we're okay, that's my response. That in my angel wing blinks death stopped in his tracks and I'm thirteen and Olive is fourteen and isn't bleeding through the spine of my book. I pick at my elbow, my knee, my ankle ant bites, scratching off skin under my short bit nails; I don't remember his responses anymore because often I don't feel like their mine to have. I've never experienced death like this, my father loved me whole but I was small; but I was small, but I was small, but I was small. One of my scratches bleed, one on my elbow -- small. I've always been and always will be.

One market man notices, says, "Lysette, are you okay?"

And the response falls in foggy ears, I whisper back huh and keep walking my small steps in my large boots. Tiny prints leading from wayward home. Is small is small is small is small is, I rub the blood on my summer shorts, is small is small is small is small is small is
small. 

"Hello?" I whisper, my head rounding the corner into the hospital. It's home. Not my home, not anywhere close -- Olive's. And the receptionist says, "hello," back, my cheeks flushed because she's gorgeous and tall and I'm small is small, "is Olive here?" 

"No,"

"oh."

I can wait, I can, I can. It's the least and the most I can do, and I rub my cut as I sit down, stinging with the salt and dirt on my fingertips. Ten at least, minus one, what am I? I'm not strong, I'm not a Mortuus or a Graham, I'm just Grey. Just caught in the middle and I can't compare to the ten of them minus one, I couldn't even compare to the minus one. If I died would my body just be caught here again? Would Olive be the one burying me next to my father, or would I even be buried? 

I don't want to remember the response.