Axis

august 2nd

        “WHO’S READY FOR SOME ice cream?” Jasper greets the next day as I sit at my aunt’s circular kitchen table, drawing pictures using colored pencils with Willie, my five-year-old cousin. While his pictures are mostly scribbles that he claims to be superheroes and dinosaurs and other typical boy stuff, I find myself sketching skylines and cityscapes with sunsets.

        Willie looks up from his fourth attempt at drawing and shoots Jasper a wide baby-toothed grin. “Hi Jathper!” he exclaims delightedly, unable to properly make the ‘S’ sound in Jasper’s name.

        “Hey Little Man! Whatcha drawing there?” Jasper ruffles Willie’s wild mess of blonde curls that spill over his forehead and peers over his shoulder. “Is that Batman?”

        “I told you Leckthie! She didn’t believe me,” he explains to Jasper, who in turn shoots me a mock how-could-you-be-so-stupid expression.

        I throw my hands up in surrender. “Okay okay, it’s Batman. Happy?”

        Before he gets the chance to reply, he spots Champ sitting on the floor at Jasper’s heels and his big blue eyes widen excitedly. “Can I pet him?” Willie asks, staring through his eyelashes up at Jasper with an innocent look on his face, his lip pouting the slightest bit.

        Jasper gives him permission without correcting Willie’s use of “him” in regards to Champ and slides into a chair beside me, his eyes zeroing in on the picture I’ve been working on. He brushes the colored pencil strokes with his finger gently.

        “Do you miss it?” he asks, his voice reverent. 

        I shrug. I haven’t been in New York since I left with Aunt Colleen when I was ten, and although I miss the memories associated with the life I once led there back before everything fell apart, I have no intentions of returning.

        That’s a part of me that I refuse to share with Jasper, no matter how close we are.

        “Nah.” I avoid his eyes and set to work placing the multicolored array of colored pencils back in Willie’s purple pencil box, closing the lid with a soft click. While I busy myself in organizing the muddled piles of white construction paper in a nice, orderly stack, I feel his viridescent eyes fixate on my face, making me blush and squirm a little in my seat.

        From his position on the ground, Willie squeals with delight as Champ coats his face with slobbery kisses, her black and white tail sweeping across the tiled floor.

        I know Jasper wants to press the issue further, but he lets it drop, though the deep-set frown that finds its way on his face does not go unnoticed from the corner of my eye.

        I press my lips together and keep my head down.

        “Well, as I was saying, who’s ready to go get some ice cream?” Jasper says, his tone more cheerful and airy than it was a few seconds ago.

        Willie looks up at Jasper with wide eyes. “Ice cream?” he asks, his voice hopeful. He’s unable to make the ‘S’ sound, so it comes out sounding like ithe cream.

        “What’s this about ice cream?” a new voice asks.

        We all look up at my blonde-haired aunt as she stands propped against the lemony-yellow kitchen wall, balancing a laundry basket against her hip, her hair tied out of her face in a ponytail. Even sporting a simple tank top and cloth shorts, she looks enviously pretty for someone her age who mothers a five-year-old boy, along with her teenage niece.