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Kel's birthday had come and gone without a single word from anybody but Hero. Sure, it was nice to not be bothered a ton---for his own sanity, he chose to consider it as a gift of peace---but it stung knowing that his friends and family had entirely forgotten about him again. His parents were already coming up with big plans for Sally's third birthday in December. She could already walk and say a few words clearly and coordinate a few basic movements, which were used primarily to punch Kel in the leg with baby-sized fists and cry whenever he wouldn't let her watch TV with him. At least she remembered his birthday, somewhat.
"Bir-day!" she squealed at him when he came to play with her on the morning of November 11th.
Kel had felt his heart melt into a puddle, and he smiled at her. "Aw, you remembered!"
Sally's idea of a birthday gift was to pull his hair, punch him in the face, and spill apple juice all over his favorite varsity jacket, but he couldn't stay mad at her. A literal toddler had remembered his birthday better than his parents did. If he asked to try getting a license, would they let him? Or would they think he was still fifteen? It hurt to know that he'd only truly mattered when Hero first started getting better, and then Sally came along to take up all the attention. He could drop dead one day, and Mama would be more worried about how Hero would take it. Kel knew his parents meant well for him whenever they remembered they had another son, but it was starting to feel less like he was being forgotten and more like he was being ignored.
That was why he was currently standing in the middle of Hobbeez with his eye fixed on a little glass ball. It was just like the ones used by fortune tellers, and Kel was no fortune teller; however, he thought it would look nice on his side of the room---so long as he didn't knock it down and break it while shooting hoops. He figured it would be a nice little birthday gift to buy for himself. He hadn't spoken to Aubrey or Basil much since the night at the hospital in summer, and Sunny could've been dead in the city for all he knew. He didn't want too much to do with the boys right now anyway. Kel knew that what happened with Mari had been an accident, but that didn't fare too well against learning that she'd been killed by her own brother and she wasn't struggling after all and her alleged suicide was just a great big joke to keep Sunny out of jail.
Trying to shake off the thought, Kel ran his fingers over the glass ball. It was cold and smooth, and he nodded as if to approve its texture. Tomorrow was supposed to be full of sunlight, likely the last real sunny day of the year. Autumn was drawing to a close, with a nasty bite in the air and gloomy skies and dead leaves everywhere being drained of color and changing to a final muddy brown. He wondered if the ball would catch the light nicely and fill it with a warm glow, or if it would split like a prism and paint a rainbow on the wall, or if it would just reflect off the glass straight into his eyes and give him a headache. He slid a hand into the pocket of his jeans and cupped it around the ten dollars he'd brought with him. How much is this ball going for?
The price tag on the shelf said the ball costed fifteen dollars.
"¡Ay, puta madre!" said Kel, much louder than he meant to.
"Everything good over there, man?" the shopkeep asked from behind the counter.
Kel felt his face light on fire and said a silent prayer, thanking God his mother wasn't with him to hear him cuss. "Oh. Oh, yeah." He nodded like an idiot. "Just fine, dude."
All he needed was five more dollars, and then he could buy that ball. Why did all the inconvenient things have to happen to him, of all the people? Why couldn't Aubrey ever walk into a store and have her eye set on something she wouldn't ever be able to buy? Hell, she never had any money to begin with.
Because she steals, said the voice in the back of his head. Name one time she's paid for anything.
That was only partially true. She did pay for things, but most of her possessions were either handed down from Mari or shoved into her bra with the price tag still attached while nobody was looking. Kel had seen her at school one day, pulling an entire four-hundred dollar necklace out of her shirt. Whenever he saw her again, he never mentioned it. He was beginning to consider taking off his hoodie and balling up the glass ball in the fabric and just leaving, but he knew better. Mama had raised a fighter, stubborn as a mule, but she hadn't raised a thief.
"I see you've got an eye out for that ball over there," said the shopkeep. "I'm not sure how we got it. We don't even sell things like that here."
"Then why is it being sold for fifteen dollars?" Kel asked.
"What else would we do with it?"
Fair point there. "Why is it fifteen dollars, anyway? It's just a hunk of glass."
"Tell you what, kid." The shopkeep stopped to briefly scribble something down in a notebook, then looked up. "You look like you want that ball pretty bad. You said it's fifteen dollars? I'll let you have it for five, since you helped me out over the summer."
"You can do that?" Kel's eyes lit up. "And it's legal? The government isn't gonna whip your a---erm, tan your hide?"
"Think of it as a product going on sale."
"Awesome!"
Beaming from ear to ear, Kel scooped up the ball and fished a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. The ball was a perfect weight in his hand, and he squeezed it a little tighter so as not to drop it while he carried it to the counter.
"Let's see..." The shopkeep rang the ball up. "Yup, five dollars. You got it on you?"
Kel handed over the bill, officially making the purchase. Now that the ball was his, he could hardly wait to get back home. "Thanks, man!" he called as he darted out the door. "You're the best!"
Outside in the plaza, Kel stared into the ball like it would give him a fortune. His reflection stared back, a teenage boy with a tanned complexion and a big bright smile. Yeah, he'd keep this little ball a secret. He felt like there was some kind of magic in it, and he wouldn't let anybody else find out about it. It was just the kind of magic he needed, and magic for him alone.
The glass ball was a secret for all of three days.
He'd placed it in an old shoe box and hid it in the drawer beneath his TV. Whenever he came home from school, woke up, or just felt a little down, he'd pull it out and hold it for a few minutes. Kel wasn't exactly the sentimental type, but he seemed to find a lot of comfort in the ball. It was definitely one of his favorite birthday gifts ever, despite being the only gift he got for turning sixteen. Hero called him from college a couple days after his birthday, apologizing endlessly for missing his brother's birthday and promising he'd be home as soon as possible to take him out shopping and buy him gifts and even get him out of going to school, which filled Kel with a sense of hope for the time being.
Mama had told him to go play with Sally after he complained about it being too cold to go outside and shoot hoops in the street. Reluctantly, he tracked her down and brought her into his room with a few of her toys and a couple fluffy blankets in case she got cold or fell over. Hector had picked that moment when he was carrying her up the stairs to go hauling ass around the house and run between his feet, and it was a miracle that he didn't fall backwards or drop his sister. Now, as he waited for another round of his racing game to start, he tried not to think about what would've happened if he fell and landed wrong. Another teenager dead, sprawled out at the foot of the stairs as history began to repeat itself....
A couple of rounds and several repressed barrages of curse words later, Kel had switched from a racing game to an old playthrough of Final Fantasy X he never finished. Sally was wandering around the room waving her stuffed rabbit around and babbling a simple song. Hector was loudly snoring away beside him. In the middle of a fight, Sally decided it would be a good idea to walk in front of the TV and flap her arms like a bird. Kel wasn't too amused by this.
"C'mon, Sally, you gotta move," he told her as she grabbed the cord connecting the controller to the console and began to shake it. "Seriously, I've lost this fight so many times."
Sally wasn't tall at all---being two years old, she was only as tall as the shelf the TV was on---but her little pigtails on the top of her head made it difficult for Kel to see what ability he was choosing next. Suddenly, the little girl whirled around and began tugging on the drawer where the glass ball was hidden.
"Door!" she called out.
Kel rose to his knees and hastily crawled over to pull her away. "No, Sally, don't open that! What if it falls on you?"
He managed to get his hands under her little arms and grab hold of her, but she just wouldn't let go of the door handle. She seemed to get her grip of steel from Dad. "Door!" the toddler shouted again as the drawer opened further and further.
"Let go, Sally! ¡Ay, Dios mio!"
At last, Sally toppled over backwards, letting go of the drawer handle and landing flat on her butt. The drawer was inches away from being pulled all the way out of the TV stand. While letting go of Sally, Kel's hand had bumped into the controller, and he'd accidentally confirmed the use of the ability he didn't mean to use, and he watched the GAME OVER flash across the screen. He rolled his eyes and grumbled some words to himself that would get him hit with the wooden spoon had Mama been around to hear them. Goddammit, Sally.
"Ooh..."
Sally got up to her feet and waddled over to the corner where the shoe box was, holding the glass ball Kel bought. Slowly, she reached out and slapped it, giggling at how cold and smooth it felt. Kel, however, shot up to his feet and frantically scooped her up to get her away from the ball.
"Don't touch that!" he scolded, walking over to his bed and setting her down on the mattress.
By now, Hector had perked up and started sniffing the ball. Kel shooed him out of the bedroom and closed the door.
Christ on sale, I just wanted to keep the ball for myself. Is that too much to fucking ask?
Mildly distraught, Kel pulled the glass ball out of the drawer and held it in his hands, absorbing the coolness of its surface. He turned it over and over to make sure it hadn't been smudged with hand or nose prints. He could smell Mama starting to cook dinner downstairs. Where would he put the ball until then? Sally would likely babble about it to their parents, and they'd find some way to understand her. Maybe he could hide it in one of Hero's trophies? Those things always made them sick, how they covered his brother's half of the room to taunt him and made it known that he was absolutely useless. To add insult to injury, Hero seemed convinced that he didn't deserve to have all the awards he'd won. It was total bullshit---Hero knew he was perfect, so why did he like to act like he wasn't? Kel wanted to climb up to the roof holding a trophy and throw it down into the driveway and watch it shatter. He wanted to hold a trophy of his own. What was wrong with him?
It was all in his head. Had he been born normal, he would've been winning accolades just like his brother, and his parents would have two forms of pride and joy to gush about. But it wasn't his fault that his brain was wired with a faulty connection. It wasn't his fault that he couldn't focus or read the room or grieve in an acceptable way. He had no right to be punished for what he never asked for.
"I have ball?" Sally asked curiously, her head cocked to the side like a bird listening intently.
Kel swallowed the growing lump in his throat and forced himself to smile. "No, Sally," he said, voice cracking, "you can't have the ball. It'll break if you play with it. And it's very, very special, so don't break it, okay?"
"Special. No break," the toddler parroted.
"Right. Special. No break."
"No play."
"That's right. But you can play with Bunny instead! See, he's right here."
Kel held up the stuffed rabbit, lemon yellow with the tips of his ears chewed off from when his sister was teething. He thought of all the little toys he gave her when she was smaller and still kept in the crib, and all the games of peekaboo, and his smile became more genuine. Yeah, she was a handful, but he could never stay mad at her. She cared for him more than most grown folks did.
In silence, he gave the rabbit to Sally, then wandered over to Hero's side of the room and sat down in front of the night stand. He'd been missing him lately---he'd been missing everyone. Now that the Truth was out, what hurt him the most was that he was never able to properly grieve Mari. He'd been sad up until the funeral, and afterwards, she was simply a missing object to him. He knew he missed her more than anything, but he could never seem to convince anyone that what he felt was genuine, not even himself. He regularly went along with everybody else in thinking he'd all but forgotten her, all because she didn't haunt him the way she haunted his brother. It wasn't his fault he was never able to process grief and emotions the way normal people did. He couldn't have been that bad, could he?
Kel curled himself into a ball, making sure his breath wouldn't fog up the glass ball he was still holding to his chest. He didn't like getting sad like this. He was usually able to find something to distract him and make him happy, but he seemed to be nearing the end of his rope---no shade to Basil, of course. His friend group that had come together for the first time in years was split apart again. He hardly saw Aubrey in general, not even running around with the rest of her stupid gang. He still shared a few classes with Basil at school, but Basil never said a word to anyone and missed lots of days on the regular. It was a miracle he hadn't gotten in deep shit for his attendance record. Kel himself had been making sure his grades were a little better this year so Mama had no reason to even consider putting him outside with the dog on winter nights like she used to.
Why does it always have to happen to me? Why can't I ever catch a break?
He dozed off with this specific thought in mind.
He awoke a couple of hours later to a dark bedroom. Nobody had even bothered to wake him up for dinner, it seemed. Gracias, Dad, he thought bitterly. Way to leave me to rot, you douche.
Sally was still in the bedroom, too. It looked like she was playing dress-up with her brother's clothes while he was asleep---hoodies and jerseys and sweaters were flung across his side of the room, and she was currently wrapped in the bright orange dog jersey he'd finally been bothered to wash yesterday. She was snuggling with Bunny and fast asleep in her brother's bed, which probably reeked like sweat and typical teenage boy odor. He had yet to change his sheets.
And there was a girl.
She loomed over Kel's bed, all white except for long black hair like something from an urban legend. She glowed faintly in the dark and stood silently, watching Sally sleep. Kel blinked hard, then blinked again, then pinched himself in the thigh. She was still there. Dread flooded his stomach as his heart began to race wildly. His breath came out in short, strained bursts.
"Who are you?" he called out, voice wavering. "What are you doing to my sister? Get out!"
The girl looked straight at him. Her skin was light gray, and her dress was plain and white.
"Get out!" he repeated, and suddenly he feared that his parents would come upstairs to find him yelling at nothing and send him off to see a shrink.
"So this is your sister?" the girl asked softly. "Aw, she's so cute."
Her voice was familiar, familiar enough to jolt Kel out of his fear for a moment. It was soft and warm and sweet like honey, giving him a sense that he knew her from somewhere, and he had no reason to fear her.
"She's so precious," the girl said again. "I think she'll grow up to look a lot like you."
The voice. The hair. The dress. The eyes, which Kel couldn't see too well but looked quite soft and sweet. He did know her. She was a ghost.
"...Mari?"
It felt odd to say her name again after all this time, like he was trying to say something in a foreign language. There was no doubting it, though. That was the ghost of Mari Suzuki who was standing over his bed and gushing over his baby sister.
Mari smiled and ran a hand over Sally's hair. "And how have you been, Kel?"
Fear and anger flooded his chest. "Get out," he spat. "You're not real. I'm high as fuck. I'm schizophrenic. I'm lucid dreaming or something."
"No, it really is me. I'm just here for a short while."
Slowly, Mari began to walk towards him. He tried to get up and run, but he found himself frozen in place. All he could do was hold his little glass ball to his heart and watch in terror. She stopped in front of him, looking down at him with his legs extended and leaning against Hero's night stand while staring at her with wide eyes. Kel noticed ashy grey marks around her throat. Rope burn.
Mari had been dead for four years, and she'd moved on to heaven a long time ago. No way her ghost was in here. And even if it really was her, what business did she have with Kel, out of all the people?
She crouched in front of him, and her eyes bore a melancholy look, as though she was tired and holding back sadness of her own. "I see you got my gift," she told him, eyeing the glass ball. "I'm not sure just how or why, but I figured you'd like it."
"My ball?" Kel choked out. "This?"
"Well, you're holding onto it for dear life. I'm glad you like it, though."
Kel's heart felt as though it stopped beating, and he found himself holding his breath. "It's just a stupid hunk of glass I found at Hobbeez."
"It's more than that, Kel. That's my birthday present to you."
A great big lump of wax had lodged itself into Kel's throat, making it impossible to swallow. This glass ball was Mari's gift for him. That was why he felt so peaceful holding it, why he felt like it had just the kind of magic he needed, why he needed to hide it so badly. He loosened his grip on it and tried desperately to start breathing normally, holding back the tears that threatened to burst.
"What's new with you? With the others?" Mari asked as she moved to sit beside Kel and took his hand. Her hands were ice cold, the hands of a dead woman. She always had warm hands when she was alive. Kel wasn't sure why he expected them to still be warm. He'd watched Hero squeeze them with dangerous strength at the funeral, as if he would somehow warm them up again.
Kel stared down at the ball. "Too much," he said. He was right---too much had happened recently. But it was also too much to be sitting here with the ghost of Mari. Too much to have her and Sally be the only ones who remembered his sixteenth birthday last week. Living was too much for him to process.
"Well, that's okay. I only know a little bit myself, but even I know it's a lot. Just tell me whatever you want to tell me."
He couldn't help it. He told her everything.
Kel had always been notorious for oversharing, getting him lots of weird looks and negative attention because he never knew when to shut up. This time, he wasn't even aware of how much he said. He had only just noticed the tears running down his face and the glass ball rolling across the bedroom floor far away from him. Sally had begun to stir on the other side of the room, waking up and saying something about princesses to Bunny.
Mari nodded and pulled him into a hug. She smelled like floral perfume and rainwater, a combination that burned his nose and made him feel a little sick. "You know, I've been able to watch you every so often," she said finally. "I always knew you'd all face the truth together. I'm happy I was able to help my brother face it first."
"You mean you had something to do with it?" Kel asked, although his words were shaky as tears kept falling.
"Of course I did. I couldn't bear to see him suffer any longer."
"So you forgave that bastard?"
"Hey, don't say that about Sunny. I forgave him a long time ago."
"But---But he---"
He couldn't do it. Kel buried his face in Mari's chest and began to sob, praying his parents wouldn't open the door and find him. He couldn't even reach for the glass ball that was now on the other end of the room. A memory came back and hit him; it was one he'd tried his best to forget after it happened, but now there was no putting it back. It was his thirteenth birthday, and he'd been completely shoved aside because Hero couldn't get his useless ass out of bed, and he'd locked himself in the bathroom with the bottle of pills he was supposed to take for his attention span issues. He'd downed every single pill just to throw them all up twenty minutes later, and it stung more than ever because he just wanted to die. He wanted that feeling back again as he cried, Mari's arms around him to hold him in her classic sisterly hug.
"Fairy!"
Kel sniffled loudly and wiped his eyes with his sleeve, then turned to find Sally standing in front of him and Mari holding the glass ball. He didn't feel like telling her to put it down. Surprisingly, she kept up her goofy grin as she gave the ball to her big brother and wrapped him in a little baby hug, rudely pounding him on the back. "All better," she said, trying to cheer him up. "All better."
And Kel did feel a little bit better. In that moment, he vowed to be a better big brother and never let anything bad happen to Sally. He figured he could even help with planning her birthday, just as a secret way of thanking her for the support she was too young to realize she was giving him. All she knew in her head was that he'd been sad lately.
Mari grinned while watching her. "I still can't believe I've never seen your little sister up close. I've seen her at a distance, but not like this. She's got a lot of energy."
Kel nodded. "Yeah, she does. Wonder where she gets it from," he added, trying to toss in a bit of humor.
"I got lucky, getting assigned to watch her."
"What does that mean?"
"White fairy!" Sally squealed, wrapping Mari in her little baby hug next.
"Jeez, I forgot how exhausting small children are." The ghost began to stroke Kel's hand with her thumb. "Even Sunny was bouncing off the walls once, believe it or not."
"What do you mean about watching my sister?"
Kel's eyes still burned with tears, but the lump in his throat had loosened just a little, making it easier to swallow and to breathe. His sixteenth birthday presents were a glass ball and a visit from a dead girl. It was beyond crazy, but he didn't care what he believed anymore. He'd already told her about the Truth and the way the friend group drifted apart once more, and he couldn't tell whether or not they wanted to get back together. Once again, it seemed to fall on him to fix everything himself.
"Oh, it's nothing much," Mari replied as Sally let go of her. "The higher powers decided I was too good to do nothing for the rest of the afterlife, so they made me a dream fairy. It's kinda fun."
"You can't just say that so casually!"
Mari laughed at the boy's look of shock, which startled him out of his sadness. Before he knew it, he was laughing too.
"So what does a dream fairy do?" he asked her.
"Exactly what it sounds like. You just go around and give dreams to kids. As fate would have it, I was picked to hand out dreams to your sister."
"Ooh," Sally babbled, tugging on Mari's hair. "Can I have unicorn?"
"Of course you can have a dream about unicorns."
Sally shook her head. "Want a real one."
"Oh, I don't know about that," said Kel, and he burst into laughter again. It felt good to laugh after all this crying and all the fear.
"Princess?" the little girl suggested.
"You're already a princess, mi hermana."
"Puppy?"
"We've been having a puppy! Mari, how did you manage when Sunny was little?"
"Patience is a virtue," Mari replied unhelpfully.
The growing dread in Kel's stomach and the feeling of a hollowed-out chest slowly began to dissolve. Mari was here to watch over his little sister. By association, she'd always be close to him as well. Did this mean there was still hope for him? He was a ghost child made of glass around the house, and his old friends hadn't bothered to keep in touch with him, but he wasn't truly alone, was he? No, he had his siblings and his sister's dream-fairy-guardian-angel-whatever ghost.
There was just one lingering question....
"Why the hell did you wait so long to show up?"
Mari's smile faded, and she went quiet for a few minutes. Her eyes bore the same melancholic look they did when she first approached Kel. Finally, she spoke, squeezing his hand tight. "You were always a lot stronger than you seemed to realize," she told him, her voice soft and careful. "I had to wait until you knew it for yourself."
"So, since you're my sister's personal dream fairy and all, can I just call for you whenever I need to?"
"Not whenever you need to, whenever you have to. You've been doing so well in building up strength and courage. I wish I could stick to you the way I used to, I really do. But you need to learn to live for yourself and make it on your own."
"I won't see you very often, will I?"
"Kel, I'm sorry."
The boy looked down into the glass ball, disappointed but not surprised. "It's fine," he assured her, although it wasn't fine. "I'd rather have you look out for Sally than look out for me. I'm sure she could use a girl like you to look up to, even if you are just a dead-and-gone dream fairy."
"You don't sound like it's fine."
She was right on that part. Deep down, he wanted her to stay as though she were alive. She was so close to him---so why wasn't it an option?
"I'll always be with you, though." Mari looked over to Sally, who stared at her with mesmerized eyes, and smiled, as if recalling a pleasant memory. "Both you and your sister. You might not get to see me, but I'll always be there for you, I promise."
Kel looked up. "That's what you used to say be---"
"Before I died? You're right. That hasn't changed a bit."
After a moment of stillness, Mari pulled Kel into another embrace, hauntingly light. The sense of dread returned. He didn't want to say goodbye just yet. He needed more time. Even a minute would do.
Please, God, he begged silently. Not yet. Not now. Please.
Fearing the worst, he squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath.
"Stay strong, Kel," said Mari for the last time. "I hope we can meet again soon. Feliz cumpleaños."
She'd even wished him a happy birthday.
Kel finally opened his eyes, and Mari was gone. His eyes stung, his throat burned, and his mind was completely empty. He didn't have it in him to think about anything. Desperate for a distraction, he lowered his gaze back to the glass ball. The ball had changed; a white flower bloomed in its center, petals spread open like the wings of a bird taking flight. His ball was completely ruined. It wasn't clean and clear and spotless anymore. He'd never get to see it full of light at the core like he imagined the day he bought it.
Sally reached out for the ball and cupped her hands around it, staring at it curiously. "Or.... Or..."
"It's pointless," said Kel, his voice flat and monotonous.
"Orchid!"
It hit him. The flower in the ball was one Basil had taught everyone about years ago---a white egret orchid, it was called. Sally didn't even know that word, and Kel couldn't possibly have remembered. Mari must've left it there when she left. It was the only explanation.
My thoughts will follow you into your dreams.
Kel was crying, but he couldn't help but smile. He wasn't alone after all.
"Happy birthday to me."