For The Moon

mason

Mason used to love winter. He used to love the way the snow would fall from the sky and onto his shoulders like feathers brushing against his skin. He loved waking up to the sound of his mother's excited voice telling him, "Mason, it's snowing!" while pulling out his coat from his closet with a smile on her lips. He loved how the snow blanketed the city in white, completely void of the discoloured brick and wood on the hundreds of rotting structures in the area. He loved the cold air he breathed; he loved how the frost made the scent of the city-the smoke from cars and cigarettes, the smell of grease from the fast-food chain restaurants lining the main roads-disappear and make it seem like New York was clean and pure again.

        But this was before Mason only saw the colour of snow in crimson red. He doesn't love the season as much as he used to. He would have liked to blame it on the fact that he's grown up; that he doesn't love the same things; doesn't enjoy the simple things life has to offer him; doesn't see why things had turned out the way they did. But really, it's the fact that every time he inhales the cold air, it only feels sharp in his lungs, like daggers cutting through blocks of solid ice. (And maybe the fact that Sam, who once loved winter like Mason did, does not breathe the sharp cold air. Not anymore.)

        When he looks at his reflection on the mirror, he has to refrain from swinging his arm to let his fist collide against the glass. There'd been enough instances of shards of glass finding ways to puncture his skin, and seeing Sam ten times more than he needed to on the broken pieces of glass lining the sink and the bathroom tiles. He'd already earned twenty-eight years of bad luck (four broken mirrors), he needn't another seven more. Sam never believed in myths like those, calling Mason out as naïve when he'd stepped on a crack on the sidewalk and called his mother asking about her back-just to make sure, even if the chances were highly unlikely. But that didn't matter anymore. Sam wasn't there to tell Mason he was stupid. And Mason figured losing Sam was already a lifetime of bad luck.

        Mason dyed his hair blonde when he turned nineteen. His father and his mother thought he was going crazy, and his little sister thought he had gone past the level of crazy (but so did everyone else). He showed up on Thanksgiving that year with the tired look in his eyes that never seemed to go away and his head under the hood of his sweater. Emily wasn't used to Mason showing up alone (it had always been the two of them; never ever just one), and when he'd shown up with an entirely new look, she could only look away and keep walking. There was no excitement, no hellos and kisses; Sam was gone and the only reminder she had left of him was fading away too.

        It was a whirlwind, but it felt like the world had stopped when Mason opened the bedroom door and everything was just as it was the year before when Sam kept his socks on the floor but everything else had been kept in his bag. It had been easier in New York when Sam cleared everything out for Mason, so his brother won't have to go through any more trouble. (Sam always thought ahead. Mason was out in the library that entire day and didn't see him after that at all.) But Sam forgot about the house New Jersey. Everything was still here. (And Mason is still standing in the doorway, staring at the one side of the room that Sam had declared his when he was born twelve minutes earlier.)

        So Mason did what he needed to do: he shut the door. He was staying in the guest room, even if it meant that he'd have to be next door to his parents.

        He was in the bathroom when his mother walked in the room. She was quiet, the opposite of what she had always been: loud enough to let anyone know she was in the room, that she was the one in-charge. Mason did not hear her, but she heard him. [Mason was talking. His mother was always the nosy type, she always wanted to be in the loop; to know if her boys would bring a girl to thanksgiving or if there was someone back in New York she had yet to meet, she just always wanted to know everything. The door was ajar, enough for her to see Mason hunched over the sink, his body stiff. "Please," he whimpered. Her knuckles turned white, and she could feel her nails digging into her palms. "Please leave me alone." She stopped breathing. Was he talking to her? He was in tears (and so was she) when the sound of her heart breaking into a million pieces hit the ground.]

        He thought she'd be angry about the mirror, but the way her clouded eyes looked at him with fear, worry and concern all at the same time made him weak and he fell into her embrace. His hand was bloody but she held him anyway. His breath was warm against her skin, and she missed the feeling of holding her son in her arms. When Sam had died, he had taken a part of everyone with him. What hurt the most was when it seemed that Mason had disappeared with him too.

        Molly Evans was a strong woman who knew what she wanted and what she needed to do every second of every day-she had her life all figured out. Lowering her son to the six feet into the ground was not part of her plan, and then she found herself continuously stumbling and falling apart. When Mason whispers something she never would have wanted him to say, she finds herself back in that cold, dark morning when Sam had jumped hours before. "I kept thinking it was him in the mirror."

The thing was that Mason was too much like Sam, but at the same time so different from who Sam was. Sam was born twelve minutes earlier, but Mason had always been at least two inches taller (they put it on the fact that Mason had been in the womb longer than his brother). They had the same chestnut-coloured hair, the same green-eyed stare, the same smile; but never the same expression. Sam's was full of life and excitement; he was always the life of any party, the center of everyone's attention. Mason was the sidekick, he was the quiet one, the one who kept the attention on his brother. If there were anyone who'd have jumped out of the ninth floor of a parking building, it would have been Mason.

        But it wasn't when it should have been neither of them. It was Sam who landed on the snow that could have saved him but did not. It was Sam who took the running start to leap off the railing. It was Sam who had the life Mason had wanted. It was Sam who took away the life he didn't want.

Every year, at midnight after Thanksgiving dinner, Sam and Mason would lay out in the backyard on the pool chairs their mother had won at a raffle when they were ten (they didn't even have a pool). They'd drink leftover wine and open up a bottle or two of beer and watch their breaths in the darkness. It had always been the two of them; never ever just one. But Mason was there anyway, just him. He didn't drink the wine-his parents had done that for him; he didn't drink at all. Mason had his hands folded together on his stomach, watching the stars in the darkness.

        It wasn't long until the girl who lived next door looked down her window and noticed there was only one person outside. (She'd been living in Milan for college.)

        "Hey! Is that you, Mason?" she called out. Mason looked up at her and nodded, a blank expression on his face. "Where's your brother?"

        Mason shrugged.

        "How's Sam?"

        "Dead."

++

a/n: if you've read this is for sam by my friend @anasomnia (to whom this is dedicated to), congratulations! if you haven't yet, worry not because this is completely different from that story. so go ahead and read it. i hope you liked reading this one as much as i loved writing it.