Another sound I’ll never forget? My mother’s wail. It sounded like she’d been cleaved in two.
Dad’s shoulders shook as he held her and I remember sitting in a cushioned chair stunned and unable to wrap my ten-year-old mind around what the doctor said. My brother couldn’t possibly have died on the playground. This couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t.
And yet I’d seen him lying there, his chest unmoving and broken.
Then, what felt like hours later, after my tears stopped and our mother’s wails had turned to soft hiccoughs and sobs, my father sat down next to me, hugging me to his side, and a miracle happened… Kestrel began to breathe. His heartbeat returned. He was alive, and not only that, he was perfectly healthy. He was thriving. It was nothing short of a miracle and beyond anything anyone at the hospital had ever witnessed.
Upon hearing the news, Mom bawled. My strong-as-steel dad held her and cried along with her, and my tears started up again because I couldn’t fathom how it was possible.
I saw him lying there. I heard them break his body.
I heard the sadness in the nurse’s voice when she offered to reach out to the chaplain for us.
I listened mutely as the doctor struggled to find words to compassionately break the news no parent, no sister, wanted to hear.
But he was alive, they said. And the three of us cried again.
The tears we shed after the miraculous recovery weren’t those of grief, but unbridled relief.
Only, Kestrel did die that afternoon and it wasn’t him who returned to his body.
Something else did.
I knew it the moment I walked into his hospital room. As the nurses and doctors buzzed around, observing him and checking his vitals, celebrating the miracle of his resurrection, he observed me.
Kestrel was quiet. Too quiet. And no one noticed or wondered why.
With corn silk hair and silver-blue eyes, my brother looked like a cherub, but from birth had acted like an absolute demon. Kestrel was always sick, and he used that excuse to get out of everything from trouble to homework.
Throughout our childhood, he was always suffering from some malady. The flu, asthma, pneumonia, stomach virus, unexplained fevers. Yet no pediatrician could explain why he was ill so often. Mom had sought opinion after opinion; a laundry list of specialists ran every test they could think of, even for the most obscure diseases and ailments. According to them, his immune system wasn’t to blame. Since there was no medical explanation, they brushed it off as bad luck and the result of being exposed to germs at school.
Beyond his random mild illnesses and even on the best of his days, Kestrel was sensitive. Things bothered him. He didn’t like food or drink that was too hot or too cold. He hated to have his arms covered, so he lived in tank tops, refusing to wear jackets even in the dead of winter. He slept with four specific stuffed animals. God help us if one of them was misplaced. He would rage and cry and tear the house apart at the seams to find it, and we would help him just so he would stop screaming.
He hated it when anyone spoke in the car and insisted on taking his shower precisely at seven p.m., or else he refused to take one at all. He hated the dark and demanded that every light in the house between his room and Mom and Dad’s blaze all day and night.
I would close my door to drown myself in darkness and escape the incessant light so I could rest. It drove him crazy that I didn’t give in to everything he wanted.
I can honestly say that my brother hated me, but it wasn’t something he learned over time. He hated me from the moment we were born. As toddlers, if I walked into the room he was in, he wailed until I left it. As a young boy, he threw rocks at me until I ran inside. He tried to shove me down the stairs a few times. That ended when I threw his favorite blanket in the fireplace and watched it burn. I got in trouble, of course, but it was worth it. He didn’t try to break my neck again.
The night before he died, Dad called us downstairs for dinner.
Kestrel was already seated in his spot in the corner of the nook when I sat across from him. Without doing anything more than sitting down to eat with the family, he looked at me and told me he hated me. They were the first words he’d directly spoken to me in months, and they were the last he would ever say to me.
Mom scolded him and told him that it wasn’t true, but he looked me in the eye, a promise lingering inside their icy depths that said it was. I never even figured out what prompted it – if anything did. Kestrel didn’t need a reason to hate me. He just did. And that was that.
For my part, I didn’t hate Kestrel. I didn’t understand him, but I knew the moment I saw him lying lifeless on the ground that I loved him.
I would’ve taken his place if I could have, but that wasn’t the hand we were dealt.
Things were drastically different after Kes came home, wearing my brother’s skin. The passionate hatred Kestrel held for me evaporated like water on the road after a summer afternoon storm. I began calling him Kes, aloud and in my mind. He wasn’t Kestrel, no matter how often our mother said his name. No matter how closely the impostor looked like him.
The day he was released from the hospital, Dad helped him over the threshold into our home as if he were impossibly fragile, but I saw the strength he possessed, a strength my brother had never possessed.
The thing that lived in him after that? For hours that evening, it watched me just as carefully as Kestrel always had, but with no hatred flaring in its icy eyes.
It was observant. Curious. Quiet.
I watched him just as guardedly.
Mom checked on Kes every ten minutes, but as the night wore on, she fell asleep, completely exhausted. Dad told me and Kes we didn’t have to worry about going to school the next day. He sat on the couch and was soon softly snoring, his head folded onto his chest. I left him there to rest and headed to my own bed, stopping when I found it hovering in front of the refrigerator with both doors pulled open, frosty air washing over him. Before I chickened out, I slipped a butcher knife from the block and held it to his throat.
“You are not my brother. What are you?”
My hands shook like mad, but I gripped the handle and held the blade to his skin, threatening to press down and drag it across, effectively ruining his plans to slip so easily into my brother’s life.
I expected him to lie, but instead, he surprised me with the truth.
“A changeling,” he whispered.
“Why should I let you live?”
“Because if I leave, your brother’s body will perish. Kestrel died this afternoon and his soul can’t be brought back. Your mother would be bereft, doubly so if you kill me because she will lose you both in an instant. It would be more than she can handle.”
He was right. This thing – this changeling – was so, so right.
If that day taught me anything it was that if something happened to me or Kes, Mom would have fallen into a pit of depression and despair so deep, she wouldn’t have the will to climb out of it again. She was barely treading water now, clinging to the belief that Kestrel had survived.
I’d seen her agony, heard her cries, and saw the uncontrollable tremors of her hands. I watched her look around the room at me and Dad like she wasn’t sure where she was, what she was doing, or what direction to look next. She just looked lost.
He was right. She wouldn’t survive such a loss.
And that left us at an impasse.
He gently stepped backward and closed the refrigerator doors, turning fully to face me. I kept the knife between us, just in case. “If you allow me to stay, you cannot tell anyone what I am. If you do, I will be forced to leave.” Which meant Kestrel’s body would die. That could not happen. “But if you could find peace with me, Larken, the two of us can coexist. Your mother will believe her child was spared, and I give you my word that I will never harm you or your parents as long as I draw breath i
n this body. I need a home and a body in which to exist and carry out my purpose.”
While his voice sounded like a ten-year-old boy, his words were far older. I lowered the knife, still clutching it in case he was lying.
I didn’t know what to do. I had heard a story about changelings once and it scared me. But what was the alternative?
In the end, I decided there was no harm in trying. I couldn’t change what happened, but if he meant what he said, if he wanted peace, maybe this was what was best for Mom. For Dad. For all of us.
He refused to tell me exactly what his purpose in our house was when I prodded, but repeated that he meant us no harm. I walked back to my room, slipped the butcher knife between two of my favorite books, and spent the rest of the night staring at the stars from my window seat.
Dad was to blame for my obsession with the night sky. He’d taught me every constellation, shown me every planet, and together we marveled at the smooth way they slid across the night sky. We spent many nights sitting on the balcony with the telescope he helped me make and watched meteor showers. We even watched the passing of a comet once.
I fell in love with the heavens instantly, charting every lunar and solar eclipse, every predicted occurrence that could be seen from our little slice of earth on a small calendar that hung on a nail in my bedroom wall.
The stars were my constant when everything changed, a comfort when nothing was comfortable.
I watched them and listened…
I listened so that if the thing living in my brother’s body went after Mom and Dad, I’d be there to stop him.
I spent many nights like that. Sleepless. Worried. Terrified, if I was being honest.
But after a while, things settled. It turned out that Kes wasn’t lying. Life really did become peaceful after that.
Kes wore sleeves and slept in the dark, and on the bus on the way home from school, he would sit with me and ask how my day was. We helped each other with homework and even played outside together. Kes and I became friends.
We’d lived together as brother and sister for eight years now. I knew this Kes like the back of my hand. This Kes loved me. He also loved Mom and Dad.
It was wrong to think it, but I couldn’t help what popped into my mind as I walked back to my room, steam from my shower wafting from the bathroom and into the hall.
I liked this version of Kes much better than I had my own flesh and blood sibling, and the feeling was mutual.
So maybe in the end this was meant to be, and it was better this way for all of us. My fraternal twin brother was dead – yet lived.
All was well in the world – most of the time.
2
By the next day, things had simmered down. Mom was rested, and though she was still upset, she wasn’t angry cross-stitching or on the verge of tears. Dad kissed my head before he grabbed his lunch and left for work, his hands stained with the grease from all the engines he’d repaired during this insanely long week. “So, you’re going to prom with the girls, right?”
Even though it was already Thursday, Friday seemed an eternity away. And Saturday seemed even longer.
“Actually, someone asked me.”
His graying brows popped as he leaned a hip against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “Who?”
“Xavier, but we’re going as friends.”
“I remember how I went on dates with friends.”
I groaned. “Dad. Don’t. He’s just being nice since Brant was a complete dick.”
“Don’t let your mother hear you talk like that,” he admonished, unable to keep his lips from turning up at the corners.
“I want to talk to him before you all leave,” he said, more seriously.
“I’ve already warned him. He’s cool with that. Somehow.”
Dad pushed off the counter and started toward the door. “You’re my only daughter. It’s my duty to threaten your dates while you live under my roof.”
“Well, we’re just friends, so don’t take that duty too seriously.”
“I’m proud of you,” he said out of the blue.
“For what?”
He shook his head. “For becoming a young woman who knows her worth.” He glanced at his watch. “Talk later?”
“Yeah, Dad.” Around the knot forming in my throat, I added, “Have a good day.”
“Love you. This’ll all blow over. In a month, you won’t remember the dickhead’s name.”
I snorted a laugh as he left the kitchen and headed out the door.
That morning, I caught a ride to school with Kes and went through the motions of trying to preserve my pride and shun Brant and Reagan. I didn’t see Xavier the Prom Savior at lunch, and cross-country practice was cancelled. The coach’s sister was having a baby, and while we were more than capable, at the ages of seventeen and eighteen of running as a group, the school’s rule was that after-school sponsored activities had to be chaperoned, and she couldn’t find anyone to volunteer at the last minute. So… I jogged home and vegged with Mom on the couch, watching the remnants of bad daytime television talk shows. Sometimes it was nice to have a heavy show to invest in and binge, and sometimes, mind-numbing nonsense about baby daddies was just the medicine.
Dad came in with pizza, followed by Kes with a container of Snickers ice cream, and for a school night, it looked like things were starting to look up. It seemed like everything would be okay.
I should’ve known the rug was about to be pulled out from under our feet.
Kes found me in my usual perch, staring at the night sky instead of the biology book in my lap and the empty notebook page I was supposed to fill. The galaxy’s haze stretched lazily across the sky’s dusky canvas, disappearing behind the trees in the back yard.
“What’s up?” I asked, giving him my attention.
He stared out my window.
A strange look was plastered on Kes’s face, one I hadn’t seen very often, but recognized and remembered. It reminded me of when I saw him standing in the light of the fridge, the threatening blade of a knife indenting his skin. Kes was afraid.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up straighter, looking from him to the darkened yard outside my window. The book slid off my lap and hit the floor with a thump.
Still, he didn’t answer.
“Kes?” He stared at the sky unflinchingly, unaware that I’d spoken. “Kes, what’s going on? Why are you staring at the sky like that?”
“Did you see the harbinger?” he asked, his eyes darting to me for a split second before staring back outside.
My brows kissed. What is he talking about? “Harbinger?”
“To you it would look like a bright comet, but it’s not one. It just streaked across the sky.”
I hadn’t seen anything. “Are you sure it wasn’t a falling star?” I asked, just in case he saw something less foreboding.
“I’m positive. It was a message, and so much more than a simple meteor.” He turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” I asked before he could reach the door.
“To check on something,” he answered vaguely. “Come lock the dead bolt behind me. And don’t open it until I get back, no matter what.”
I followed him down the steps to the door and watched as he grabbed his keys and rushed to his Mustang.
He waited behind the wheel, its low beams illuminating the driveway and front door until I closed it and locked the deadbolt. The light from his headlights shone through the transom and slid over the walls as he backed up, winking out completely as he drove away.
Yes, things were peaceful in our house, but there were certain things Kes kept to himself.
At times like these, I tried not to pry. His omissions were protective; there were things I just shouldn’t know.
Things no one should.
3
&nb
sp; The following morning, my cell phone’s alarm blared in my ear until I found the will to open one eye and the strength to click the button to turn it off. A notification popped up. Less than ten percent battery remained. Fabulous. I forgot to plug it in last night. I put it in battery saver mode and threw it back onto the mattress.
Kestrel had come home at some point. The hall shower was on and I could hear his tragic taste in grunge rock blaring from inside the bathroom. Couldn’t he listen to Taylor Swift like the rest of humanity? Or Five SOS? Come on.
I groaned and flung the covers off, heading toward the closet. If I wanted to catch a ride with Kes, I needed to hurry. I raked hangers across the metal bar, trying to find something clean, cute, and relatively comfortable.
Just then, dread coiled in my stomach, settling into an uncomfortable knot, and the hair on my arms stood on end. I rubbed my hands down them to squash the feeling.
Downstairs, Dad and Mom moved around the kitchen, the coffee machine whirring and hissing. Dad, talking loudly over the noise, promised to fix it this weekend. Mom confirmed that her plans for the day included updating her resume and scouring the internet for a new job. I could tell she was still upset, and judging by her tone was probably on her third cup of coffee, and Dad was getting ready to leave for work. He was telling her how amazing she was (he was right), and that people would be fools not to hire someone with her wealth of experience and personality. She was getting all swoony.
The water in the bathroom shut off.
I paused, feeling indescribably strange.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something didn’t feel right. Something in the atmosphere felt… off, almost electric. Like static on a sweater. I wondered if an ensuing shock would come as I proceeded to spray copious amounts of dry shampoo into my roots and combed my hair into a messy bun, tugging on my favorite ripped jeans and dragging a loose hoodie over my head.
Things That Should Stay Buried Page 2