The Little Dipper

“Ooh! What’s that one Sissy?”

I smile at the small, dainty finger pointing up at the night sky. “Well, Mikey, that’s the Little Dipper.” I take his hand and guide it to each different star as I explain it, “see that really bright star on the end?” He nods his head quietly and I smile again, “that’s the North Star.”

“I know that one,” he shouts excitedly. “That’s the one that sailors would follow when they were lost!”

I smile again, “exactly! Now, if we look around carefully, we may be able to find the Big Dipper. It looks just like the Little Dipper, just a little bit bigger.”

I move my eyes from the sky and to my little brother and watched him as he scanned the sky for the Big Dipper. Though we may have a ten year gap between us, we’ve always been really close. Ever since we were kids, we’d come out here and look up at the sky. Day or night. We’d stare at the stars, the clouds, the sunset, sunrise, the moon.

“I found it,” he shouts, snapping me out of my thoughts, as he stands up from the ground, jumping up and down. “Look Sissy, look! I found it! I found it!”

I smile up at him and get off the ground, brushing the dirt off of my skinny jeans. “Good job Mikey!” He jumps around me and continues to chant, ‘I found it! I found it,’ as I look at my watch to check the time. One in the morning. Mom and Dad might kill me. Actually. 

I pick him up and swing him over my shoulder, “what are we doing,” he asks me sadly.

“It is way past your bedtime and I promised Mom and Dad that I’d have you in bed by ten.”

“But I’m ot tired,” he whines in my ear.

“I’m sorry little dude, but if I don’t get you to bed before Mom and Dad get home, we’re not going to be able to go to the fair tomorrow.”

“No,” he screeches in my ear. “I’m not tired! I don’t want to go to bed!”

He starts to pound his fists on my back and kicks me in the stomach as he continues to scream in my ear. “Mikey,” I yell sternly as I set him down on the ground so that he can continue to throw his tantrum without injuring my internal organs.

After a few minutes, he calms down and looks at me with a frown, “I don’t want you to leave again,” he says to me.

I frown back at him and help him off the ground and take his hand as we walk back to the house. “I know, I don’t want to leave again either.”

“Why do you have to leave?” I stay silent as I focus on the sound of our footsteps on the already wet grass. “Sissy,” he says to get to my attention, “why do you have to leave?”

“Because I need to go to school.”

“Why?”

I open the back door for him and let him in, “don’t forget to wipe your feet,” I tell him.

He wipes his feet aggressively on the welcome mat, slides his shoes off, and kicks them over to me. “Why do you need to go to school,” he questions me again.

I bend down to pick his shoes up as I respond, “because I need to get my degree. That way I can look at the stars all the time.”

“Can I sleep in your room tonight?”

“Yeah.” I look down at his torn up sneakers in my hands as we walk to my room together.

“What’s wrong Sissy?”

“Nothing,” I tell him as I open my bedroom door. I gently place his sneakers on the ground as he runs over to my bed and hops in, underneath my pink comforter. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m just gonna miss you and Mom and Dad.”

“I’m gonna miss you, but you’ll be back.”

I climb into my bed with him, not bothering to change into my pajamas, and wrap my arms around him, “you know, for an eight-year-old, you’re pretty smart.”

I feel his little shoulders shrug underneath my arms, “that’s just what I have to tell myself whenever I miss you and you're too busy to talk. Why do you have to go so far away?”

“Because it’s the best school in the country.”

“How’s Adam?”

I close my eyes at the sound of his name, “he’s good. You like Adam don’t you?”

He rolls over so that I’m talking to the back of his head, “yeah, he was fun.”

“Yeah, he was a lot of fun,” my voice trails off as I go over the last few months that I spent with that screw up. The guy broke my heart. And Mikey’s. He was so good with Mikey. I can’t believe I thought he was the one for me.

“I know you guys aren’t together anymore,” he says to me, “I’m not dumb. I still think it’d be cool if he could hang out still.”

I yawn and hug him closer to me, “you are the smartest guy I know, do you know that?”

He yawns too and rolls over in my arms, shoving his face into my shoulder, “yeah.”

And with that, we slowly drift off, waiting for the next day to arrive. My last day with Mikey before I have to leave for school again.

---

“Sissy!”

I jump awake and look around to see Mikey dressed and ready for our final day together. I smile at him as I sit up in my bed and rub my eyes, “how did you manage to get ready without me noticing?”

He shrugs at me and tugs me out of bed, “come on, come on, come on,” he shouts at me. “I want to go to the fair!”

I shake my arm away from him and stretch. “Okay, okay. Go wait in the living room, I’ll be down there in a few minutes.”

He darts out my door and I listen to his small little footsteps fade into the distance, initiating my start for the day. I get up from bed to get ready, taking less than half an hour, and then grab my purse and keys before making my way to the living room where I find Mom, Dad, and Mikey watching cartoons on our flat screen TV.

I approach the couch slowly and quietly, coming right up behind Mikey. I place my hands on his shoulders and yell, “boo!”

He jumps up from the couch and turns around to face me, “Sissy!” He crosses his arms as he shouts as he takes his seat back on the couch, “that was mean.”

I give him a small kiss on the forehead as I squeeze onto the couch in between him and Mom.

“Good morning, Ally,” Mom says, “there are some pancakes on the table for you. Don’t want you driving on the highway on an empty stomach.”

I set my purse and keys on the floor in front of me as I get up and say thank you. I make my way to the small kitchen and grab my plate of chocolate chip pancakes. I take them back to the couch and reclaim my seat. “How’s that boyfriend of yours,” Dad asks me as I take the first heavenly bite of homemade chocolate chip pancakes. “You haven’t mentioned him at all,” he continues.

I swallow my food and shrug, “he’s good.”

“They’re not together anymore,” Mikey interrupts.

“What,” Mom says, disbelief present in her voice, “what happened? It seemed like he made you so happy.”

I start to feel my stomach rumble and I put the plate of pancakes on the coffee table. “Yeah,” I start, “we, um, we got in a fight, not like physical, but it was a pretty bad argument. Yeah. It was pretty bad.”

“Do I need to stick Uncle Parker on him,” Dad asks, referring to his brother who happens to be this large, intimidating cop.

I shake my head, “no, Dad, you don’t need to stick anyone know anyone.”

“Well, what happened then? What was the argument about,” Mom asks me. I bite my lip and cross my arms. I want to tell them, I really do. I look over at Mikey whose eyes were still glued to the TV, but not with him in the room.

I place a gentle hand on his back, “hey, why don’t you go grab a book and your Switch or something, it’s going to be a long ride.”

“But I wanna hang out with you on the ride,” he whines.

I chuckle, “okay, but we both know that I can get boring, you fall asleep all the time whenever we’re talking.”

He smiles mischievously as he gets up, “yeah, you’re right.”

Once I’m sure he’s out of ear shot, I turn back to my parents and bring my knees to my chest. “We had sex,” I say to them quickly.

I watch their faces. They seem blank, expressionless. They’ve always done this, everytime that I screwed up in high school, I got this. “Wow,” Mom says. “Was it consensual?”

I nod my head.

“Then what was the problem,” she pries.

I bring my knees closer to my chest and place my head on them. “Well, we didn’t use protection,” I explain. My heart starts to pound against my chest and my mouth starts to dry up. “And um, I missed my period afterwards and decided to go to the doctor. They found out that I got pregnant.”

I stop again as I let the information sink in. They don’t say anything, so I continue. “I told Adam and we got into an argument about what to do. He wanted to keep it. I didn’t. I ended up making another appointment to get an abortion without telling him until afterwards. That’s what the argument was about.”

They stay silent for a long time. Only a few minutes had passed, but it felt like an hour. “Did he lay any hands on you,” Dad asks me.

I shake my head, “no, he just got really angry with me and I got really angry at him. He’s tried to reach out to me, but I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, I love him, I really do, but I don’t want to risk that happening again.”

Mom takes my shoulder and pulls me in, “that ones up to you,” she says to me calmly, “but I think for now, you should make your last day with your brother a fun one.” She looks at the pancakes and asks, “are you done with those?”

I smile and give her a hug, “yeah. You guys are the best!”

“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Dad says to me, “but I know how much your brother has been looking forward to this, so we’re not going to talk about your punishment yet.”

“A punishment? Really? I’m almost 20,” I say to him.

“But you’re still living under my roof.”

“That’s fair I guess, thank you.”

RIght then, Mikey comes running back into the room with a drawstring bag on his back. “I’m ready,” he yells excitedly.

I look back at Mom and Dad and give them each a hug, “I love you guys, we’ll try and be back before ten.”

“Have fun,” they say in unison as we leave the house.

---

“You’ve been driving for almost two hours,” Mikey complains to me.

“Mikey,” I say calmly, “it’s only been 30 minutes. If you don’t stop complaining, I’ll turn this car around and we can go back home.”

At that sentence, he starts to scream and kick and yell. “No, no, no,” he squeals.

I clutch the steering wheel and try to ignore him, but he keeps his tantrum up.

I turn around, keeping one hand on the wheel, and look at him. “Mikey,” I say sternly, “if you don’t stop right now, you can kiss today good-by-”

Squealing tires fill my ears as I snap my head back to the road and see that I’m driving in the middle of two lanes. I slam on my breaks, but it’s too late.

Time slows down as glass shatters from all of my windows. The airbags fill up the front two seats. The last thing I see before the police and ambulance come is Mikey looking at me, tears rolling down his face, blood pouring from his head, the airbag slowly surrounding him.

---

“I’m glad you called me.”

“Me too.”

“I’m really sorry. About everything. Us. Your brother. I just. I don’t know what to say.”

I shake my head and look up at the stars, “you don’t have to say anything.”

Time feels like it stops as I keep looking at the stars in the night sky. “Are you going to come back to school?”

I shake my head as I turn my eyes away from the sky and towards him, “I’m taking online classes this semester. It doesn’t feel right to just leave after his funeral. Plus, we’re already a week into classes.”

“Yeah,” he says to me. “Ally, why did you call me?”

I return my gaze to the sky, “honestly? I don’t know, Adam. Just, sitting in that hospital bed, not able to see him, my parents too worried about him to come check up on me. I don’t know. I just think you were the only person I wanted to call.”

He reaches down and grabs my hand, squeezing it tightly, “I’m glad you did. You know, I’m not angry anymore, I understand why you did it.”

I smile, “I know.”

“I never stopped loving you either.”

I look over at him and stare into his eyes, “I never stopped loving you either.”

We lay there like that, silently, for the rest of the night, just staring up at the stars. At the Little Dipper.