Charcoal and Rain

Ivy was glad to be gone.

It had not been a difficult decision — choosing to rewrite her future, to leave home. Home was where Poppy was, and that made it a place she didn’t want to be. 

She had come first, Ivy reminded herself; she was older, not Poppy. Maturer, too. Less empty-headed. But if she was being honest, how much of a difference did three minutes of extra time in the world really make? Being born first was about the only thing she had over her sister. 

She sighed, staring at the droplets of water pooling on the window of the plane. She thought they looked like tears, sliding down and losing hold on reality, grasping at the glass in a futile effort to hold on. Ivy’s bleak face shone back out at her through the tens of thousands of tiny mirrors in the water.

She looked away.

Poppy was always first, she thought glumly. First, no matter what. First with people, first with their parents, first with that guy she had met last week at the mall. First even with Jonathan. She had proven that much a week ago. 

If you walked into Poppy’s room, you would see pictures and pictures and more pictures lining the walls, all full of flashing smiles and intertwined hands and cheeks pressed together. One thing was clear: Poppy was quickly running out of wall space. 

Ivy huffed a laugh. So she could joke about it, she observed, even if she resented it.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have anyone. She did, of course, or she would not have survived the relentless sadness that inevitably came with living alongside her spotlighted sister. 

Ivy’s phone buzzed in her hands, interrupting the chanting thoughts that had begun to buzz into her ears like bees ready for stinging.

It was Zoe, of course. It couldn’t be anybody else. 

She picked up the phone.

“Hi, what’s up?”

“Hey!” Zoe said. 

Ivy couldn’t help but think that, beneath her friend’s cheerful, bright voice, there might have been a slight hint of relief, as if she had not been expecting Ivy to pick up the phone. And although the thought might have left a sting, Ivy couldn’t blame her. After the screams and insults she and Poppy had thrown at each other mercilessly, hurling them like stones through fragile glass, and after Zoe had witnessed it all for herself, she likely thought Ivy was nothing more than a broken shell of a person. 

Besides, Ivy could never resent Zoe for anything. Zoe, whose witty humor made even the worst, most bleak situations remediable; Zoe, who played soft jazz and whose voice was like blinking fireflies on starry nights.

Ivy’s thoughts were interrupted by a considerable amount of turbulence on Zoe’s end of the phone call: there was a sound somewhat similar to a barrel of pots clanging down the stairs, and a tangle of voices and commotion drowned out Zoe’s voice. “Zo, what’s going on?”

A pause. “Zoe?”

“How much would you hate me if I said I was… at the airport?”

Ivy sat up abruptly in her seat, the woman in the seat beside her looking up at the abrupt movement. “What do you mean, at the airport?”

“I mean… at the airport.”

“Like, now?”

Zoe let out a knowing laugh. “Like right now,” she said, and her voice smiled even as she said it. “I decided to come with you.”

Tears welled up in Ivy’s eyes, almost unexpectedly. She didn’t bother to brush them away. 

“I- I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’re excited” said Zoe emphatically. “Especially now that I’m coming with you.”

Ivy had to admit, a summer in London would be significantly better with her best friend by her side. Even if Jonathan wasn’t coming. 

She pushed the thought aside.

“Okay,” she said, and even her voice exhaled relief. She hated that it was that noticeable, but then again, it was Zoe. Zoe knew everything about her anyway.  

She could tell her friend felt it, too. That exhale. “Good,” she said firmly. “See you soon, Ivy.”

With that, the line cut off, and Ivy looked back at the window that had contained her bleak reflection only moments ago.  

Now, her stormy, gray eyes shone with something more. Not brightness — no, not quite. But something. Something like silver swirling in the bottom of a previously hopeless, dark chasm. Maybe it was that relief talking, or maybe it was a sudden hope that blossomed in her chest like a tentative lily in spring. 

*  *  *

Poppy felt awful. 

Absolutely, positively awful. 

She hadn’t said goodbye to Ivy. In fact, they hadn’t said a word to one another ever since that horrible shouting match a few days ago. The same shouting match that had caused Ivy to go completely and utterly hoarse, and even more infuriated. 

Poppy had never seen her sister like that.

It was always quiet judgment, with Ivy. Passive aggression, sometimes. But never anything like those horrible screams of frustration and anger that sounded like she was ripping her heart out with claws, ripping out a part of what made them a pair by birth. Poppy winced at the memory.

She knew, of course, that it was all about Jonathan. 

Poppy remembered the devastating pain, the utter shock in Ivy’s eyes when those two short words had escaped Jonathan’s mouth. Poppy’s right.  

Jonathan had taken Poppy’s side. Jonathan, who had known Ivy ever since they made an unbreakable vow to each other in grade school to be the bestest of friends. Jonathan, who had been there for Ivy when their nana died; Jonathan, who had seen her break down in countless bathroom stalls because the pain in her chest wouldn’t let her breathe; Jonathan, who had always been there to hold her hand and to tell her that she was brilliant, and kind, and loved. Jonathan, who had spilled his own heart out to Ivy; who knew more about her and gave more of himself to her than to any other person in the world. Jonathan, who was the other half of Ivy’s heart in ways that Poppy would never be. 

And yet, in a fight about Ivy’s future, Jonathan had sided with Poppy. 

You shouldn’t do this, Ivy, he had said. You have a future here. You can earn a degree here. Don’t go to London. Don’t throw away your life for a meager hope that’ll only leave regrets. 

And when she had protested against this — when she had assured him that she could make it on her own as an artist, that she couldn’t live and breathe without capturing the world on paper, he had just shaken his head and said Poppy’s right. 

And so, the utter shock and devastation in Ivy’s eyes had turned to fury — flaming, white-hot fury that had exploded into screams and shrieks and shards of broken glass. 

STOP, she had screamed. STOP THINKING YOU KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR ME!

The words had reverberated through the room long after it was all over. 

Stop. 

Stop.

STOP.

They had not spoken a single word to each other after that night. Jonathan, on the other hand, had called Ivy countless times, and all to no avail. It did not take long for him to understand just how much he had hurt her.

Poppy had tried to work up the courage to apologize. She had. But the thought of speaking to her sister after everything that had been said was nothing short of nauseating. 

Better to wait, she had reasoned. Better to hope that it would fix itself, somehow. 

That logic had seemed sound to Poppy, at the time. It had seemed perfectly sane when she had thought it out in her room, only a step and a knock away from the sound of charcoal on paper and heavy thoughts.

Now, the room next to Poppy’s felt empty and devoid of life. 

Devoid of a soft, invisible soul who had always been there to listen. 

*  *  *

Ivy spent the flight wide awake, with Zoe dozing on her shoulder. 

No matter how hard she willed it, sleep wouldn’t come, and so she had no choice but to give up and to allow herself to sink into the warmth of the friend beside her. 

Ivy was tired of reliving it all in her head, like a movie with no remote. It had almost become a nightmare, now, the excruciating step Jonathan had taken closer to Poppy, the words he had uttered. 

Don’t do this, Ivy. Don’t throw away your life for a meager hope that’ll only leave regrets. 

She was tired of it — tired of him wanting her to stay. When she had told him she was leaving for London, leaving to become a painter in her own right, he had only hesitantly expressed his happiness for her. He was worried for her, she knew. Worried and unwilling to let her go. But to restrain her, to stifle the very thing that gave her air in her lungs, was not the act of a friend. 

Pain welled up in her chest at the thought. And Poppy, - her head spun with blind frustration at even the mere thought of that name - Poppy had known exactly what she was doing with her smiles and wide eyes and her caring act. 

She had not even tried to make amends, had not tried to apologize. Bitterness stung Ivy’s chest like a mouthful of cocoa powder. 

Zoe stirred, then, even as the rest of the plane dozed on, enveloped in dim blue light.

“Ivy,” she murmured, head still on her friend’s shoulder. She looked up into her face. “What are you thinking?”

It was a tradition of theirs, to ask that question. 

Ivy sighed. “I’m thinking…” 

She inhaled sharply before continuing. Tried to let out the knot in her chest. “I’m thinking that I don’t know how to fix anything.”

Zoe just looked at her, as if waiting for her to continue. 

“I- I feel horrible, Zoe. And I don’t even understand why.”

Zoe looked up at her friend quizzically. Then, quietly, “You should call Poppy. Once we land.”

Ivy gaped at her. “You’re not serious.”

Zoe refused to break the gaze. “I’m completely serious.” She sat up, then. “She wanted to apologize, you know. That’s what she told me yesterday, when I said I would go with you.”

Ivy shook her head. “But she didn’t tell me herself.”

Something like pain flickered in Zoe’s hazel eyes. “You should call her,” she repeated softly, and rested her head on Ivy’s shoulder once again. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Nothing more was said of the issue, but Zoe’s words had left a mark upon Ivy’s mind. And as rain enveloped the window next to her, as everything slept in the soft hum of the plane’s engine, as Zoe’s breath became a steady, soft rhythm upon her shoulder, Ivy thought of her sister and the bridge between them. 

She thought of the emptiness that had taken root in her heart, the chasm that was opening with every passing moment. 

And a thousand miles away, a golden girl lay on her bed and felt the gold in her dissipate. Outside her window, it, too, was raining.