Page 14 of Half-Hearted
Thus began the epic battle between good and good, since neither one wanted to be the bad guy, and Grey (my other brother and the “obvious bad guy choice,” according to Ethan) wasn’t there to fill the role. Which wasn’t really surprising; Grey never wanted to play with us—or anybody,for that matter. I rarely ever saw him since all he did when he wasn’t at school or soccer practice was hole himself up in his room and… well, that’s it. He was always just up in his room, by himself. He never brought friends home, either.
I tried my absolute best to sit there and watch when the boys started their sword fight. I really did. But all their prep work had taken so long that by the time the main event actually started, I physically couldn’t sit still anymore. It wasn’t possible. I was going to burst if I didn’t dosomething, and what else was there to do other than to pick up a weapon from the discarded sticks pile (the one with a couple of green leaves still attached to it since my lightsaber also needed a color) and jump right into the middle of all the action?
The next thirty seconds went exactly as one would expect.
I ran into the middle of the fight holding a too-long, too-heavy branch too high above my too-exposed head, ready to take my brother down with a stealthy sneak attack, and… I tripped. Because of course I did; I was five, and my shoes were missing their laces.
Ethan didn’t see me, didn’t hear the yelp that escaped my throat when I went flying until it was way too late. Until he was already midstrike and his carefully chosen weapon was already whipping right toward my face. I remember squeezing my eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable sting of impact, and then… nothing.
I definitelyheardit, the terrifyingly loudsnapof wood against flesh. But I didn’t feel any pain or even discomfort, just warmth. A heavy, comforting and protective warmth that was entirely out of place for the season.
“Crap—Alexis! I told you tosit still!” Ethan’s voice had been an appropriate mixture of irritated and alarmed but also muffled, which was odd. Like there was something blocking it or maybe my ears.
I opened my eyes, and… you know when you’ve looked at something a million times but haven’t actuallyseenit? You know what it looks like, technically, but all the little details and intricacies that make it unique and special and beautiful have somehow never really registered with your brain?
But then one day, it suddenly just… clicks?
“Lex? Are you okay?” Joel had asked.
I remember it so vividly, how the midmorning autumn sunlight was hitting his eyes in that moment, illuminating their rich brown to the warmest, coziest caramel you could possibly imagine. And I was so distracted by their color that it took a few moments to understand what had just happened, that he’d thrown his body over mine to protect me from the incoming hit, like Superman or something. But, like, way better, for reasons I didn’t fully understand yet.
“Dude, you alright? Let me see.” Ethan helped Joel sit back up slowly, wincing as he assessed the back of his neck. “Ah… that’s… we have to—no, don’t!”
Too late. Joel had already reached over and touched the wound, only to have his fingers come back an entirely different, much more horrifying color.
I’d panicked.
Screamed.
Bawled.
Because Joel was dying. It was the most amount of blood I’d ever seen in my whole entire life, and it for sure meant that Joel was dying.
Joel—poor, sweet Joel, who was probably scared and in a whole lot of pain—had immediately started to comfort me. “Shhh, it’s okay! It’s okay!” he kept insisting while I wailed, pretending like there wasn’t literal blood trickling down the back of his neck, seeping into the neckline of his green sweater,killing him. “Lex, it’s nothing! It doesn’t even hurt!”
He was such a liar.
The adults hadfreakedwhen we’d walked back into the house, my blood-soaked pink scarf pressed against the back of his neck. Joel was taken to the ER and was there for so many hours, I was absolutely convinced they were going to keep him there forever. That I’d never be able to see him ever again.
When Marta retells this story, she insists that I had been simply inconsolable. That, according to the maids and other household staff, I’d cried for hours and hours on end while she and Joel were gone, refusing to calm down no matter what they did or how hard they tried, until I’d eventually exhausted myself and fallen asleep.
I didn’t remember any of that, though.
What Ididremember was when he’d come back the next day. I remembered the exact second he and Marta had walked through the kitchen’s double doors. I remembered the way he’d smiled and opened his arms wide when I’d sprinted toward him, and I remembered him comforting me again, saying, “I told you I was alright. You didn’t have to cry so much.”
Then he’d shown me his stitches, insisting they were “super frikkin’ awesome” and “not scary,” even though theylookedreally terrifying, running all the way from his upper left shoulder to the base of his skull, where a good chunk of his hair had been shaved off.
“The doctor said it’s gonna scar,” he’d claimed proudly. “And everybody knows chicks dig those.”
His mother hadtsked and chided him lightly for that comment, telling him to please not call women “chicks.”
He’d said something else to her, but I didn’t hear what it was because I was so distracted by his eyelashes. And I didn’t really know why…
They were just so…
He was just so…
I didn’t have the words for it back then. Didn’t understand why my stomach started to feel strangely soft and swirly when he smiled at me again.
