Gone Page, Gone Bird

“Look out!” Right as the shout went out her mouth, her sticky hands rose to her eyes, an effort to shield them from witnessing the disastrous fall Laurie’s older brother was sure to sustain in a few nanoseconds’ time.

Thwack. There it was. Reluctantly, she lowered a hand and peered over the other to see Jamie plastered onto the floor, a grimace on his mouth and papers in hand. She couldn’t help but shake her head at the carpet other papers had made for his torso, the ones that had fallen out of his grip.

“Can’t you slow down and just look where you’re headed for a change?” She knew her chastising tone wasn’t going to placate him, but the words were out before she could ponder their effectiveness.

“Can’t you not eat sugar ridden Jell-O five days of a week and think of your diabetes, for a change?” Came the quick comeback. To be truthful, Laurie didn’t even mind it. She knew he was right.

Sucking off the last bit of banana flavored green splattered on her fingers ­­— she somehow ended up getting them involved in the eating process, despite the spoons she employed. It couldn’t be helped, the Jell-O slipped off and she had to get her hands dirty after all— Laurie decided to follow her brother into his room.

“Well, aren’t you the neat freak?” Bemused, she took in the overflowing cartons of God-knows-what junk Jamie liked to call his collections, the hoodies littering the floor, the sock stuck on the door handle, the earphones dangling from the clock’s pendulum, and of course, a truckload of papers adorning every surface to be found.

“If you had to bring yourself in here, that too without so much as a knock, you surely could’ve left the sarcasm behind the door.” Jamie didn’t look up from the desk he was bent over as he retorted.

Unbothered, Laurie strode over to take a look. No change of scenery here, she thought, as a stack of papers met her eyes. Jamie was rifling through them keenly, but quickly, evidently searching for something.

Finally, before the vicariously procured helplessness made her implode, Jamie dropped the stapled stack and let out a groan.

“I know it was here somewhere, I put it here myself.” Muttering under his shallow breaths, he raked his hands through his already messy curls before throwing a glance at the earphone sporting clock. “It’s already 11:30.” If ever there was a picture of distress and dismay, it was her brother’s face at that moment, Laurie decided internally.

“Maybe if you let me help y-” Before she could finish, Jamie stormed out of the room.

Sighing in surrender, she turned her attention to the jilted stack of papers on the desk. There were maybe 10. As she picked it up, eyes zeroing in on the barely legible scrawl, everything clicked into place. Why Jamie had been running around the house all day, doing things that had seemed so arbitrary to her in their nature that she had given up questioning by midday, concluding that it was just another one of Jamie’s abrupt and sporadically productive days.

It had begun in the kitchen, or at least that’s when she became a witness to it, when she walked in on Jamie flipping an omelet in a pan, complete with olives and jalapenos and cheese and was that chicken? Was Jamie really cooking himself a meal, instead of chugging milk straight from the carton like he did every other morning? Things had gotten more and more bizarre after that. At around 11, she’d been looking aimlessly out the window of her bedroom when she spotted him bent over… a pot? No, it was simply grass, and there was a shovel lying next to him, and his hands were caked in mud, and he was planting seeds. Yes, Jamie was planting a tree in their backyard. She had merely stifled a giggle at the idiosyncrasy of it all. Trust Jamie to be doing the last thing on earth you would expect him to be doing. Later that evening, she saw him walk out of his room with red eyes, and it only took her a look at the empty birdcage he was holding, the epitome of tragedy. Her mouth has formed a comic O, and she barely squeaked out a query. He offered her a solemn shake of head in response, saying only that Maya Angelou would be proud of her. This had been followed by Jamie emptying out his entire wardrobe, sealing lots of clothes in cartons, and dropping them off at Goodwill. He seemed to her to be a boy living the last day of his life. She had even considered asking him outright if he was hiding a cancer diagnosis from their family, but thought better of it.

Now, as she turned over the page marked 10, she couldn’t help but smile. Her brother was hiding no fatal disease. He was simply hell-bent on checking off all the resolutions he had made for 2022… on 31^st December of the same year. She had also figured out what the cause of Jamie’s distress was. The 6^th page was missing. He’d wanted to check it off, but he didn’t know what it had been in the first place.

Shaking her head, she got on her knees on the floor, and looked under the desk. Dust. Lots of it. She knew Jamie was messy and forgetful, but this looked like the underside of a cobweb-ridden cave. Cringing, with one two fingers pinching her nose, she stuck her right arm under the desk and grabbed around dumbly. There it was. She almost wanted to scream in delight as her hands folded around what felt like paper, and sure enough, it was the 6^th page, although this she only saw for certain after once again—dirtying her hands.

Throwing one last glance at the clock hand striking 11:48, she took off, calling out her brother’s name. There was a noncommittal shout of “over here” from the backyard, so she went out there and saw him sitting on the grass, looking like a picture out of a children’s storybook. The sad, despondent, implacable boy who couldn’t free the princess after all, basking in the pale luminescence of an equally melancholic moon.

“Were you looking for this?” She stuck out the greyed paper sheet and dangled it in front of his eyes like a bone, and he certainly acted the part of a hungry dog. His hand almost ripped the sheet in half, but Laurie said nothing. She was too curious to know what the resolution said.

A minute went by, silence dominated the taught air pregnant with Laurie’s expectancy.

“Come on, what’s it say?”

Jamie didn’t say anything, then slowly held up the creased paper. There, lit by the crescent’s calm glow, the words almost spoke to her from the page, so clear was the irony of the situation. Written in all uppercase was a sweet statement of implied compassion for himself, were Jamie’s own words.

Don’t beat yourself up over this list. It’s just a list. For good measure, leave one of these 9 resolutions undone (maybe cheat and keep the parrot, he’s only just started sitting on my shoulder) Here’s to deliberate misconduct in the name of letting things go (not birds) including lists. ACCEPTANCE, JAMIE. ACCEPTANCE. Hallelujah.

For a few speechless seconds, Laurie read the lines again and again. Then, she felt a vibration in the air. Jamie was silently laughing.

“I can’t believe I lost Greeno because of a lost page.” He said, chuckling.

For a few moments, Laurie just looked at him. Then, faux seriously, she said, “At least Maya Angelou would be proud of you.”

And there it went, if not Maya, then the moon smiling down at two siblings bursting into hysterics, the spitting image of flawed humanity finding humor despite all the odds.