The Fall

Fourteen

When we were kids, Lena once asked me what it was like to have siblings. She was under the impression, like Lena the introvert would be, that living with someone else semi-close to your age was the worst possible thing that could ever happen, and living this way for eighteen this years was a simply horrifying prospect. Surely, she had said, you must be always be fighting and you probably never get anything to call your own!

She wasn't wrong, but she wasn't exactly right either. For the most part, Mackenzie and I had a really good relationship, mostly because from the fact that we were pretty alike, all things considered. And nothing demonstrated that more than the way we usually spent our Sundays, laid out on the porch swing together. It was about sixty degrees outside, but we did it until it got too cool to stand.

Right now, she was painting her toenails a bright teal while an indie-pop song came through her tinny iPhone speakers. It was nice, being able to kick back, relax, and try to forget everything that's been happening.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Mackenzie asked as she leaned over to grab her topcoat from the balcony.

"If this is an intervention about those beakers I keep ordering off Amazon, let me just stop you right now. I need those, alright?" I said, laughing. If this was about what I thought it was about, I needed to deflect as much as I could.

"It's not about that, stupid."

"Wow, must be serious. You'd usually use much harsher words."

"I mean, I guess you could say it's serious...I mean, I don't want to make this a big thing, okay? So just listen to me for a second."

I was silent as the world started to spin.

"Okay, so when people have these conversations in movies and shit, they always ask, like, if the other other person is being beaten or something, and I'm pretty sure you're not being beaten. Right?"

At that moment, two things happened: another song came on and the world seemed to stop. I tried to think about something else and seized onto the track coming out of Mackenzie's pink iPhone speakers.

Love is not a choice
Fragile girls and boys
Gathered beating hearts
Shattered work of art

I wanted so many things at once. Mackenzie and Lena's approval, my own identity, and maybe most complicated of all, I wanted Ryder.

I was afraid of the love that you asked for
You are the light in my eyes, you're the answer

"Because if you were being beaten, you'd tell me. I know you would. But I also know that you're the type of person who sometimes doesn't see subtler things until it's too late. Remember the time I gave you that science kit when you were eight? And you almost burned the house down?"

"Because that's what I think you're doing now. I'm afraid you'll get burned."

And that was the moment that even as summer faded on the chilly evening air, I knew that the fire was more intense and dangerous than ever for me.

-Kacey, inexplicably.