Chasing Clouds

by Kathryn Andrews

  The grandfather clock from the formal living room chimes as Reid stares at me. His body has gone tight, his chest rising and falling at a faster rate, but instead of responding, he just swallows. Heat suffuses my body. It starts in my toes and rises inch by inch until I’m covered with a full body flush. I thought it would be harder to put myself out there, but it wasn’t, not with him. He’s worth it, even if I do feel like every emotion, thought, and part of me is enlarged and exposed.

  “Also, I’m sorry, too—for so many things.” I glance away and my eyes find the water glass. Condensation has built up on the outside and is slowly rolling down to the table. “I know I was wrong to mislead you about Clare. From the start, I should have told you about her.”

  Mentioning the loss of Clare in combination with the anguish of how Reid and I ended two weeks ago, how desperately I missed him, and having him here to pour my heart out to, I’ve reached the pinnacle of my emotional stability, and it teeters. Feeling as bare as I do to the one person I feel the safest with, tears fill my eyes and begin to fall. I can’t help it; there’s no stopping them.

  Leaning forward, his large hand covers both of mine. It feels so comforting to be touched by him, and I want to climb into his lap and melt into his body. His fingers brush over the wedding band I’m still wearing, and he lightly gasps as he looks down and sees it. I don’t feel bad for wearing it, and I won’t. He pauses before he looks back up at me.

  “I would have liked to have heard about her from you,” he says, being the support he’s always been to me. I don’t want this to be about me; I want it all to be about him because I love him, but I know he needs to know this last part of me before we can even consider moving forward. It’s too big. It’s too much a part of who I am and why.

  Taking a deep breath, I look back at Reid and see the sadness I feel reflected in his eyes. He hurts for me, and that nearly brings me to my knees.

  “It’s so complicated. All of it is, and that makes it hard.” I roll my lips between my teeth.

  “Why don’t you start by telling me what happened.”

  “You don’t know?” I ask him, surprised.

  He shakes his head. “My stubborn personality had me convinced I didn’t need to know. I thought I knew enough, and since we were done, I chose not to look it up.”

  “Oh.”

  I look down at our hands. Part of me feels disappointment in his reasoning, but another part of me feels grateful because I can tell him the story without there being prior prejudices.

  At my pause, Reid releases me then wraps his uninjured arm around my hips to drag me up next to him. Leaning my head against his shoulder, I breathe in the scent of him and close my eyes in remembrance.

  “We were supposed to be heading to my father’s country club for breakfast. It was the end of the school year, a late start day, and I was feeling selfish. I just wanted some time with her, so I convinced her to skip school and spend the day with me. They were expecting us, all of them, but I didn’t want us to go. I swear, she spent every minute she could with Patrick, and it was like I got pushed aside. The realistic part of me knows this wasn’t true, but with the way things seemed in my head and felt in my heart, I was crazy jealous.”

  “Patrick?” he asks, confused.

  “He was her boyfriend.”

  “I see,” he says, and nothing more.

  “While she was getting ready, I flopped down on her bed and watched her. She tried to ignore me, but she was a people pleaser, hated when people were unhappy with her. Turning around, she put her hands on her hips and asked me, ‘What?’ I’ll never forget her in that moment. Her room was on the east side of the house and the sun streaked in, lighting her up like a spotlight. Her hair was so blonde, her posture so perfect from years of dance, and the dress she’d chosen to wear that day made her look like royalty. I remember thinking she was so beautiful and everything I wasn’t. Sure, I danced too, but at the time, my hair was dyed bright pink and I had a large henna tattoo covering one hand.”

  “Pink hair? You?” he asks, looking at me skeptically.

  A small smile emerges as I think about the reactions I got after I dyed it. I loved it. “Yes. My father was not happy, but he never had the expectations for me that he did for Clare. I guess you could say I was the black sheep of our family. He had given up on me a long time ago. Somehow I convinced her to spend the day with me, for old times’ sake. We packed up a picnic, grabbed a few other things, and headed to our spot behind the house at the very end of the field. Not a lot was said—not much ever was. I think for us it was just about being near each other.

  “‘Do you think you and Patrick will get married?’ I taunted her, lying in shorts and a bikini top my father never would have approved of, hoping to get a bit of a tan. I already knew the answer. Even I saw that those two had something rare, something real. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised you’re even asking.’

  “She hated it when I talked about Patrick, thought I wasn’t supportive of them, but I really was. I was the most supportive of anyone, but when someone is as perfect as she was, you have to have something to tease them about, and he was it. She climbed up off the blanket, tossed her hair over one shoulder, and wandered over to pick a few dandelions. Behind the lenses of my sunglasses, I watched as, one by one, she made a wish, blew on them, and watched the seeds float through the sky. She was eternally superstitious and would do anything and everything to not tempt fate.

  “I told her, ‘I just think you should spread your wings and get a taste of what’s out there.’ She turned and looked at me like I was crazy. ‘Guys are not like ice cream—you can’t go out there and taste thirty-one different flavors.’ ‘Sure you can! And that sounds fantastic to me,’ I replied. We were eighteen, and the world was supposed to be our oyster. She said, ‘Sounds terrible to me. I love him, Cam, I really do.’”

  I’d forgotten until just now that she used to call me Cam.

  “I told her, ‘I know you do, but what kind of sister would I be if I didn’t try to dissuade you at least a little? I mean, you’re about to move to New York City! The largest city in America. The possibilities are endless. Just think: no more fake Southern charm, and no more Father.’ Clare just giggled, and deep down, I knew that was the life she wanted.”

  “Honestly, I can’t see how anyone would want that life,” Reid says, interrupting me. “Or Patrick,” he growls.

  “He was different then, just like I was—not that that’s an excuse for his behavior lately, but it’s the truth.” I run my hand down Reid’s thigh. Warmth permeates through his jeans.

  “What did she say next?” he asks, reaching over with his casted hand to run his fingertips over my arm.

  “She said, ‘I happen to like all that Southern charm, and you’re getting your wish. I think Father is as pleased as you are about you heading to Providence. You two are too much alike.’ Of course I was appalled by this, and I said, ‘I am not.’

  “She loved saying this. It was her one go-to when she needed to get under my skin, just like Patrick was mine with her. ‘You are. Both of you are stubborn and strong-headed.’ I remember my head whipping over to look at her, and her eyes were sparkling and laughing at me. It was the last time I ever saw her like that.”

  Sometimes I see her like this in my dreams, laughing and happy. It’s always this scene, and I’m always so relieved—until the scene plays out. It never changes, no matter how hard I try.

  “Pause.” Reid twists a little to get a better look at me. “You were going to go to college in Providence?”

  “Yep, Rhode Island School of Design. Furniture design.”

  “Wow, I can see that now, and I know you said dancing was your sister’s thing, but I guess I just assumed you loved it too. You had to put in a lot of work to get as far as you did.”

  “I did.” I frown, thinking back to the hours and hours I spent in the studio after she died. I was clinging to anything and everything that made me feel close to her, and da
nce was in her soul. She loved every second of it. “Clare got into Juilliard. I was so lost after she died, I deferred all major life decisions to my father, and he thought it best I went in Clare’s place, to fulfill her dreams.”

  Reid tenses beside me. “What about your dreams?”

  “That summer, without Clare, I didn’t have any. Life felt over, and the only thing I wanted was her. He pulled some strings, sent a donation, and one year later the admission was transferred. I spent that entire extra year here, dancing eight to ten hours a day, trying to be the best—the best for her, for them . . . everyone but me.”

  “Huh,” Reid mumbles.

  Leaning forward, I pick up his water and take a sip. I know what’s coming, and I know I have to tell him, but I’ve never told anyone. Everyone in our world already knew, and I never talked about Clare in New York. I just didn’t see the point, and it was all still so fresh.

  Putting the glass down, I curl back into his side.

  “I jumped to my feet and threw my shirt on. ‘Take that back,’ I yelled at her, and she just laughed, screaming, ‘No way.’ It was common knowledge how much I hated being compared to him while Clare was compared to our mother. Of course, even though I love her, she’s not any better. She folds like a deck of cards when it comes to my father.

  “So, I picked up a handful of dirt and held it high so she could see I was about to fling it at her. Squealing, she started running. Our house sat at the western northernmost part of the property, and we were at the south end. Clare started running east. There were trees on the perimeter of the property, which would be easy enough for her to duck into and hide behind. We’d run through those trees more times than I could count, and I took off after her. ‘Yeah, you better run fast!’ I hollered.

  “I chased after her, we ran through the field, and at that moment, I was the happiest I had been in so long. It was just me and her, my sister, my best friend. I knew after that day things would change—they already had, really. Time was flying by, and our days together were almost up. I was embracing every second of our time in that field.

  “As I started running, I realized we’d been out longer than planned. The sun had dropped behind the tree line, we were in that golden hour phase of light, and soon it’d start getting dark. It crossed my mind that we needed to head back. I was certain by then they were looking for us, but instead of calling her in, I chased her harder. We’d spent so many hours running through every inch of the field . . . but when Clare looked back at me, laughing, and then her face distorted with such acute agony and fear, time immediately went into slow motion. I watched as she fell to the ground, grabbed her leg, and let out the most horrific, pain-filled scream. I thought maybe she just tripped or stepped in a hole, but nope. I landed on the ground next to her, and there in the middle of her calf were two large puncture wounds. She’d been bitten by a snake.”

  “HOLY SHIT,” I say, fully entranced by her story.

  “Yeah. There are thirty-nine nonvenomous snakes in Georgia and six venomous. Speculation is that the snake was sleeping. It should have woken up from the vibrations on the ground headed its way, but that’s not always the case, especially when it’s from a small female and not a large heavy animal. There was no warning, or if there was, I guess Clare wasn’t paying enough attention to hear it. She stepped right on an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, the most venomous of them all. We heard the rattle of the tail as it retreated away, and I will never forget that sound.”

  I’ve never heard that sound, except for what they play for sound bites in movies. I can’t imagine lying in bed at night and hearing it. I’m certain I would never forget it either.

  “We were a good mile away from the house and neither one of us had our phone. Once we got her to calm down and then up and moving, her leg started to swell, badly. That’s when we knew we were in trouble. She wanted me to run ahead and get help, but I didn’t want to leave her, and I forced her to keep going. Night was coming fast and I was afraid.”

  “I would have been afraid, too. I have zero experience when it comes to snakes and no idea what to do in that situation.”

  “Things I learned after the fact that you shouldn’t do when bitten: move, because it increases the blood flow to the heart, or get anxious and worked up, because it increases your heart rate—both of which we were doing. I had ripped off my shirt and tied it just above the bite to hopefully slow down the dissemination of the venom, but she kept swelling and I kept having to loosen it. It was all happening so fast. You’re supposed to receive medical attention for a snakebite within thirty minutes. It had been well over that before I finally left her in the field and ran ahead for help—well, ran is an exaggeration. I was hyperventilating and pretty much hysterical, and I couldn’t go very fast.

  “By the time the paramedics got to our house and we drove through the field to get to her, she had already started vomiting, lost function of her arms and legs, and had difficulty breathing. Her heart failed on the way to the hospital and she was pronounced dead immediately after arriving.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I shake my head. The entire situation sounds utterly horrendous, and I can’t even imagine what it was like for her to witness it.

  Camille turns to look at me. Her eyes are so despondent and hollow, intensifying the sheer need I have to erase all of this for her.

  “They say the chance of a person dying from a snakebite is so low, it’s nine times more likely you’ll die from a lightning strike. There are only five or six fatalities on average per year. It’s because of this—well, this and other things—that I’ve always felt responsible. Time was in our favor. I didn’t move fast enough, soon enough.”

  I run my hands down her arms and shake my head, willing her to somehow agree with me. “Camille—”

  “No. Whatever you’re going to say, don’t.” She readjusts so one of her legs tucks up under her, the other hooking over my shin, then she reaches out and squeezes my waist. “There’s nothing you can say that will change how I feel. This is what I live with every day. I was the reason she was in the field. She died because of me, and they’re right to call me a murderer.”

  Anger toward myself because I once thought that disgusts me, and animosity toward those who’ve called her that charges through me. I want to strangle anyone, everyone who’s ever made her feel like it was her fault.

  “It was an accident. You are not a murderer—I know you know this,” I grit out, trying my hardest to contain the anger I feel for her.

  She shrugs her shoulders and drops her eyes to her hands. Her fingers flex in the fabric of the pullover, and one by one, I feel them push into my skin.

  “People don’t understand what it’s like. Yes, losing a sibling is devastating, I’m not trying to take that away from anyone, but losing your identical twin . . . it’s incomparable. She wasn’t just my best friend—she was me. I lost myself, and I lost all the good parts of me.”

  “That’s not true. I may not have known you before, but I see so many good things in you, so many that sometimes I wish I were more like you.”

  She leans back in surprise and her eyes find mine. “Really? Like what?”

  “Camille, you are so kind.” I reach up and tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. “You say you like to keep the peace, and I know you do, but you genuinely want those you care for to be happy. You always look for the best in others, giving them the benefit of the doubt even if they don’t deserve it. With me, you’ve been loving, creative, and happy. You’ve made me want to be a better person, because you deserve the best from me.”

  Her bottom lip quivers as she studies the details of my face. She’s so beautiful, inside and out, and I deeply want her to see it, too.

  “Thank you.” She blinks slowly, her long eyelashes sweeping down and up like they’re waving at me.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I ask her.

  “Of course.”

  “How did you and Patrick happen?”

  “He sat ne
xt to me at the funeral. It wasn’t intentional on his part—my parents called him up—but after that day, we sort of gravitated toward each other at school, social events, graduation. He understood more than anyone else how badly I was hurting, and in return, I understood him, too. I needed him and he needed me. Later that summer, Patrick was required to take a date to a political fundraiser, and he asked me if I would go. Of course I said yes since we were friends, but one event turned into many, and before I knew it, people had declared us a couple. I didn’t care, though—being with him made it feel like my sister was still here, and I’m certain he felt the same way. Numb with emotion, I molded myself to be what he needed, what everyone needed. After all, all of it was my fault. My parents were thrilled, and for the first time in a long time, it felt like they were proud of me.”

  “Did you love him?” I hate asking her this, but given everything between them, I perversely need to know. My heart starts racing.

  “No. I missed her,” she says, clearly hoping I’ll understand her meaning, and I do. “I still miss her, every day.”

  “Tell me more,” I encourage, running my hand across her thigh.

  “In normal life, when someone dies, we grieve them and move on, but for me, every time I look in the mirror, I see her. I don’t see me. I feel like a living breathing memorial, and it’s really hard to differentiate between her and myself when we are one and the same. People mourned her to me. I became a living ghost of her, and I lost myself even more.

  “Since before we were even born, we were a ‘we’ or ‘the girls.’ I was never just me, and when she died, it’s like I stopped breathing because life as I knew it was over. I had to learn to breathe on my own, and it was really hard, but thankfully I did have my grandfather, and I had Patrick.”

  At the mention of his name, I involuntarily pull my hand away. She catches the movement and stops me. Retuning my hand to her leg, she holds it in place.