Page 47 of Pictures in Blue
“You aren’t happy?” she asks.
I look at her with her bright red head scarf covering her now bald head and wonder how she can ask me that. How can she ask anyone that?
“No, Sarah. I’m not.”
“C’mon, big brother. I’m going to be okay.”
“How can you say that?” I question, anger sneaking into my tone.
“Hudson, I’m dying. I’ve wasted enough time being angry about that. I’m not wasting any more days being angry at the world. I want to spend whatever time I have left being happy with my family. With you, Elias, Ethan,” her voice breaks on Ethan’s name.
“I don’t want to leave you all with the image of me being broken in the end. I am not broken. I amwholebecause of you. Because of who I have around me. Cancer may have taken the life I was dreaming of, but I have been able to live and be happy with the time I am given. You should too.”
I give her a sad smile, not really taking in her words. She is dying. I can’t be happy about that.
I look down at my letters neatly placed on the Scrabble board and spell out my word. Avoiding the heavier talk.
“P-E-N-I-S.”
“Reeeeeeal mature,” she draws out.
“P-E-N-I-S,” a small voice says from behind me. “What does that spell, Mama?”
We both collapse into laughter as Ethan crawls into Sarah’s lap. “Uncle Hudson will tell you when you’re older,” she says. And I don’t miss the glance she gives me. If she didn’t have cancer she would have saidshewould tell him when he’s older. But she can’t do that. Because she won’t be there. She won’t see him grow up. She won’t see him live a life of all the happy moments she wants us all to have.
She squeezes him tightly and ushers him up to bed after he picks another toy car to sleep with. That kid and his cars is a love story for the ages if there ever was one. When she comes back, we finish our game. She wins, as per usual, and we fall asleep watchingThe Shop Around the Corner, her on the couch, me on the floor next to her.
I wake up near the end of the movie when Kralik and Pirovitch are looking through the diner window discovering who the mystery woman is. “Because itisMiss Novack,” Pirovitch’s voice echoes through the room.
I look over at Sarah, expecting to see her smile because her favorite part of the movie is when they discover who the person behind the letters is. Instead, there is only stillness and my heart drops to my stomach. I can’t breathe, because I know she isn’t.
“Sarah,” I say, knowing she won’t answer, but my brain doesn’t understand. It does not comprehend that she isn’t there. I have to try to wake her up.
She has to wake up. But she doesn’t.
She is gone.
My little sister is gone…and I am broken.
“Sarah!” Louder. She has to hear me. She has to wake up.
“Sarah!” I gently shake her, tears streaming down my face, falling and soaking into the blanket covering her.
“Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!” I keep yelling because I can’t stop until she wakes up. I can’t stop until I see her eyes open and joke about how she tricked me.
“Sarah! Sarah!” I feel arms pulling me away from her. Elias’ voice is just as broken as mine, “Hudson, Hudson!”
“Hudson! Hudson! Wake up!”
My eyes snap open to Avery hovering above me, shaking my shoulders. The tears I felt in my dream are trailing slowly down my cheeks and my chest is aching. I’m hyperventilating. All I see is Sarah.
Cold. Unmoving.
Dead.
Avery places her hands on either side of my face, angling it to hers.
“Hudson, breathe,” she instructs.
