I can smell the diesel fumes and dust as the bus clears away from the entrance of our driveway. The walk is around a quarter of a mile, but the bus doesn’t have a place to turn around if it went to my doorstep, which is fine by me. We have too much junk in our yard anyways.
Bobby wants to hold my hand as we walk to our house, and I let him. His backpack is no longer bigger than he is, and he’s starting to discover girls. Girls are apparently discovering him, but neither are quite sure what to do about it. I know it won’t be long before he’ll stop holding my hand when we walk up to our house. Nowadays he waits for the bus to drive away before he reaches for it.
“C’mon little fish,” I tell him. He smiles up at me and begins skipping along, kicking the rocks with his dust-encased shoes. “How was school today?”
“Good,” he says, breathless as he tries to keep up with my long steps, the steep climb, and sending the random bits of gravel left and right. “Liam and I played handball and four square during gym. Rebecca and Joey played with us too. Ms. Griggs is teaching us how to divide fractions now too.”
He continues to chatter on like this, talking about the trading card games he played during lunch and before school, the stories he’s reading in language arts, convection currents running along the Earth’s mantle and how Hawaii is just a hotspot that’s moving below the lithosphere. I try to remember this moment, trying to file it away among the other moments that I have shared with him, knowing that they’ll smudge into this blurred mural of my memory, and echo of when Dad used to do this for me too. If he ever cared about me like I do for Bobby, then he never shows it. I know that I won’t be like him when I get out and find a husband. If I find a husband.
Our driveway flattens out and it is a straight sprint to our front porch from here. Bobby sees our Dad step out onto our front porch, and that’s when my brother lets go of my hand and bolts for our father. Dad smiles, and crouches down, his arms spread wide as Bobby plunges through the tall grass and ascends our creaking steps.
Dad’s got the timeless facial features of Richard Gere. A full head of completely white hair. Clear and taunt skin. No wrinkles around his eyes, but his grin reaches up to coax them out every once and a while. I don’t know how old he is, but he’s been around for a while. He sweeps Bobby up as my little brother giggles and screams. I follow behind, arms across my chest, before I brush the bark of our birch tree in a silent thank you. I can feel her branches wave and sway in response. I want to get rid of the moss that is growing up her trunk, but she won’t let me. She’s too kind sometimes.
We’re all eco-friendly at our house. Solar panels on the roof. Windmills out back. Dad doesn’t work, not in the traditional white-collar/blue collar way, but he helps with research for his friends and keeps the house, mostly. I keep the garden out back, growing our fruits and vegetables and maintaining our compost heap. I make dinner most nights, unless Dad orders out for pizza. Bobby mostly just plays, but Dad’s got him to help me out from time to time, along with beating back the jungle which is our front lawn. Don’t know why Dad won’t do it himself.
“Ha ha! Hello little fish!” says our Dad, bouncing Bobby on his hip. “Whoa, you’re getting too big for this!” He sits my brother down, and turns to address me as I’m leaning against our tree.
“And how’s our Miss Sulky and Surly?”
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