Mollie + Chester

Chapter Twenty-One

They told me Seth was walking out to his car from the ice cream shop where Macy worked when the roof out the front of the coffee shop a few doors down collapsed. Three other people were injured but Seth was the only one that died. It was an accident, the high winds made it fall. Seth was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mr Gregor drove Seth's car back here and he even looked inside, finding a melted tub of ice cream from the shop where Macy worked. It was the mystery flavour, the one that both Toby and I ate the day we first went there. I didn't tell anybody that the ice cream was for me, instead I took the tub before most people saw it. It was my own secret message from Seth that nobody else would share.
Nobody expected me to do anything but sit there and cry, maybe watch some movies or cartoons on ABC and curl up under the warm blanket. So that's what I did.
Xia stayed all day, leaving me at night in Mum's bed and coming back early in the morning where she would clean in the kitchen until I came down, my pink baby blanket with the teddy bear pattern wrapped around my shoulders.
All of yesterday, Xia and I drank so many of Seth's hot chocolates, I thought we would explode if we didn't stop. An empty mug sat on the coffee table in front of me and Xia was on the couch laughing at the cartoons like Seth used to.
Someone banged on the door and I looked up, almost forgetting and calling Seth's name, instructing him to get it but I remembered. Sometimes it didn't feel like he was really gone, it felt like he was still upstairs in his room doing assignments for university or talking to Macy on the phone. I crossed my fingers for a second, hoping that Seth would come down the stairs right now, call me a Doofus and open the door for whoever was there.
Nobody came down the stairs. I uncrossed my fingers as Xia got up off the couch to answer the door. She spoke to the person at the door, though I couldn't process the words or tell who it was because I was still telling myself that Seth wasn't coming down.
"Guess who's here, Mollie," Xia said leading someone inside. As soon as I saw him, I began to sob even though I thought I had used up all my tears. Toby let me throw my arms around him and didn't care when I hung on for ages. When I pulled away, I noticed his eyes were red and blotchy matching mine which made me cry again.
Toby held up his notepad and showed me a message he had already written before he got here.
Would you rather: be invisible when you wanted, or be able to fly?
I took his pen from him and circled fly and the tiniest smile appeared on my face.
Thank-you, I mouthed and he looked confused so I scribbled in his notebook.
For being Toby, my friend.
Toby smiled and we sat on the couch, huddled under the blanket, Xia going into the kitchen to clean some more, and we watched old videos of Saturday Disney Seth taped when he was my age. We even laughed at the old ads that showed 'kool backpacks' and CDs from singers I had never heard of before.
The ads finished and the show came back on where the main character was fighting off the evil ninjas. She was cornered and they pushed her further back to the edge of a river with electric eels and piranhas (it was a kid's show) and it seemed like she was going to get pushed in when she grabbed onto a branch above her head and jumped up into the tree, letting the ninjas fall into the river.~
If Seth were here on the couch with me, I would have scoffed at the cartoon saying the evil ninjas would have been too smart to fall into the river. Seth would have laughed at me and told me I was too serious and needed to be open minded. I would have punched him on his arm and then he would tickle me until I surrendered.
Toby laughed at the faces on the evil cows that where now chasing the main character and I smiled.
You smiled! Toby wrote and I took the notebook from him to write my own message.
Did not. I wrote under his messy writing.
Toby looked at me suspiciously then pounced, tickling me on my feet like Seth used to do.
I started to cry and laugh at the same time when Xia came back into the room carrying hot chocolates with huge scoops of ice cream in them.
I wished for the billionth time that Seth would come back.

Chester walked in circles a few times before curling up above Mollie's shoulder in her warm bed, listening for the quiet sounds of the night. Downstairs, the kitchen clock ticked and the new fridge whirred, a lone car drove by lighting up the street for a second and a night animal howled.
Mollie's chest rose and fell with every rasping breath and she whimpered every once in a while, experiencing a bad dream. This was the first time since Seth died that she slept in her own bed. The last few nights she had slept curled up in a ball next to her Mum under the covers after Xia had moved her cancer fighting robots into the room.
Her bedroom door creaked open and the kitten looked up, ears standing upright, listening for a threat. He saw Mollie's mother, her hair no longer perfectly styled and her cheeks very red. Her eyes were glassy as she peered over to her daughter's bed and grimaced when she sighted the oxygen tank attached.
"It's not fair," she whispered to the sleeping room. "She doesn't deserve this, Chester." The kitten looked up at his name and meowed, acknowledging the mother in the room. "She's so sweet and innocent but she has to deal with so much. I don't know how we are going to get past this. I don't know how she's going to survive this."~
Mollie stirred, rolling over in her bed and her mother quietly left the room, closing the door softly.
The little girl whimpered again and began breathing faster. The kitten could hear her heart beginning to beat quickly and tears came from her eyes.
"No... Wait...Seth!" She cried, her hands reaching for something that wasn't there.
Chester nudged her damp cheek and meowed, waking her from the nightmare. Her eyes shot open and she looked around, trying to find out where she was.
She scratched Chester behind his ear and plucked a tissue from her side table and wiping her eyes. She looked as if she was thinking, her eyes focused on nothing and finally, she slid her legs out from under the doona and stood on the hard floor.
Mollie unhooked herself from her various machines and crept towards her door being careful not to wake her parents, her feet sliding across the floorboards in her fluffy socks.
She made her way down the hall and stopped outside her brother's room, breathing deeply before turning the knob and entering.
Chester watched as she began to cry again without making any noise as she took in the room.
The little girl walked around the room, her fingers tracing the edges of objects such as half-finished books and scattered stationary. Finally, she pulled back the covers of the bottom bunk-bed and slid in, the smell of her brother wrapping her tightly. The top bunk was stacked with cardboard boxes full of old art work and stories written by Seth. Chester curled up in his spot above her shoulder and Mollie flipped a switch on the wall, turning off the lights.
The roof lit up, glowing green stars were stuck to the plaster randomly making it seem like the sky.
Chester wondered how Seth saw his roof, if he joined the dots when he was too wired to sleep or count how many triangles he could make. Did he know exactly how many stars were on the roof? Did he used to make patterns like he did with the clouds?
Mollie rolled over and she felt something hard beneath her pillow, Seth's pillow. She stuck her hand under and pulled out a little black leather bound book Seth had gotten for his seventh birthday.
When his owner opened the book to the beginning, Chester saw the careful and bubbly writing of a child in grey lead pencil.
Mollie flicked on the light switch and for the first time in five days, heard her brother's voice.

I let my hand run over Seth's scrawly first grade handwriting and read his story about talking animals putting out a bushfire. I heard his voice describing his weekend when we went to the beach and a crab pinched him on his leg. I felt his sadness when I read his entries about me falling off my bike.
I flicked through the pages and found a story written his older handwriting and began to read.
Up in the tallest tower on the tallest mountain under the brilliant sky that always seems like a beautiful painting resides a girl with eyes that change from brown to green to blue. She sits on the little silk cushioned stool by the window, her hair blowing in the ever existing wind.
There is a roar from below, from the belly of the castle where the fierce beast waits for the time to take his pray, and tear her life from her arms.
As the girl waits for her death to come, for the beast to steal away her life, countless knights in shining armour attack. They come with swords and arrows and the widest range of weaponry ever seen but they do not succeed in rescuing the girl.
They manage only to distract the monster, manage only to give the girl more days to live in the agonising wait.
I sat up, realising the story was about me and smiled through my tears.
The sun was low in the sky, the orange light shone on the girl's porcelain face when the door to her chamber opened with a crash. The girl turned slowly, knowing the knights in shining armour had finally failed in giving her more time. She did not know whether she wanted to die but she would not show fear to the beast.
But instead in the middle of the girl's chamber stood a magnificent golden lion who towered over the girl.
"Who are you?" She asked standing up off her silk cushioned stool. She noticed her feet were smaller than one of the lion's claws.
"Hope," the lion boomed simply.
"Hope?" The girl was puzzled. Timidly she took a step closer to the giant.
"I am hope. The knights all attempted to save your life, when their efforts were wasted. They aimed to prevent death when it is known that there is nothing that can. Death is inevitable. But there is one thing that can make our lives worth all the pain and suffering. Hope. And while I may not be able to save your life, but I can give you something to live for."
The lion turned into swirling dust and in his place stood a tiny kitten with big green eyes.
The girl spent the rest of her days filled with hope so when the beast came to take her life, she had no fears and felt no sadness.
When he took her life, the beast collapsed, defeated, never to harm another being again.
Tears ran off my nose and chin, hitting the page and smudging the letters as I turned to the final page of writing. The rest of the book was empty, the feint lines ruled, ready to be filled with Seth's handwriting that would never form. I started reading his last entry.
You know, all this time I wanted to see Mollie grow up. I wanted to see her get married, fall in love, graduate from high school (not in that order). What I didn't realise was that even though I probably won't get to see those things happen, I still watched her grow up.
Growing up was when she took her first steps, just because if she crawled, she was going to Miss out on all the chocolate cookies. Growing up was when her first word was not Mum, or Dad, but milk. Growing up was when she was three and she told the big bully kid from next door to get lost when he pushed her over. Growing up was when she came home from the hospital and found me crying, she wouldn't let go of me until I stopped. Growing up was when I didn't have to tie the shoelaces of her pink flashing runners anymore. Growing up was when she had to be tree in the school play so she wrote her teacher a letter and she was recast as an angel. Growing up was when she saw that little kitten in the junk yard and ran in to save him. Growing up was when she learnt that there was no such thing as perfect. Growing up was when she began to hope.
I watched her grow from that tiny baby with the big colourful eyes to the girl she is now and I am happy.
Because sure, she didn't become a wife, or a mother or the mayor of Tamwood, but she became Mollie.
And that's all that counts.