Aunt Candy and the Mysteries

Twenty-One.

I don't remember much from the next few days. I know that I got back to the house, that Aunt Candy was panicked, and furious that we'd pulled such a stunt. I remember her anger being relieved by hearing about all the kids we'd saved. I remember that Charlie met Aunt Candy, and that the first thing she did was hug him. I think I recall a tear in his eye. I remember my brother and his constant 'are you okay' 's and 'can I help' 's. I remember always saying no. And that was the truth. He couldn't help. Not with this. He couldn't even decide if he liked Katchina or if he should dwell in the fact that his first crush was now taken.

I remember missing a lot. Countless hours spent in my window seat, just watching the cars on the street drive by. Clueless. How can they keep buzzing around to work and back when the world had just changed so drastically. How can they be so ignorant to what's going on around them?

I remember spending countless hours in the woods, just wandering about or sitting against the tree that Cedar and I sat against the day he kissed me. The day he told me he would stay if given the chance... and he was.

One day, though, I remember with crystal clarity. It was a tuesday, and it was groggy and wet, the way tuesday is stereotyped to be. I was in the woods, sitting against the tree that my back (I swear) was almost perfectly shaped to now from countless days of sitting there for long periods of time. I've learned throughout this time why he used to like it out here so much. I was thinking about the grass. How it grows and grows even though we keep chopping it away. It's resilient, not taking no for an answer. As poetic as it sounds, I'd imagined myself as a piece of grass, to always have the unwanted parts taken away then grow again, not caring that I was half of who I used to be.

That thought stayed in my head for a whole week to pass, nagging at my brain, trying to tell me something, though I couldn't quite figure out what exactly. It wasn't until friday of that week that it finally clicked, I knew what it meant and I knew how to become that piece of grass. To grow from the clippings.

I knew what I had to do...

♢⚿♢