We Are Us

I don’t wait for him to finish his sentence. “I’ll be right there.”

Ru

I jog back down the hall, to Sadie’s room. “Hey—”

“Don’t you even knock?” She’s lying on her bed, holding a book with a half-naked man on it a few inches from her face.

“Can you cover for me if Mom wakes up? I need to take the car into town—I won’t be long.”

Sadie sits up and looks pointedly outside her window. “Poppy, you only just got your license and you want to go driving in that?”

Urgency clutches at the tendons of my throat, turning my voice into a croak. “I have to.”

“What for?”

“I—” Glancing down at my watch I see that I only have twenty minutes to get into town before the store closes. It takes fifteen on a su

Her features soften. “Go. I’ll handle mom if she wakes up.” After shooting her a grateful smile, I’m halfway to the back door when I hear her call softly. “Just be safe.”

I make it to the store just as the manager is coming around the register with a set of keys. Her shoulders slump, a heavy sigh hallowing out her chest. “We’re closing.”

“I’m sorry, I called a few minutes ago?” My voice ends higher like I’m asking a question. “I’m just picking up a photo order. I’ll only be a minute.”

My heart is practically crashing against my ribcage by the time I’m back in my mom’s car, soaked to the skin. I grab the plastic bag and rip open the envelope containing photos Gavin must have taken with the camera of his phone. There are only fifteen, that’s all his phone would store, and he said he wished he’d gotten one with more memory a dozen times.

But as I flip through each one, the tears fall harder until my vision is as blurry as the windshield of my mom’s car.

Gavin and I, lying in a pile of fallen leaves we’d raked with our hands. Our heads are touching, our hair mingling together. Huge grins stretch across our faces, a halo of red and yellow and copper leaves forming around us. I run a finger over Gavin’s lips now. We were so happy that day. So happy whenever we were together.

There’s a photo of me, my eyes closed, lying on a bed of blankets in our cave. My shoulders are naked, and I know the rest of me is too, although the picture frame ends just below my collarbone. I don’t remember him taking this picture, though I’m almost certain I know he did—the night we made love for the first time. My moonstone pendant is visible in the shot, although my hair is partially covering it. And there’s a softness to my features, a sated kind of blissfulness that shows even in this photograph.

There’s a selfie of us in front of my favorite tree, a yellow birch with thick, exposed roots that we sometimes sit on like chairs. Another where we’re sitting on the high rock ridge we climbed that led us to our cave all those years ago. And another of us standing on either side of the GC + PW Gavin had carved into the smooth, mouse-gray trunk of a beech tree.

The rain is still coming down when I finally drive home, the sky sludgy and even darker than before. Sadie is waiting for me in the kitchen, and she tosses me a box of tampons as I come into the room.

“Thanks, Poppy. You’re a lifesaver,” she says loudly, jerking her head toward the living room and taking the tampons back. “Mom, Poppy’s home.”

My mom stumbles into the kitchen, clutching her coffee cup and weaving slightly. “Sadie, that is the last time you’ll send your sister out into a storm.” Her voice trails off as she gestures with her mug at the window rattling from the wind. “And Poppy, you should have told her to stuff her underwear with paper towels.”

Sadie heads back to her room, I’m sure biting her tongue.

“It’s okay, Mom. It was no problem.”

Pouring the last of her bottle into her mug, she returns to the comfort of her couch, shaking her head and mumbling. “There’s no reason to be out in this. That girl, just no consideration.”

A few moments later, I tap lightly on Sadie’s bedroom door, waiting until I hear, “come in,” to open it.

“Thank you. I—” A wave of remorse pierces the thick veil of worry and confusion that has blinded me since reading Gavin’s texts. “I’m really sorry, Sadie. For earlier, and for the million other times I’ve bitten your head off for no good reason.”

Sadie accepts my apology more easily than I deserve. “It’s fine, sis. We’re stuck with each other, for better or worse.”

A soggy laugh tumbles from my throat. When we were younger, we joked about marriage vows being pointless because, in our case, they certainly hadn’t kept our parents together. I’m not even sure my parents were actually married. We’ve never seen any pictures of my mom in a white dress, and her answers are always vague. But sisters, we said, would always be together, for better or worse, no matter what.

“I’m lucky to be stuck with you, Sadie. I owe you.”

“Not as much as I owe you. But don’t worry, I’ll get even with you one day.”

“I, um…” I look down at the wrapped bag of photographs in my hand. I promised Sadie an explanation. “These are—”

Our stare is broken when her phone chimes. She picks it up and glances at the screen. “Can we—”

“Of course.” I flash a quick smile and back out of Sadie’s room, clutching at any excuse to delay a conversation I’m in no condition to have.

I spend the night staring at Gavin’s photographs, finally easing out the back door when the first light of dawn streaks through the sky.

The storm wreaked havoc in the preserve. The hiking trails are slippery, muddy rivers. Decades old trees are uprooted, twigs and branches and huge sheared-off limbs scattered over the forest floor like LEGO bricks.

But nothing is going to keep me from the woods today.

I left something for you in our place. It explains everything.

It better, Gavin. Because if it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’m going to do.