Tim's mother is too young to die, but she dies anyway--in a video that goes viral. Tim scrambles to hold his life together, but the person who keeps him on his feet turns out to be his half-sister, a fiesty girl who has no idea they're related, but...
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I walk up to my house to find Billy sitting on the porch, him and his lit cigarette half-hidden by behind the railing.
When we were ten years old, he hung his head out his mom's minivan window into the pouring rain to talk to me. Tim Brown, in grade five and already resigned to leading a lonely, wet life, my clothes soaked through and my bike stolen.
Billy made his mom take me home with them and cook me dinner while we waited for my mom to get off work. We hadn't spoken a word to each other outside of class before that day.
It's not raining, but I've got enough cold in my bones to make up for it. My whole body feels like pins and needles. It gets right into my brain and I can feel all the empty anger that I had as a bike-less ten-year-old.
For a second, I stand at the intersection of the sidewalk and path to the front door. The mortgage is paid for the month. Is it still my house? There's no for sale sign, no sign at all that anything had happened as far as the house was concerned.
Billy gets up from the porch, his face pale and concerned behind the cigarette glow. It somehow makes him look younger, like a kid trying to be grown up.
"Where's Heather?" Billy asks. There's a second question under the first. You're alone? Nobody wants to leave me alone. The short walk home is the first time it's been just me since yesterday.
"Heather has a meeting with the funeral director to talk about financial options." I shrug. I can't listen to people talk around me anymore, discussing life insurance and selling the house and what to do about me. If adults want to talk about me like I'm not there, I might as well not be.
Billy puts out his cigarette while I unlock the door. Without it, he fidgets, too awkward to say or ask what he wants to. A million times, I've watched his nervous tics, but not in front of me.
"What happened?" Billy asks, pushing his glasses up his nose.
"Ask me again after a drink or two," I reply, stepping into the house. I almost trip over the shoes in the doorway, the black work heels and the running shoes. I don't move them, the same way Heather didn't when she came by this morning before I even woke up.
