Burning September Read Free

tent meets Russian opium den.  No, don’t give me that look, not ugly circus with primary colors and elephant shit—like satin-lined walls, and some draped over the ceiling.  To make it look like the inside of a tent, you know?  Soft pinks and cream.  And little spindly end tables with apothecary things on top; even dusty it’d look awesome in an antique sort of way.  Big poufy couch and quilted ottomans with crystals all over them.  Hey, and maybe those door separator thingies made of beads, like the one Mom had?  Except not as tacky. 
    Uh, sure, had been my response.  But that sounds expensive. 
    Nah, we’ll hit thrift stores and whatnot, maybe make some of the crap on our own.  You need a project.  Idle hands, you know.  I’m resourceful.  Always find a way. 
    And it was true, she always did, exempting her current predicament.  She’d made a case to a judge to keep me out of foster care after our dad died, became both mother and father to a ten-year-old girl at the tender age of eighteen.  She’d been my only real parent anyway, the judge noted.  Alcoholic fathers were never the best ones, and foster care wasn’t far behind them in the grand scheme of things.
    Obstacles had always seemed to melt at her touch.  After twenty-five years they decided to teach her an important lesson in a big way. 
    Sitting there in a stupor, gaze boring holes through a photograph on the wall that netted Caroline a few awards and freelance gigs, I had to wonder if having been tasked with the job of raising me contributed to any of this.  If she’d been a normal eighteen-year-old, she’d have learned about unrequited love and loss.  She’d have had a few friends to discuss it with, long bouts of verbally abusing the bitch who stole her boyfriend, and eventually learned to cope with that thing called rejection.  Everyone else on earth was well acquainted with broken hearts and the eventual moving on, but she’d missed that class since she’d been too busy making macaroni and cheese for her little sister.  She’d chosen me in lieu of bar-hopping and girls’ night, opted for bedtime stories and Disney movies.  No wonder she hated our father; look at what he’d done to her?
     
    ***
     
    There was one huge difference I noticed upon entering the visitor’s room of the facility: the powers that be had decided it was safe to remove Caroline’s restraints.  They were unnecessary from the start.  The only person she’d been a danger to had been dead for three weeks.
    Florescent lights, normally so unflattering, poured over my sister standing in the center of the room, pale blue scrubs sagging around her like a melting iced cake.   
    She broke into a jog and threw her arms around me.  The only time she’d hugged me tighter was when we were newly orphaned and she’d dropped me off for my first day of fifth grade. 
    “I missed you,” she said when she pulled back with a luminous smile.  I echoed her, and she sat on the couch, dragging me down next to her by both hands.
    It was amazing how vibrant she could be when surrounded by the other dead-eyed patients.  Breakthrough Recovery Center was not where she belonged.  Anybody who saw her would have said it.  Except Detective Slater; he’d say she belonged in a two-man cell. 
    “Have you been keeping up with your classes?” she asked, arranging my hair around my shoulders.  Her pupils whizzed between mine, sized me up in a blink, intuitive as ever.  A stark contrast between the eyes of her fellow lunatics.
    “Yeah.”
    She snorted, an overgrown hank of hair ruffling.  “That doesn’t sound convincing.  School’s important.  I hope you’re not blowing it off.”
    I hadn’t been blowing it off.  Every day I’d shown up.  My body, anyway.  “I’ve got a class in two hours.  I’m heading there after this.”
    “I don’t want this mess to affect your grades.”  She rubbed both thumbs beneath my eyes.  “I can tell it’s been