Chapter 8: (EIGHT) Love You Like A Sister Always

19:05 25 May

I ran to the front door and yanked it open, skidding to a stop in the living room.

“Aunt Cher! MEL!”

“Um, surprise?” Mel said, as she and Aunt Cheryl stood up from behind the couch. “How did you know?” Melody was almost exactly my height, and she’d let her bangs grow out since we were younger. Aunt Cheryl looked like a younger version of my mom, though her hair was longer and dyed red.

“That’s easy, Mel!” I said, setting down the borrowed Ranma volumes while I waited for them to be close enough to hug. “Avril Lavigne CD, kid’s sunglasses on the dash, a coffee cup from Rascal’s. Who else would be coming from that direction with a kid and stopping here?”

“Nice deduction, Nancy Drew.” Now that Mel was out from behind the couch, I could see she was wearing torn skinny jeans, a Journey t-shirt, and rainbow-soled converse. She was maybe an inch taller than I was, which I found annoying – weirdly annoying considering how happy I was to be small again.

“Eh, honestly I’ve always thought of myself as more of a George,” I said as I took my shoes off. “She’s more kick-ass.”

“You know martial arts?” she asked, jumping over the ottoman to hug me.

“Er, no. But I could learn!”

As soon as Mel let me go, Aunt Cheryl took her turn. I didn’t mind. It was really nice to see them again.

“Wow, Jackie, look at you! It’s been too long.”

“It’s good to see you too, Aunt Cher, but- why are you guys here?”

“Well, after you called the other day, your mom and I got to talking and realized just how long it had been since you kids had gotten together. You and Melody were thick as thieves when you were little, and after all we’re only two hours away. We figured it was about time. So, we’re here for the week!”

“No way, seriously?”

“Yeah! She got time off work and everything! They surprised me, too, at least until we got here and I figured out what was going on.”

We all talked for a bit, but eventually our moms got into a conversation about taxes or something inane like that. God, I'm so glad I don't have to care about taxes.

“Can we hang out in your room ‘til dinner?” Mel asked.

“Sure! Lemme grab my books,” I said, pointing at the stack on the coffee table.

“Oh, you read Ranma?”

“My friend Max lent them to me. It’s really good so far! It’s funny, there’s bizarre martial arts, Ranma has cool powers, and I like the art!”

“You’re really into it, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s cool!” I picked up the stack of manga, a corner making uncomfortable acquaintance with one of my bruises as I started walking. I winced.

“Um, are you okay?”

“What- oh, the bruises on my arms? Yeah, just a little accident with a skateboard and a wall.”

“You skateboard?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

She winced when she got it. “Ah. But, uh, I was actually talking about your leg? It looked like you were limping.”

“Oh! Yeah, just a little accident with a bicycle and a wall.”

She gave me a flat look.

“What?” I said, a bit defensively. “It’s not my fault I was being chased by a moose!”

“Wait, you’re serious?”

“Yes!” I said, adopting a stern pose. “Moose-on-human violence is not a joking matter!”

“I still can’t tell if you’re serious.”

“Do you wanna see under the bandages?”

“Not particularly.”

“That’s fair.” I pushed open the door to my room. “Here we are, let me set these down.”

“Ooh, you have a guitar?” she said, plopping down on my bed as I piled the stack of books on my desk.

“Yep!”

“Are you any good?”

I shrugged. “I mean, I think so. My friends and I are starting a band, actually.”

“Ooh, what kind of music do you play?”

“Well, we decided our influences would be stuff like Sonic Youth, New Order, Sleater-Kinney. Stuff like that.”

“I’m not sure I’ve heard of any of them.”

“That’s easily fixed.” I scanned my room for the music we’d picked up Sunday. “Hm. Actually I might have left it downstairs? Let’s check on Youtube.”

I switched to my computer chair, woke my computer up, and logged in, and Mel grabbed my shoulder and half-pushed me out of the way when she saw the window that was open.

“You’re on tumblr?” she said, excited.

“Yeah?”

“Dude! You’re following me. Now.” She quickly took over my keyboard and did it herself, then scrolled down my posts. “What’s this? A manifesto?” she joked.

“Er…” The one thing I was worried about was a post I’d made a few days earlier. I wasn’t sure I wanted her to read it, but it was too late now – she was already doing it.

I had a pretty bizarre experience recently. There are these stories you read online sometimes, where people have these vivid experiences and then wake up and find out they dreamed years of their life. I had something like that. I was in my late twenties, a friendless college dropout renting a crappy apartment, working at a video store; and then I woke up and I was thirteen again. And it just… there are so many bad decisions we can make in life. There are all these ways we can wind up just going through the motions. I think… I think it’s important, to try to live your life. Try new stuff, take care of the people you care about. Figure out what makes you happy and doesn’t hurt anyone else, and then do that.

I’m getting a pretty good start on that, I hope. Making new friends. I have a couple things I wanna try to avoid, too, just in case I actually experienced the future or a premonition or something.

I think it’s important.

She turned to me and wiped at her eyes. “Oh, Jackie… is this the reason you called the other day?”

I was tearing up too, remembering what I’d written, how hopeless everything had felt before I woke up a week earlier. I nodded.

“One of them,” I said with a sniffle, rubbing my eye with the heel of my hand. “I just… I really missed you guys, y’know?”

She hugged me and we stayed like that for a while until we’d both cried it out a little. I really liked being able to cry. Screw you and your macho bullshit, Dane! Eventually Mel sat back down on my bed and I swiveled my chair to face her.

“Have… have you told your parents about it?” Mel asked.

“Noooo,” I said, waving my hands to fend off the idea. “I don’t want to see a shrink. And I would be pretty soon if I did.”

She nodded in acceptance and we turned to other subjects. I found Temptation by New Order, and we listened to that and then some other music for a while – wow, the music selection on early Youtube is crap – before Mom called us for dinner, and we headed downstairs. Dad was home now, and he and Mom and Aunt Cheryl were already sitting at the table.

“Can we sit at the bar tonight?” I asked.

“That way we can keep catching up without you old folks distracting us,” Mel joked. Mom and Dad traded looks real quick.

“Sure,” Dad said with a smile. “Just keep the noise down so you don’t overload us geezers’ hearing aids.” We all laughed at that and then started serving up.

We had moose chili and cornbread tonight, and while I knew it wasn’t The Moose – we’d probably had this meat in the freezer for a while – I still took some probably-perverse satisfaction from it. I grated on some sharp cheddar, mixed it up, and added sour cream. Perfect.

Mel had watched this with an eyebrow raised, holding the block of mild cheddar instead of actually grating it.

“Sharp cheddar?”

I gave her a thumbs up. “It’s perf!”

She snorted. “‘Perf’?”

“Like, yeah, like fer shur,” I Valley’d with a shrug. That made her burst into giggles, which made me let loose a few. Snickers, that is. I wasn’t giggling. Obviously. “Here- heh. Try it!”

I offered the sharp cheddar once she’d finished laughing. “I’ll eat it if you don’t like it,” I added.

She rolled her eyes, but took it and did the same thing I had.

“Mm! That is good!”

“Why are you so surprised?” I affected an offended look, hand to my chest. “I wouldn’t eat it if it didn’t taste good.”

“You ate a chocolate-covered pickle once!” she accused, pointing at me with her spoon.

“More than once, actually,” I said with a wave. “My statement stands.”

“Ew!” She stuck her tongue out at me, and I returned it. Then we were both giggling again.

Hm. Maybe I did giggle on occasion. Very rare occasion.

I tucked some hair behind my ear and started eating again. We kept talking through dinner, just going over all the things that had changed in our lives since she moved away, though I had a bit more trouble remembering stuff than she did. Whether that was a ‘long time ago’ thing or a ‘my memory is Swiss cheese’ thing, I still had no idea. After dinner, all five of us talked in the living room for a while, until Mel and I decided to make some popcorn and watch a movie in my room, so I got the popcorn maker set up and the butter melting while Mel looked through the movie cabinet.

“Okay, what do you think?” Mel asked from the living room, holding up two DVD cases, Bolt and WALL-E.

“I think I’ll grab a box of tissues on the way upstairs.”

“Hmm, true. Ooh, or we could watch the Incredibles.”

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“That works.”

We took all three of them up anyway once we had our popcorn (salted, buttered, and then Lowry’s after to stick to the butter). I popped Incredibles in the disc drive of my computer and got it started.

“Nest?” Mel asked.

That word brought back a flood of memories from when we were little, Mel and Bay and I all on top of each other in a pile of blankets. I nodded, and we yanked the covers and pillows off my bed; I hit play and we curled up in the Nest on the floor to talk.

“Wow, I forgot about the animation on this. The sequel’s is so much better, and Voyd’s cool.”

“Wait, there’s a sequel?”

“Yeah? It came out in – in 2018, gah! Forget I said anything.”

“That ‘flash-forward’ thing was pretty confusing, huh?”

“I’ve been calling it ‘the previous continuity’, but, yeah.” Frowning, I added, “and honestly, if I was going to hallucinate a future, it could have been one where Treasure Planet got a sequel too. And Mean Girls didn’t.”

She scrunched up her nose. “How does a Mean Girls sequel even work?”

“Literally just a remake that’s worse than the original. So, it doesn’t.”

After the Incredibles finished, we wound up watching both WALL-E and Bolt; eventually, at some point in the third movie, we both fell asleep.

###

11:23 26 May

I got woken up by muffled giggling and found Mom and Aunt Cher both standing over me with cameras. I was still wrapped up in all my blankets, and also Mel, both of us sort of wound around each other.

“Shh, don’t move,” Mom whispered. “You both look so sweet like that!”

I rubbed sleep out of an eye with my free hand. “Mm. I want veto before you show those to anyone,” I whispered back. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to convince them to delete them, but I couldn’t remember the last photograph of myself I liked, so if the pictures would be floating around I wanted that much power at least.

Mel groaned a little, shifting to bury her forehead deeper into my shoulder. I had no idea how that could possibly be comfortable for her; it certainly wasn’t for me.

“Psst! Mel!” I said, shaking her a little. “Wake up before your mom has even more embarrassing pictures to show your future dates.”

“Hngwha?” She blinked blearily at me.

“There ya go.” I extracted myself from her limbs and stood up, grinning at Mom with my hands on my hips. “Ha! So much for your evil plans!”

“Curses!” she said, snapping her fingers. “Foiled again!”

“Dibs on the bathroom,” I added, and was rewarded with Mel suddenly blinking to clarity as I swiveled and power-walked out of the room.

“Nowaitheyack!”

By the time I finished Mel was dancing awkwardly in front of the bathroom door, and she eeled in past me as soon as the door opened wide enough.

“Okay outout!”

“I’m going!” I tugged the door shut behind me and strolled downstairs laughing. I found Mom and Aunt Cheryl at the kitchen table with a box, one of those fancyish ones made out of, like, whatever kind of cardboard they make hardback books from.

“Hey, whatcha lookin’ at?”

“Oh, just reminiscing with some old photos, from when Cheryl and Melody lived in town.”

“Yeah?” I wandered over and sat seiza in a chair to look with them. I might have had problems with how I looked in pictures, but it was still fun to see stuff from when I was little, particularly because I couldn’t remember it that well.

Mel joined us a few minutes later and the four of us browsed through photos for a while. We just sort of skipped over any that had Dane in them, but otherwise it was really cool to see them all. There was one of Mel and I when we were like five, fighting over a trout that one of us had just caught and the other wanted to keep as a pet; that one had us all laughing.

I picked up the next one in the stack and examined it. It was a photo of three little girls, maybe four years old, two identical ones dressed as princesses in a ‘jail’ made of chairs, and outside it one dressed as – “wait, is that Bailey in a Robin Hood costume?” I held it further away so Mel could see.

Mom leaned over. “Aww, I remember that. The three of you argued so much over who’d be Robin Hood and who’d be the princesses in need of rescue.”

“The- three of us?”

Sure, the one princess looked like Mel, but- but-

But the other one-

This is a photograph of me dressed as a princess.

I honestly don’t know what to do with that information.

“Jack?” Mel said, sorta leaning in front of me. “You good?”

“I am holding a photograph of myself dressed as a princess,” I said, still staring at it.

“And a very pretty princess you make, too!” She patted me on the arm.

“Thank you, Mel, that is abundantly unhelpful.”

“Jeez, what’s the problem? I was wearing the same dress. And Bailey’s dressed as Robin Hood.”

Well, finding out I’d apparently crossdressed prior to Sunday is a bit of a surprise. It made me feel… uncomfortable? I thought that was probably right, anyway. Sort of a weird tickly sensation in my chest.

“Um. I’ll tell you later.”

She poked me in the side. “No, really, c’mon.”

I nodded at our moms who’d already moved on to another photo. “Later,” I reiterated. She made an ‘ah’ and went back to the photos.

I shoved the thought aside for about half an hour, and then we found a Halloween photo dated 1999. Bailey was dressed as Supergirl; the one I was pretty sure was Mel was dressed as a less-risqué Black Canary; and the other kid in the picture was Wonder Woman.

At least, I hoped I had Mel and I the right way around, because…

“Uh, Mom? Is this me?”

“Oh, gosh! Wow, I’d completely forgotten that. Look at how cute they were, Cher!”

“Still are, when Jackie blushes like that,” Aunt Cheryl said, which helped not at all; must be where Mel gets it from.

“Guys? Is this a photograph of me dressed as Wonder Woman?”

“Mm-mm,” Aunt Cheryl said. I started to breathe a sigh of relief, then she added, “Melody was Wonder Woman, you were Black Canary.”

I just sort of dropped my head in my hands for a minute while I tried to process that.

Okay, I mean, Black Canary was pretty cool. Maybe I had a thing for badass martial arts chicks. And I pulled it off remarkably well for a four-year-old. But…

“Why?” I mean, there were so many other superheroes I could have dressed as. Like… like… uh… the Flash? So I could run away from this information?

“I think you said something about needing to match Melody and Bailey?” Mom mused.

“You also said she got to wear a cool jacket,” Aunt Cher added.

“Cool. Cool cool cool. I’m gonna go get my water now. From my room. Where I left it.” I said, super-convincingly. I walked upstairs and then just laid down spread-eagle on my bed on top of my sheets.

“Okay, spill,” Mel said, shutting the door behind her and then sitting crosslegged next to me.

Well, I already told her the Big Could-Get-Me-Institutionalized Secret, so.

“Fine,” I said, talking to the ceiling rather than look at her. “But this doesn’t leave this room.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious, swear it.”

“I swear. Jack what is it?”

“Okay. So I mentioned the band I’m starting?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s relevant I promise. Anyway, it’s me, Bailey, and our friend Kelly. We decided on the name ‘Rebel Grrl and the Soul Sisters’. Which kind of implies all three of us are girls, so we thought it would be cool if I dressed like a girl when we’re playing. And I figured, whatever, it’s just clothes, right? Except now I find out that apparently, I dressed up as a girl multiple times when I was little. So I’m freaking out a little. Like, does that mean something? Does that have to mean anything? Am I completely off my rocker?”

She flopped down to lay next to me. “Damn.”

“Yeah!”

“Well, like you said – does that have to mean something? I mean, so you wore a skirt once. I once wore a pair of pants made entirely of bubble wrap. We all do weird shit sometimes.”

I looked at her for the first time this conversation. “I’m sorry, you did what?”

She waved it off. “This isn’t about me. So, does this mean anything particular to you?”

“Not… not really? At least, I thought I was just curious, y’know?”

“Then indulge the curiosity. We’re teenagers, or whatever you are. We’re supposed to do weird shit to find ourselves or whatever. If it isn’t hurting anyone who cares?”

“How come I have thirteen extra years of memories and you’re the mature one?”

“I read a lot of Dear Abby.”

I snorted and punched her arm.

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