Fairies Riding Thunder

Maybe it’s Big Sister that says it first, or one of the fairies whispers it, or maybe it is G.D. that says some of it too.  Most likely it’s all of them together telling me what happened and this is what they say.  They tell me he had been frightened like I am today to face a tough thing that’s not always simple to see or to handle and he ran away, he disappeared like Mickey did at prom.

“I’m sorry,” Ally says.  “Nobody knows where you dad went.”

“I don’t believe you.”

And Ally’s words like Mickey’s not being real or being like whatever it is the fairies are and Big Sister is and my whole ruined life remind me of the things I reach for inside the cabinet, in the land of the tipped over’s.

When my aunt leaves it is as hot as it has ever been in my room and I dream of all my ancestors huddled in here, watching, waiting to see what I will do.

“What happened to you?”  They ask.  “Why did you get into a fight with your boyfriend over your hair?”

The room stays hot.  “He disappeared,” I say.  “It had nothing to do with my hair.”

Big Sister stands by the door surveying all of us.  “None of us are real?”  She asks.

I don’t say anything to this and it’s harder than all of the ancestors knowing everything (which I imagine they do on some days and other days I think they know only of their pasts and how to float.  And it would be easier if just Big Sister and I got into it, about what I did to Flipper for starters - how this gets me and Grizzly (all of us) kicked out from good places like Aunt Ally’s.  But the ancestors have to bring up what happened at prom and they say Flipper, Mickey, all of it is my fault.  I don’t talk about what the popular girls did to my hair before any of that.  And I don't bring up the strange and Samaritan like move Gitt did at the prom when she handed me her phone so I could call home.  Girls like Gitt always seem to have different rules.

I study the tiny crack in the ceiling searching for G.D.  “You didn’t just leave, right?”  But even he stays silent.  And then I hear a train, it runs through my head and sounds like fairies riding thunder.

“Come with us,” they say.

Big Sister warns me, as always, not to go.  Her voice breaks and this reminds me of the way Mickey’s voice sounded at the dance.  “I'm disgusted with you too,” she says.  But there’s something else, something I don’t hear often from Big Sister.  She sounds weary.  It seems almost as if she’s giving up.  And then I see her hands are shaking.

“I’m sorry.”  And it’s my voice that breaks this time.  “It’s too late to change my mind.”

And then I’m way past wherever it is that Big Sister exists (if she even does) and way past caring about what happened at Panic and the prom and what my aunt said about my dad and what this means.