Keeping Up With the Wind: A 'Burban Tale by Suleyma Moon

23.

            The next day, I woke up early enough for the world to still be splashed with shades of orange and pink. I looked over at Li'l Jay, who was still fast asleep, and shook him awake.

            "I'm going home."

            "Mm-hmm," he mumbled, only opening one eye.

            "Thank you." I leaned over to kiss his cheek.

            He rolled over and looked up at me, smiling, his eyes glassy and sleepy. "There you go again. How many times do I have to tell you that was just a once in a lifetime opportunity?" He propped himself up on one elbow. "But instead of benefiting from all this sweetness back then, you, my friend, decided to give me a bloody nose."

            "I never gave you a bloody nose!" I laughed.

            "Ok then, a runny nose," and just that quick he went back to sleep.

            I pulled myself off of the roof and climbed down the tree, then ran across the street. After climbing into my own window, I put on some pajamas and got into my soft, warm bed. I don't know how long I'd been there, but after a while I started to feel like someone was watching me.

Opening my eyes, I saw Blaze sitting quietly on the windowsill, waiting patiently for me to wake up. I smiled at him and sat up. It didn't surprise me that he had been sitting there the whole time. Blaze was the only one of my friends that wouldn't just barge into my room and wake me up. I remembered what my mother had told me about the twins watching me sleep when I was a baby and wondered how long he'd been sitting there. The sun was completely up now. I squinted at its brilliance against Blaze's back.

            Seeing that I was awake, he now blinked. That was the first sign of life that he displayed, and I motioned for him to come in. He jumped down from the windowsill and walked over to the bed. Even though I knew, of course, that he was alive, the fact that he had been sitting so still and now suddenly moved sent a chill through me. I shook it off.

            "What?" he asked, seeming a little jumpy himself.

            I tried to think of what made me shiver like that. "You were just so still before you jumped down and it reminded me of the time my mom took us to the mall and we went around touching all the mannequins."

He smiled. "Oh yeah. I remember that. Why were we doing it again?"

            I shrugged. "Just being kids, I guess."

            "Yeah, we had seen The Twilight Zone the night before and wanted to see if they really would come alive. It never worked until it was your turn to touch one..." he chuckled. "Man, that was so funny! We were just trying to scare each other and then that thing really did move!"

            We both laughed. "I think he was a mime," I said, reflectively. "I wonder if we hurt his feelings when we ran away screaming like that."

            "I don't know," Blaze answered, also thoughtful. "He probably thought it served us right, badass kids going around touching everything."

            "Yeah, probably," I agreed. "That scared the crap out of me. I still haven't touched another mannequin since then."

            "Me either," he confessed, and then became serious. "We've known each other a long time."

            "Yeah. It's been fun, though," I said, thinking about all of the trouble that we had gotten into together over the years.

             Blaze and I sat quietly for a while, me on the bed and Blaze in a chair next to the window. I watched him as he looked out of my window and into Whisper's. I could only guess from the expression on his face what he was thinking about.