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They made a pact when their father remarried to stick together no matter what.
Rafe was all of ten years old at the time, but back then his little sisters used to look to him like he hung the stars and the moon in the sky. They sat together on the beach, under a palm tree — just the three of them — and put their hands on top of a suitcase they were about to bury. Mom’s suitcase.
“I swear,” they had said together. A promise as good as a pinky promise, “to never accept Rose as our new mother, and to stick together no matter what.”
He got the idea off a movie about witches reciting poetry in the woods, swearing their loyalty to each other and all that nonsense. Making the pact to never let Rose take their mother’s place was Sarah’s idea, believe it or not. But Rafe was completely on board. She would never be their mother. They might not be able to stop the marriage, but they could fight the process.
They buried the suitcase deeper than the ache in their hearts that night, and patted around in the sand until the hole was filled.
Rafe lit a candle and said a few words. Wheezie sang a song. Sarah helped set the candle out to sea on a raft. They stood in stony silence and watched it drift away.
Six years later, and a lot had changed. They kept their pact to never call Rose ‘Mom’ but they fell short on the sticking together part.
Despite their best efforts, Mom’s absence changed things, and Rose’s presence made them worse. Dad stopped building sandcastles with Sarah on the beach, and started teaching her to sit properly at the table when guests arrived. He started teaching Rafe how to manage a budget instead of teaching him how to play golf. He rarely paid any attention to Wheezie. Most of his time was spent with Rose.
New responsibilities came up, a new person in the house, a new Dad. Sometimes Rafe felt like the whole world was against them.
Yet somehow Sarah thrived.
She quickly caught the attention of Dad with her impressive grades and cheerful attitude. Rafe tried to make his own impression. But it came across as ‘kissing up.’ At least that’s what Rose called it. Albeit, Rose wasn’t fond of Sarah either. Her nickname for her was “The Princess” and it was never used in a good way.
After a while, Rafe stopped trying to impress Dad.
His sixteenth birthday is today, and Rafe is in the Bahamas. He wants to be back home with his friends. But instead he is trapped in this luxurious vacation house with his family.
His family who had no interest in him once so ever.
No one would have any sympathy for him back home. His ‘friends’ were jealous he had the opportunity to travel, and his peers on the island thought of him as a rich pampered brat coasting on Daddy’s money.
There was a chill in the air as he walks along the dark beach. Rafe welcomes the goosebumps on his arms as he stumbles in and out of the tide. His nose keeps running, craving some white powder. He brushes at his nose without thinking, a habit of his that’s developed overtime.
He had met some friends a year ago that gave him his first taste of cocaine. It helped him forget, and he liked that. There was a certain numbness that came with the high which was almost better than being high at all.
But when it wore off, he was a mess of emotions. Everything was felt in extremes. Anger that used to be contained turned into screaming matches and punching walls. Sadness that he used to hide turned into open weeping on his bedroom floor in the middle of the night. Confused thoughts that he could usually work through in his head ended up twisted and disturbed. Darker thoughts than he’d ever experienced before. Thoughts of violence towards others, towards himself. A part of Rafe thinks he likes that too. The release of emotions after the high. It was addictive. He craved letting all that bottled up pain out.
At first it was just a Saturday night thing. Just something to do on the weekend. But then it became once a week, twice a week thing. Now he’s craving it all the time.
Rafe stumbles along the beach, his feet dragging in the wet sand. He can’t remember why he thought it was a good idea to try the stuff. There’s a pain in his chest that hasn’t gone away since he started snorting. It’s guilt, and it’s constant. His mother, God, what would she say? Did she know? Wherever she was?
His eyes are half open and half closed. Somewhere in the distance he can hear Sarah laughing with Dad and Rose on the patio of their beach house. She’s showing off her latest pool tricks and they are watching her, drinking from four hundred dollar champagne glasses like two country club members. Rafe remembers he’s supposed to be happy he has money. Grateful. He wants to spend all of his Dad’s money, just waste it. No. No he shouldn’t want that, he doesn’t.
He walks further along the ocean. Waves make muffled sounds as if he held his ear to a seashell.
At last, he finds the palm tree from all those years ago. Wheezie is there too, a strange look on her face.
“Guess we had the same idea,” she says as Rafe approaches.
He thinks they might have.
“Yeah, have you tried looking for it yet?” he slips to his knees. The sand is gentle, soft on his knees and hard to hold in his hands. It slips through his fingers like everything else in his life.
“Mom’s suitcase?” Wheezie asks, but it isn’t really a question. “No. Why? You wanna dig it up?”
He doesn’t respond further. His hands are moving on their own accord, and he’s tearing through the sand, looking for one piece of him that he can still recognize.
“Do you really think it’s there?” Wheezie asks, her voice a harsh buzzing sound in his ears.
The size of the hole in the sand has increased significantly and Rafe is having trouble getting any deeper.
“C’mon, help me,” he says to Wheezie. She hesitates for a moment, a perplexed expression plastered on her face.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Sarah?”
No, he thinks it so loudly but he can’t voice it. She was there when they buried it… they made a pact to stick together. Childish of them. Wheezie’s still looking at him like she’s expecting an answer.
“You think Sarah cares?” he asks dryly. It’s bitter, his voice, than he remembers. He can barely even recognize himself anymore.
“Of course I think she cares. How can you say that?” Wheezie sounds hurt. It snaps him out of his digging for a minute.
“How can I say that?” He repeats her question slowly to himself, mulling it over in his own head. How could he say that? Sarah was his sister. The same little girl he watched twirl around in Mom’s arms, and play with her makeup. She cared. Of course she did.
An apology is on his lips, but he can’t bring himself to say the words. He hasn’t apologized in so long...
“She’s with Dad… and Rose,” he adds, a reminder to Wheezie that Sarah has been speaking to the enemy. He resumes his digging excavation. “But you can ask her if you want. Better hurry. I’m getting close.”
Rafe catches himself watching Wheezie as she runs along the beach to find Sarah, flip-flops in her hands, bare feet sinking down deep into the sand as stumbled up the hill.
Sarah will come if Wheezie asks.
Or maybe she won’t. And he’ll know what he believed to be true was true all along.
He’s got sand on his face, in his hair, in his mouth. It tastes like tiny rocks grinding against his teeth, dirty and dusty. He spits at the ground and keeps going. His body is lower than it was when he started. He worries he won’t be able to get out of the hole he’s dug himself into, but he also can’t bring himself to care. He wants to find this old piece of himself.
He’s searching.
“You’re never going to find it,” Sarah says. She’s above him, standing in her magenta swimsuit, with the breeze whipping through her hair. It’s dark, and Rafe can barely see her. But he knows she’s far away from where he’s at. Maybe she’s always been far away from him.
“Why don’t you come down here and help me?”
Please… help.
“Rafe, it’s probably washed away by now. Why do you want Mom’s suitcase anyway? We buried a few of her necklaces and some pictures. It’s not like it was valuable. It was just a closure thing we did as kids.”
How can he explain it to Sarah of all people? He wants the past back? Doesn’t she want it too?
“If you don’t believe it’s still out here, then why did you come back?”
“To make sure you don’t get stuck down there,” Sarah says. She holds out her hand and Rafe glances at it briefly.
“Come on,” she wiggles her hand, “I’ll help you out. We have to stick together, right?”
The words compel him to take her hand and she’s helping him climb out of the ditch he dug himself into. But it won’t last.
Because the pact they made to stick together will die with the people Rafe and Sarah used to be. He sees her standing in front of him now, and she’s not the same. He knows he’s not either.
It’s been six years, and who knows where they will be in six more.