Come into the Light

        Kyra swallowed a mouthful of coffee, hiding her grimace with the newspaper. Why anyone drinks this stuff when it tastes like soap and burnt toast was beyond her. Still, she would make herself finish the entire cup; it’s what an adult would do. And Kyra, having turned 14 a week ago and due for her freshman year of high school in exactly one month, decided that the only way to prepare herself for the next stage in life was to do everything her mother (a real adult) would do.

               Every Sunday, Kyra’s mother woke up at 6a.m. for no good reason, poured herself a cup of soap, and kicked back with the newspaper, muttering and chortling every few minutes as she read the news of the day. On this particular Sunday, Kyra woke up a little later than she wanted—around 11, actually—and found her mother putting on makeup in the bathroom.

               “Where you going?” Kyra asked.

               “I’m having lunch with Dee, remember?” her mother said, swiping on some mascara. “You’re watching Patrick for the afternoon.”

               Kyra’s face grew hot. She’d forgotten all about having to watch her three-year old brother. And now, her day was ruined.

               Patrick. Such a sophisticated name for an illiterate, semi-incontinent drool tornado who always had cheerios stuck to his face. Sure, he has big round eyes and caramel apple cheeks, but bubbling beneath his cherub-like surface was the blood of a demon, a demon whose only ambition was to cause as much chaos in a twenty-four-hour period as possible.

               Only ten minutes into babysitting duties and Kyra heard her brother’s congested breathing behind the newspaper. She tipped down the paper to meet his eyes.

               “What?” Kyra asked.

               “Kiwi, I’m bored,” he whined. ‘Kiwi’ was the closest Patrick could get to the name Kyra. Their mother thought it was adorable so ‘Kiwi’ was starting to stick. Kyra hated the name and just hoped it didn’t somehow follow her to high school. She’d get ripped apart for sure. A newspaper-reading, coffee-drinking adult does not get called ‘Kiwi.’

               Kyra gazed out of the picture window in their living room. The summer rain, warm and persistent, showered the empty driveway. Sending Patrick outside to play wasn’t an option.

               “Read a book if you’re bored,” Kyra told him, and went back to skimming the news.

               “I can’t read,” said Patrick.

               “Write a book.”

               “I don’t know how.”

               “Play with your crayons.”

               “I ready did that,” he said, holding up a paper. “I made a pitchure of you, see?”

               The “pitchure” was a white piece of paper depicting a curly-haired, cross-eyed potato with scribbles of orange and red coming from its circle mouth.

               “You’re mean so you spit fire,” Patrick explained. Kyra rolled her eyes.

               “Real original, turd breath.”

               “You’re turd breath!”

               When Kyra didn’t respond, Patrick sighed and scrambled onto the couch cushion right next to Kyra.

               “Can you tell me a story from there?” Patrick asked, tapping his small finger on the crime section. Kyra side-eyed him.

               “New details emerge in gruesome slaying of South—you know what?” Kyra said, interrupting the headline, “Just watch your cartoons.”

               Patrick slid off the couch and stood in front of the T.V., swaying and scratching his butt as he watched animated puppies sing a song about washing their paws. Kyra just had to keep him distracted for 3 more hours.

               “Kiwi?” asked Patrick. Kyra twisted up her newspaper and flung it across the room.

               “What do you want?”

               Patrick pointed to the wall beside the entertainment center.

               “There’s a butterfly.”

               Kyra squinted at a dark smudge on the wall.

               “Ew, no that’s a moth,” she said.

               Kyra, needing an excuse to throw out her coffee, walked to the kitchen and rinsed out her cup. She returned to the living room armed with the empty mug and approached the quarter-sized moth. In one swift motion, she encircled the moth with her mug, trapping it in darkness.

               “Quick—hand me your picture,” she said to Patrick.

               Patrick toddled over to his pile of crayons and snatched up the drawing. He handed it to Kyra, who began sliding the paper underneath the mug. Just before the paper was halfway under, Patrick wailed like a demented cat and the sudden howling noise made Kyra jump. She shot daggers at Patrick.

               “What is your problem?” she yelled.

               “I don’t want you to cut the mott!”

               “Moth,” she enunciated. “And I’m not going to cut the moth I’m going to capture him and put him outside!”

               “But it’s raining!” Patrick cried.

               “Fine,” Kyra said, lifting the mug. “It can stay.”

               The moth still clung to the white wall, seemingly untroubled by the attention. Patrick pointed up at the moth.

               “The wings look like your paper stories,” he said.

               Kyra glanced first at her rumpled newspaper in the corner of the living room and then back at the moth. Patrick was right—the moth’s wings were the same color as the newspaper—powder gray. Its wings even had dark, tiny markings, like the words in a headline.

               “They deliber stories for the spiders and bugs,” Patrick said.

               Kyra giggled.

               “They deliver stories to the other bugs, huh? About what?”

               “To hide under rocks ‘cause of the rain and to watch out for the lady that smells.”

               “Am I the lady that smells?”

               Patrick let out a phlegmy cackle,

               “Yah.”

               “Who writes the stories on their wings?”

               “The moth bosses.”

               Kyra giggled again and recalled a moment from her own childhood. The bathtub faucet was on. Running water thudded into the basin. Kyra, just a little older than Patrick at the time, stuck her finger into the faucet to find the source of the pooling water. She remembered the sensation; the pressure against her finger felt like someone was pushing back. Someone, she guessed, who hailed from a different world. When Kyra announced that there were people in the bathtub, her mother went pale. It was only after Kyra elaborated that the “people” in the water were magical mermaid ocean fairies that her mother breathed a sigh of relief.

               Kyra realized that she and Patrick used to think in a similar way. There was a time before reality encouraged limits and practicality, a time before she looked in the mirror and saw the real world staring back. Yes, there was once a time when she imagined life not as it was, but as it could be.

               “What else do the wings say?” Kyra asked. Patrick chewed on his finger as he studied the moth. Kyra lifted Patrick for a closer look. A few seconds later, he began to explain—with Kyra’s help—that the wings spoke of crocodile monsters living underground, of pajama-wearing grasshoppers, and of raindrops the size of bowling balls. Kyra gasped.

               “I have an idea.”

               Kyra and Patrick collapsed into a pile of pillows, flashlights in hand. They cast beams of light across the ceiling, enticing the moth to come their way.

                “This is why moths love light,” Kyra said.

               “Why?” asked Patrick.

               “So we can read their stories, of course.”

               “This is fun, huh Kiwi?”

               Patrick moved his beam into Kyra’s. The moth released itself from the wall and fluttered toward them, its newspaper wings on full display.

               “Come into the light, moth,” Kyra said. “Tell us more from your world.”