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Up, Up and Away

by Alysse K, Fonthill, Canada, Age 16

It happens before I can stop it. The picture frame hits the tile with a slap, as if the floor has made some snarky remark that the frame won’t let it get away with. The crunching of its glass is coupled with the sound of my sister’s yelp, though I can’t be sure what came first- the crash or her reaction. My sister, Molly, is dramatic, highly flammable, a spectacle on and off the stage, her second home. At the current time she’s in my home, formerly her own, and prepping to move into her new apartment.
“Ah, lovely, it’s cracked all the way,” she announces upon inspection. “Shit! I spent all morning looking for that frame.”

Her new place is vibrant, like her, bordering on kitschy, like our mom, and distant like our dad, being six hours and fourty-five minutes away. The apartment, I mean. It seems that I’m only able to find permanence in solid things, like apartments and airports. Shoe stores and bookstores and the like. Things that people think they outgrow and move out of, when really we’re the ones being outgrown, as we grow in all our forms- fat, thin, arrogant, political, kind, naïve, stubborn, tacky, old and up. That last one is the one that our parents worry over the most, probably since it typically is blamed on them decades later, on overstuffed couches in therapists’ offices with fake plants and feng shui. Watch that last one folks, it sure is a doozy.

Molly certainly has had many doozies in her time, but she survived the teenage years with only a few catfights, broken hearts and plates of inedible cafeteria food. But even she still had them, the latest minor one being the broken frame. It is splayed out in a sparkling mess, with numerous tiny pieces in pretty random places. I don’t know how a few chips have landed on the opposite side of the room exactly, but if anyone could do it, it would be my sister. Everything she touches is animated, and so I have no problem believing that the slivers of glass have flung themselves across our front hall, desperate for a chance of escape to a better life that they have only just caught a peek of with her help.
“Hey, watch it. I’ll get it. Don’t worry about it,” she protests as I bend down on the floor.

I roll my eyes and then start to pick up the pieces. I really wish she’d just let me handle this one teeny thing and just let me clean up one of her messes for a change. She’s the type of big sister who’s capable of spinning salad for dinner and helping me with my physics homework, all while doing something completely useless yet impressive like balancing a dictionary on her head or twirling a basketball on her finger, merely because… Well, because she can.

“Thanks for the love, Molly,” I said, putting my free hand over my heart, “but I’m competent enough to pick up some glass.” I waggle a cupped handful of glass chips at her, careful not to let any fragments return to the floor.

“No, no, stop! I’ll pick this up later.” She sighs as she lets her eyes travel the floor, following the glittering specks. “God, it’s everywhere! Just leave it for now okay? Can you help me move some more boxes?”

I abandon my collection in a small pile on the floor, brushing off a couple pieces that stick to my palm. The last piece falls with a satisfied clink onto the top of the pile like a tiny person atop a glistening, snowy-peaked mini mountain. I’m suddenly envious of an imaginary conquest and I don’t care to know why. I pick up a box marked SHOES, and follow my sister as we step over the glittery trail, our bare feet avoiding the sprinkles.

We pack the car with boxes and bags and a bucket, maneuvering items this way and that. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that’s invented basically for the sole entertainment of the creator, as he or she imagines how annoying it’ll be for whomever dares to try it. I am not a person who does puzzles. I am not a person who even looks at puzzles. I avert my eyes if they come in contact with those damn Rubik’s cubes with their misleadingly cheery colors.

We chat as we solve the puzzle. She babbles on and on about her new place and new university friends whom she’s already met at orientation at the beginning of August. We both know she’s going to have a good time. She’s the type of person who can have fun out with dozens of people she doesn’t know all that well, and just as much enjoyment if she were singing in the shower at the top of her lungs. She’s just okay with it all, okay with every little mistake and doozie assigned to her as if they were Girl Guide badges. Maybe they make her happier. Maybe the reason why she’s always so quick to pick up my mistakes on top of her own is because they make her free. And maybe that’s why I don’t feel that.

We’re still packing the car when our mom gets home. I wave back to her as she drives into the garage. I’m reminded of the mess, my sister’s doozy. and Molly and I look to the house at the same time. As sisters we sometimes think freakily alike, even though the afterthoughts, the footnotes to the shared brainwave, are always very different.

I slip into the house while Mom examines our work, most of the boxes scrunched in any old way because we totally cheated. Inside, the glass seems to have reproduced. I wander back to my little mountain and slide more pieces into the pile. The pieces make a soft scraping sound but are drowned out by my mother’s clicking heels as they walk in a rhythm towards me.

“Oh, Molly, is this what you were talking about?” she calls to my sister before turning to me. “Hunny, just leave it. Molly will fix it.”
I shake my head. The pile keeps growing and my mom keeps talking.
“Really, there’s no need, it’s not your fault, and you shouldn’t clean it up…”

Even when things are my fault, it’s not me doing the cleaning up.
“…and I was hoping you could help me with dinner…”

Responsibility.

“…and the Morgans wanted to know if you could baby-sit tonight…”

Responsibility.

“…and you have the SATs to study for…”

Responsibility. All I’m hearing is “Grow-up-grow-up-grow-up”. But that can’t be right, I must be mistaken.

“Please, dear, you’re going to cut yourself!”

There it is. What I’d been hearing was only the last part of the sentence- I’d missed the capitalized “DON’T”. I rub a toonie-sized piece of glass between the pads of two fingers. It’s big enough that I can see part of my face, and the entirety of it when I hold it further away. I study my slippery gray reflection. I look older than I did when I was nine or ten, but I’m not sure my family sees it. But I think it’s like this for everyone at some part. I think everyone’s gotten those looks when older people see you as just someone so young, so new to the world. But what the connoisseurs of life don’t remember, given that their amateur hours are so far behind them, is that to get where they are today, they needed to be let go of, to pave their own way.

“Mom, I’ve got this under control.” I interrupt her when she’s yammering on about how I’m going to kill myself with glass sprinkles. I meet her eyes and say, “Mom. Listen. I’m not taking the SATs until next year and I’ve already called back Mrs. Morgan and told her I’d be there after supper, which I already put into the oven.” I run out of breath and pause, but rush on, full speed ahead, afraid to stop, not knowing if I will ever be able to start up again/ “I know what I am doing.”
She blinks and looks at me. Really looks at me, as if surprised to find me in the room.

“Oh,” she says in a sharp gasp, like the kind that escapes from a punctured balloon. “Okay, dear.”
Her heels click away and it hits me- I am a puzzle to my mother. And though she still calls me ‘dear’, it doesn’t have the same ring to it. Finally it’s not the same label affixed to a smiley, pigtailed little girl.
I hear Molly bounce inside the house, and talk to Mom. “She’s cleaning it up?! No, no, I’ll-“

Clickity-clack and I suppose Mom’s walked towards her, since I can’t hear them whispering. I shake my head and can’t help but smile, knowing how much this has thrown them for a loop. But I don’t care all that much, since it’s about time they grew their perception of me. I just go back to picking up the shards, one by one. It’s a shame they’re too teeny to be put back together, made useful.

I find the photograph under a cabinet. It’s our last family portrait that was taken last Spring and then taken off the wall last Winter when the divorce papers were filed. It’s sweet of her to snatch this from our house. She always likes to see the big picture, no matter how many flaws hide inside of it while we smile for the camera, like worms nestled snuggly inside of an apple.

Quietly I put the photograph into a folder and fit it into the jigsaw puzzle that is her car. I go back inside, sidestepping the lurking pieces, to rebuild my mountain. Molly peeks in once, looking incredulous. And even though I’m on the ground, I’m the highest I’ve ever been in my life. I can see myself there in the sky, like a runaway balloon, one that’ll float higher than airplanes and mountains, with nothing to hold it down. Up, up and away.