As Far as the Stars

I text back.

What’s going on?

She texts back, almost as soon as I’ve sent my message.

Plane’s late

I write back.

And then my phone starts ringing. It’s Mom. Obviously. She wants more information.

I don’t answer.

Because I’m a coward.

Because I can’t face having to explain it all to her: Blake getting on the wrong plane and me having to drive all the way back to DC and that there’s a chance we might not make it for the family breakfast. That if I don’t get some answer soon, we might not make it for the wedding itself.

All the saliva in my mouth dries up. I can’t let myself go there. He’s going to make it. He has to.

Can’t talk

I text back.

She’ll think I’m driving. That will buy me some time.

She sends another message:

Remember we’re having breakfast at Louis’s.

Okay.

I text back.

I’m really feeling sick now.

I should tell her what’s going on but she’ll implode. And then she’ll tell Jude and Jude will fall apart. And Dad will have to deal with it and Dad’s a crisis-avoider so he’ll panic and then go into hiding somewhere, which will make Mom even more mad.

Telling them that it’s even worse than me and Blake being late for the wedding stuff – that his plane’s gone off radar, that no one knows where he is – isn’t even an option.

I screw my eyes shut to block out the world.

This is the last time I’m covering for you, Blake, I say to myself. The last damn time.

I was nine the first time Blake disappeared. The first time I had to lie for him.

He snuck into my room in the middle of the night, his guitar case and a holdall slung over his shoulder.

‘Tell them to let me sleep in.’

I was still asleep myself – it was three in the morning – so I wasn’t registering what he was telling me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Tomorrow morning. Tell them not to disturb me. Tell them I’m sleeping.’

I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

‘Mom and Dad?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Not sure yet.’

Blake’s words didn’t make sense. At age nine this was how the world worked: when you left one place you did so with the express intention of going to another specific location.

So I changed my line of questioning.

‘Why are you going?’

‘To play.’ He tapped his guitar case.

‘Why can’t you play here?’

‘I need inspiration.’

Blake was always going off to find inspiration. He was always going off period.

I have a restless soul, Air, he’d say, sounding like he was thirty rather than thirteen.

That didn’t make sense to me either, not then.

‘Why can’t you find inspiration here?’ I asked.

He raised his big black eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

‘I need some space, Air.’

He’d said it before. That the music – and the lyrics – wouldn’t come here, at home. I thought that it was a mean thing to say. Like being with us was stopping him from doing what he loved most.

‘When are you coming back?’ I asked.

He shrugged.

‘You can’t sleep in for ever.’