by K. H. Leigh
“Not really, no.”
“Does that make us bad people?”
“Probably. Yes. We’re terrible people.” She leans back and looks up at me. “But you know what they say about apples falling from trees, right?”
I laugh. Hard. Great gasping laughter that suddenly isn’t laughter anymore, and I’m sitting on the ground, in the dirt, and I’m not quite sure when it turned into crying but it has, and Val is cradling my head and whispering “it’s okay, it’s okay” over and over.
I don’t see the others before I leave. I insist on buying Val breakfast, five a.m. waffles at a greasy 24-hour chain joint, and then we go our separate ways. At the hotel I take another shower, even longer than the last, and by the time I get out the sun is coming up. I lie down on the bed to try and catch a couple of hours of sleep, but my mind won’t shut off.
Eventually I give up and call the airline to see if I can change to an earlier flight. I haven't slept at all, but I'm at that level of exhaustion where it doesn't matter.
After I drop off the rental and make it through security, I still have a couple of hours to kill before my flight leaves. I have a book in my bag, but I don’t feel like reading. Instead I just sit at the gate and look at my phone. It still works, even with the crack in the glass.
He sent me a few more messages since last night. I delete the thread without reading them. Then I go to my contacts and I find his name, and delete that, too.
I don’t realize how long I’ve been sitting there until the gate agent announces my flight on the loudspeaker. Everyone around me gets up to stand in line, but I don't. I just sit in that godawful plastic chair and turn on my phone again, stare at my contacts list, while they call my boarding group. Under the tab of my recent contacts are each of my sisters' names, all those texts and emails and phone calls and group messages working out the logistics of this trip. The gate agent calls for final boarding. I just stare at my phone.
Beside each of their names waits an empty star.
K.H. Leigh is an independent fiction, science-fiction and fantasy author, as well as a collector of antique 8mm movie cameras, and a travel enthusiast. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
For more visit khleigh.com