Davis
Illustration
Jeong Eun Min
Tiffany Wang | Short Fiction
Both of us ignore the empty chair that’s next to mine. Both of us ignore the frantic clacking of the
computer keyboard down the hall as our father buries himself in fixing the lives of other people,
and the alarm that is going off in our parents’ bedroom that our mother ignores.
Instead, we are perfectly fine the way we are, because a taped-together family of two can function
just as well as a family of five. I gnaw on my apple and bite into seeds.
I.
III.
I do not realize how drunk Katie is until she nearly drives into the tube slide on the
elementary school playground, our red car skittering against the rubber chips.
“Shit!” she says, and jerks the steering wheel wildly. The tires crunch onto the paved streets as
Katie slumps back, folding her fingers over a dented metal can. She takes a deep drink before
sighing heavily, dropping it back in the cup holder. It misses and bounces down, wher
e it rolls under her chair and out of my sight. She brakes violently as liquid seeps onto
her shoes. “Shit, shit, shit.”
In the map inside my head, we can turn right, make a sharp turn, continue up the incline.
If we follow the path upwards, we’ll reach the place where my twin brother listened to
the ocean calling his name. There, he stared out at the edge of the world and decided
he could draw better from the sea floor than he ever could on dry land.
“Cassie?” Katie says, slurring slightly. She looks at me blearily and I look back at her, at
her chipped, purple fingernails and her glittery makeup, which sparkles enough to
ward off the ghosts around her.
Two weeks ago, Davis was locked in a wooden box and thrown into the December
ground. Dad left as soon as it was over and I stood rooted to the spot, breaking
Davis’ old charcoal pieces apart in my pocket. Katie stayed beside me the entire
time, changed from my older sister to a beautiful marble statue. When my fingers
became a dark, heavy gray, I put my hand in hers, and we walked to the car together,
feeling the ground collide and crash beneath us.
“We’re okay,” I say, my voice shaking. I say it again, though, and then again, and,
for a moment, I almost convinced myself that what I’m repeating is true.
She didn’t cry once.
After that phone call came, my world exploded. There were days when I literally ran out of tears,
choking on my breaths as my mind continued screaming. I kept picturing Davis suspended in the
air, how he must’ve looked as he hit the rocks and the sea kissed his face, while his molecules broke
apart and the bones that held him together unknit themselves into fragments. I spent hours lying
on his bed, staring up at the tiger that he’d somehow managed to paint onto the ceiling. Its fur
practically crackled as it bared its teeth at me in a half-smirk. I thought about how I knew that he
never went anywhere without his sketchbook and hated coffee and loved the sunset right before the
clouds came up, when the sky was hovering on uncertainty. I thought about how I knew so many
stupid things about him but I didn’t know my own twin wanted to die – and then the sobs came all
over again. But Katie stole liquor from our parents’ cabinet and hid in her room and never brought
up Davis – it was as if he didn’t exist. She was chiseled from stone, as she drove her car around in
the dead of the night, with the radio up much too loud. Sometimes I joined her, sometimes I didn’t,
but whenever I did, her makeup was always perfect, she was always drinking heavily, and she never
cried – never. At least, not in front of me.
II.
I don’t really see Katie again until Saturday morning, when she
has finally recovered from a spectacular hangover. I go downstairs for breakfast to find her at
the table eating cereal, the newspaper propped against her bowl. I sit down across from her
with an apple. “Morning,” I say.
She smiles at me. “Morning,” she says back, before returning to the comics. A smear of glitter
is still lodged on her left eyelid.
70
IV.
What I know about Davis’s sketchbook:
1. It has an unassuming brown cover, so at first glance it looks like an ordinary book
2. He drew an opened palm on the bottom left of the cover with black Sharpie. When I place mine
over it, it’s almost a perfect fit
3. He never let me look in it. Whenever I asked, he just smiled and shook his head ruefully, as if
just considering the thought was ridiculous. To be fair, drawing was always his thing, so I probably
wouldn’t have understood anything symbolic and elusive within his creations anyway
It’s in front of me right now, half-hidden underneath a stack of old art magazines on his desk
Even the air is completely still. I never realized how much the missing presence of a 5”7 boy could
crumple up a structure of a house and everyone left inside.
I sit down and gingerly place the sketchbook on my lap. I almost expect electricity to fly when I
touch it, as a thrill rises