My Sister the Storyteller

Ever since my brother Allie died, all I've wanted is to be with him again. I miss him every single day. He died when he was 11, I was 13. I'm not going to lie it was hard, we were close considering how young and clueless we were. He had cancer, leukemia to be exact.  

Phoebe, my younger sister, is 85, and I am 91. She is the mere thing that is keeping me alive. She visits me every Monday and Friday, or whenever she isn't playing bingo and canasta with her girlfriends. Our eldest brother used to come too, but he died a few years back; stroke.

I hear footsteps outside my door, they sound like a woman's footsteps. Not being sexist or anything, they are just light and typically women walk quieter than men. I look over towards the door to see who it is.

*Knock knock* Phoebe taps the door twice as she walks in. She is the strongest and most independent person I know. As she walks over to me she puts down her purse, it still has the pin that D.B. got her before he passed. It was a cartoon pin of a bag of beans. Don’t ask me, I have no idea either.

“Holden!” She says, “I have big news!” I could see that her eyes were lit up with excitement like they always do ever since we were little. She was holding a picture in her right hand of one of her grandsons, Mikey. 

“Mikey and his team went the whole season undefeated! Look!” She jammed the photo in my face. I never cared much about football but I went along with it because it made her happy, and all I've ever wanted is for Phoebe to be happy. 

“Wow Phoebe, he looks so grown up! How old is he now, 15?” I say with genuine concern as he does look grown-up.

“No silly, he's 18! He graduates this fall. It feels like just yesterday I was pacing back and forth down the hospital hallway awaiting his birth. Oh, how time flies.” She sits down in the chair next to bed, “Speaking of time flying, how are you doing, old man?”

“Well, I’m still here, so that's something.” I sigh rather unenthusiastically, “I’ve watched an unholy amount of Wheel of Fortune and I've eaten so much pudding that the damn nurses cut me off for the rest of the week!”

“Well I’m here now and I can be very entertaining. Is there anything in particular you want to do with me today?” She smiles sympathetically.

“Do you remember when we were little, when Allie was still alive, the three of us used to stay up until 10:00 and tell each other fairy tales? God what a time to be young, I would do anything to go back to the days when we thought 10:00 was late.” I do miss those days, back when I didn't have to worry about what was going on around me when I could be in my little world and not suffer the consequences.

“Holden, that was like 75 years ago. How do you expect me to remember those stories? I can barely remember all of my friend’s names. Let me see, there is Betty, Shirley, Karen, Agatha… Tory, and Liz… Uhhhh, there’s more… I know there is…” 

“Phoebe! You don't have to name all of your friends for me. I honestly just don't care enough to watch you struggle to name the rest. What about Peter Pan?”

“Oh, I love Peter Pan! Okay, but I’m adding a twist. Partly because I want to but also because I can't remember how it goes.” Phoebe makes me laugh sometimes, it's not intentional but I can't help it, she can be a bit of an airhead.

“What kind of twist?” I push her arm lightly to imply that I’m just teasing her, she doesn't look very amused with me.

“I'm not telling you, you’re just going to have to wait and see, well I guess you would wait and hear, you know because I'm telling you the story not showing you, so you will know it when you hear it…” 

“Hey, Phoebe?” I smirk, “Just tell the story. We haven't got all day.” I’ll admit it, I got a nasty glare from that one. Even in her old age she never stopped being her snappy little self.

“Well maybe if you stopped smirking at me I would start; now be quiet.” She looked serious now, and one thing I know about Phoebe is that you don't mess with her when she has her serious face on, she means business.

"Tinkerbell and Peter were the best of friends, they did everything together. They weren’t just normal best friends, Tinkerbell was a fairy and Peter was a young boy who could never keep track of his shadow. 

One of Peter’s favorite things to do was play baseball. Tinkerbell didn’t like baseball, but she loved Peter, so she put up with the sport. Peter knew that Tinkerbell didn't enjoy playing baseball with him, so he wrote her poems before the game so she would have something to do when they were waiting for the game to start. 

The other thing they loved to do together was to play around with Tinkerbell’s magic. They would go down to the frozen lake and throw handfuls of fairy dust across the ice. With that Tinkerbell would animate different scenes. For instance, her favorite one to make was a team of ducks; Peter loved ducks, it was his favorite animal. She would make the ducks spin and dance all around the lake for hours and hours. Peter could watch her movies all day, they weren’t like the old silent movies from Hollywood that were way too over dramatic. Except maybe when Tinkerbell tried to scare Peter by bringing out scary animals like coyotes or bears.

The fun didn't last forever though. When Peter was 11 years old he got extremely sick. He was bedridden for months and even on the days when he had the energy to get up he could only make it a few feet before he needed to rest. The doctor diagnosed him with leukemia pretty quickly after he went in.

For the next two years, Peter would be in and out of the hospital. Sometimes he would stay in the children’s ward as an inpatient for months at a time. After a year he gave up trying to make friends with the other kids in the ward, as nobody would stay for very long. 

His spirit began to fade, he was less like himself with each passing day. He allowed Tinkerbell to visit less and less, and soon, not at all. He hated her seeing him like that, laying in a bed barely able to move. It was only a few days before Peter passed when he finally let her visit.

“Tinkerbell!” Peter said weakly, “Tink, where are you? I'm so sorry for pushing you away, I just don't want you to see me like this.”

Tinkerbell slowly came out from behind the curtain. She was holding an envelope; it was addressed to Peter. She slowly flew over to him and put the note on the table. 

“I love you.” She whispered and flew out the door as tears ran down her face. Peter never did see her again. He picked up the note and began to read. It said:

My darling Peter,

I don't have any words for you right now, and for that I am sorry. I know that you don't have much time left on this earth but I just can't bring myself to say this to your face so I wrote you this letter. We have been friends all our lives and I cannot bear a life without you, but I suppose it was inevitable. I won’t bore you with a bunch of sappy stuff that you’ve been hearing anyway for the past two years, so I’ll just remind you of the time when we watched the ducks together for the last time. When it was time for you to go home you said something to me and I will never forget it. You said: You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I’ll always love you. That's where I’ll be waiting.

I will never forget you, Peter Pan.

Love, 

Tinkerbell

Tears streamed down Peter’s face as he folded the letter and placed it gently back into the envelope it came in.""

“Uh, Phoebe?” I say timidly, “I have a question about the logic of your fairy tale. I know you hate interruptions but it's very serious.”

“Okay, Holden. What's the ‘very serious question’ that you are dying to ask me while I am in the middle of telling you a story?”

“I do not appreciate the hostility in your voice, but I will ask my question regardless.” She glares, “How does Tinkerbell know how to write? Like does she go to a special school just for fairies or something?”

“Really? That's your question if Tinkerbell goes to school or not?” She looks pissed, “I am just going to forget you even asked that question in the first place and continue. But if you interrupt me again I am going to be mad.”

"A few days passed and Peter got even weaker. His family said their goodbyes, even his dog Nana came to the hospital to see Peter one last time. He hated seeing everyone he loved cry over him, he was the type of guy who made everyone happy just by being in the room, so this was a new experience for him. 

When Peter passed, life was forced on. His brother and sister struggled to cope with the loss, but they managed. So did his parents, sad to say but they forgot about him from time to time. All they cared about was money.. 

The one person who never forgot about Peter was Tinkerbell, she tried so hard not to forget about Peter. Tinkerbell took the passing of Peter badly. She went into a state of depression for a while; when she returned home after that last hospital visit with Peter she forgot all about her duties as a fairy, as they had to help around their village. 

As this happened three years ago, Tinkerbell was now 16 years old; a Sophomore in high school, and Holden, before you question me because I know you will, fairies can go to high school too. 

Peter was everything to Tinkerbell, so when he died she lost her sparkle, and her fairy dust replenished no more. A famous myth about fairies is that they die when they run out of fairy dust. But that myth is, in fact, false, when a fairy is unable to make their fairy dust they lose their sense of  good and bad, 

As a result, Tinkerbell started skipping school more often, not doing her homework, and not even bothering to retake the tests she missed. Soon enough, her parents found out what she was doing, and let's just say they were less than thrilled to hear about it. When they confronted her, she simply apologized and said she would try harder, but they both knew she was lying. 

Although Tinkerbell was only 16, she liked to think that she was much older. By that I mean she went to bars, even though she wasn't 21; she also never asked for permission to do things anymore.

When she was younger, Tinkerbell loved school. It was her favorite place to be. She always excelled in school. So when her parents found out that she was failing almost all her classes, they were extremely worried about her. She had become distant and barely came out of her room; only to eat and the occasional conversation. But that was rare.

Her parents started to give her more rules, just things she has to change in her life. The rules made it so she wasn't allowed to leave the house without telling either her mom or dad where she was going. To Tinkerbell, this rule, in particular, was really stupid. She hated it, so Tinkerbell continued to rebel against her parents by not telling them where she was going. They weren’t having it though. They took her phone and put a tracking app on it so she couldn't go anywhere without then noticing. Let's just say Tinkerbell wasn't too happy."

“Uhh, Phoebe,” I interrupted again. I knew she was going to be mad but I had a question that I couldn't wait to ask.

“What,” She’s not happy with me, I can tell, “Why do you keep interrupting me? You know I hate it when you do.”

“I have another question,” I smirk. She knows what I'm about to ask, I can tell because she has this ‘I swear to god Holden you better not ask me this’ look on her face. I ask anyway, “If Tinkerbell is just a fairy then why does she have a phone, I mean how would we even make phones that small?”

“Seriously Holden? Tinkerbell is a magical fairy who fell in love with a human, I don't think this story is very realistic in the first place. Also, she has magic, so she might as well use it and make something useful.”

“Touche, you may continue.” I have, once again, been outsmarted by my younger sister. I mean it makes sense, she has always been much smarter than me.

"Tinkerbell started leaving the house less and less. Partly because she didn't feel like getting harassed about where she was going each time but also because she didn’t connect with her friends anymore. She soon realized she never really fit in in the first place, she was just there but was never really part of the group. 

One day, she finally had enough. She couldn't take the pressure from her parents anymore, she couldn't talk to them about anything without getting yelled at. Her parents acted as though she was their prisoner, not their daughter. As soon as she came home from school her parents would practically lock her in her room, which gave her plenty of time to reflect on her life, and what she wanted to do because she knew this was no way of living, and she had to get out.

With every passing day, Tinkerbell thought of her dear friend, Peter more and more. She needed him now more than ever, and after carefully thinking things through, decided to run away and go see his grave site. She wanted to see Peter himself but since that was impossible, she had to be grateful for whatever contact that she could get. Tinkerbell just needed to talk to him, even if he couldn't respond, she knew he would listen."

“Hey, Phoebe?” I squeaked. I said it quietly because I didn't want her to hit me, which I knew she would do since she's done it before.

“I swear to got Holden if you are about to ask me another dumb question about Tinkerbell I will hit you over the head with the T.V. remote.” She was dead serious, but I didn't have another dumb question, I just really needed a nap.

“I promise I am not about to ask you another dumb question, I was just hoping I could take a small nap. I don't feel very well today and I am about to fall asleep, which would be very rude of me to do while you are mid storytelling.”

“Oh, Holden. Of course, we can take a break. I was thinking about going to the Chinese place across the street and getting some lunch. I am getting quite hungry and I know that Chinese is your favorite.” She smiled gently. 

“Thank you, Phoebe. I don't believe I have had Chinese food in years, but I have been dying to have it again. I guess you could say that quite literally.”

“Holden! That is a horrible thing to say to your sister!” She slapped me on the arm in anger, but I know she was just playing, “I’ll see you in an hour, okay?”

“Okay, sounds great.” I say, “Wake me up when you get back, I love you, Phoebe. But if you dare to forget my wonton soup then don't bother coming back.”

“I would never forget your wonton soup,” She chuckles, then gets up to put her coat on, since it's cold outside. “I love you too big brother.” She walks out, never to be seen again…

I'm just kidding, she comes back an hour later, as promised. We eat our Chinese food while watching an episode of The Wheel of Fortune. I hate that show but there is nothing better on T.V. 

I nearly begged her to finish the story, as I am dying to see what happens to Tinkerbell, again with the poor choice of words. But Phoebe says she has to get home,  her daughter Celia is flying in later. She says they will visit me tomorrow.

Phoebe leaves, and in my new found loneliness, I start to think about things, nothing in particular though. How my life has been, how it's almost impossible to think that in the chaos of my life, it was nearly perfect. While I do have some regrets, I will never regret the things that made me happy, the things that made me who I am today. I have Phoebe to thank for that, she always told amazing stories, and I always strived for her to always be proud to be my sister.