leave a good book on your doorstep for me to take
ask me to dance and let me say no
call me at midnight and tell me you love me
don’t wear that dress again, i want it
tattoo me on your body (make it nice)
cook me lasagna
try as hard as you can to make me cry
“What’s all this?” I asked, holding up the orange balloon demanding lasagna.
“Do you ever read self-help books, Chlo?”
“Not really.”
She grabbed the lasagna balloon from my hands, untied its ribbon, and let it fly. We watched it take to the clouds like a small, runaway sun, a blazing tail of fire spouting out behind as it went.
Next she untied the green balloon wanting eight bucks, about enough for a pack of cigarettes, which she shouldn’t be buying anyway because I didn’t want her to smoke, and we watched it rise.
“Well, I read in some self-help book that you have to ask for what you want, or no one will know to give it to you,” she said.
I laughed, but she was serious.
“You know what I want?” she said. “Something fun for a change. I want people to do the work for me, instead of me always working so hard for them.”
Was she joking?
No. She was absolutely not smiling now.
Her face obstructed my view of the balloons. She was talking very close, so close her nose was a pale, blurred blob. I was struck by how symmetrical the freckle on her cheek was, a true circle, as if her maker had drawn it on with the world’s tiniest compass and hadn’t messed up even once.
“Right now I want something for me and me only,” she continued. “Well, you can have some lasagna, too, Chlo, but you know what I mean.”
Did I? As far as I could tell, my sister always got whatever she wanted. And, if she didn’t the first time, she went back and she took it and there was no one strong enough to stop her.
That was one piece of her magic, the way everyone melted and let her take and keep taking; it was her charm.
But, for some reason, this was no longer enough for her.
She clapped her hands and made me jump. “I can’t wait to let all these balloons go!” she shrieked. “I can’t stand to see them tied up. Stuck like they are. It’s pitiful.”
She quickly untied a red balloon and let it drift.
“Now you,” she said. “You let one go, too.”
I did what she wanted; I didn’t even question it. I held a turquoise one up to the sun. “You want someone to ask you to dance and then you’re going to tell them no?”
She nodded, so I unwound its ribbon and set it free.
“I like to be asked,” she said. “And I might not say no. Depends on who’s asking. But if they assume I’ll say no, they’ll be surprised if I say yes, and isn’t that nice?”
“If you say yes.”
“You’re right, I’ll probably say no.” She smiled, tucked my hair behind my ears even though it didn’t need tucking. She was happy with me now. I was doing what she wanted. “You know me better than anyone knows me in the whole entire world, Chlo. You could write a book about me. If you were standing before the firing squad and they said they wouldn’t shoot you in the head only if you could answer one question and it was a question about me, you’d keep your head, Chlo.”
Now I smiled at that, couldn’t help it. She knew I liked to hear that I was the only one who really knew her. I liked to be reminded.
I watched her let the other balloons go. Watched her unwind their tails to leave them untethered. Watched her step away. Watched her watch each red ribbon take its leave and rise up out of reach even from her.
Soon they were all gone. I looked up into the sky, and her balloons were everywhere, it seemed, the air marred with bloody streaks and littered with demands, and nothing and no one could stop them from coming.
I felt her at my side, bristling with the power of it. The possibility. The rush.
Something in her had come undone just like the balloons did.
Now nothing could contain her.