TARVER
I KNOW IT’S STRANGE WHEN MY BROTHER Alec shows up beside me, but I can’t remember why. It tickles at the back of my brain like an annoying little itch. I give up for now and let my eyes close again.
I was watching Lilac before, but I think she’s gone now. She keeps coming and going, coming and going, always carrying things. So many things. Where do they come from? This world doesn’t have that many things in it. No things, no other people, no idea, no hope. Just her.
I really hope that when it comes down to it, she dies first. It’ll be bad for her, if it’s me.
“That’s a pretty morbid thing to think, T.” Alec’s lying beside me on the bed, reclining on his elbows the way he always did when we lay outside on summer nights.
That doesn’t make it any less true. What else should I hope for her?
“Don’t look at me, she’s your Girl Friday.”
She’s not my girl anything.
Then it comes to me like a splash of cold water in the face, quick and shocking, robbing me of breath. You’re dead.
“Hey, no need to rub it in.” Alec grins easily. “Happens to the best of us, T.”
I concentrate for a moment, waiting for the shakes, the metallic taste in the back of my throat, the whispers across my skin. But my hands are steady. You’re not a vision.
“No, I’m all you. You’re delirious. Which means I get an afterlife for a while. I’ve got to tell you, I was anticipating worse. I can live with this. No pun intended.”
That was dreadful.
“You missed it, though.”
Yes. Every day.
“I’m sorry I left, T. I didn’t mean to. What is this place?”
No idea. Abandoned planet.
“Abandoned? After all the money to germinate the terraforming? What the hell kind of thing causes them to pack up and leave?”
No idea, but something’s up. Lilac thinks some kind of life-form is trying to communicate with us. No ill intent so far. Maybe they’re harmless.
“Doesn’t seem likely, T.”
Doesn’t, does it? Can’t point that out to her. The corporations aren’t the kind of guys to cut and run just because they accidentally set up camp in somebody else’s living room.
“Hmm. What about the girl? She has seriously great legs.”
I noticed.
“You hold her at night. That must be fun.”
I’ve been trying not to notice.
“Ha. I’d sympathize, except that I can’t touch her at all.”
Nor can I, really. She’s the kind that turns me down when they find out who I am.
“Well, T, if you ever wanted to take a run at it, I’d say now’s your time. There’s hardly any competition, unless you count me. Though I am of course very handsome, even dead.”
No. She turned me down when she could. I know what she thinks of me. Don’t really want to try again just because she’s out of options.
“Is that what you really think?”
No.
“Safer, though, yes?”
Much.
“So what will you do?”
No idea.
“You’re thinking that a lot lately, T. I’ve never heard it from you before, not once. When did you learn those two words?”
When the infallible spaceliner her father built came crashing down through atmo. When Lilac started seeing the future, when Mom and Dad’s house appeared in a valley halfway across the galaxy. No idea about a lot of things, now.
“You should kiss her. It looks like it would be fun.”
Wait, what? Right, Alec. So what happens after this magical kiss?
“Who cares about after? You could die tomorrow, you don’t think you should kiss her today?”
Perhaps I shouldn’t kiss her today because I could die tomorrow.
“Boring. Also, illogical.”
I’m delirious and hallucinating, now you want logic?
“I have only the highest standards for you, T. If you won’t kiss her, have you at least written her one of your poems?”
Are you joking?
“You have, then. You just haven’t shown them to her.”
No. She likes Mom’s.
“So yours wouldn’t be up to scratch?”
Something like that.
“Rubbish.”
Mmm.
“Mmm.”
Alec?
“Yes, T?”
What do I do now?
“Keep trying. You have to get back to them. They can’t lose us both.”
I never really thought they would. I don’t know why. I’ve nearly died a lot of times.
“I never thought they’d lose one son. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, T. I know you can. You always do.”
I look across at him, drinking in his familiar face, smiling, no older than he was when he died, watching over me with the same indulgent affection that allowed me to trail up hills and down mountains after him at home.
Don’t go yet.
“I’ll stay while you sleep.”