Under the Willow Tree
Isabel age seventeen
Tyler age fourteen
The glittering sunbeams filtering through the treetop of the huge willow tree shine down on Tyler, bathing his entire body in warm golden light. He looks like an angel. A beautiful golden angel, even his thick, curly dark-colored hair is brighter. We both lie on the cool grass, stretched out on our backs with our arms propped under our heads as we stare at the thick branches and a canopy of long drooping green leaves that surrounds us.
“Isabel?”
“Mm?”
“We can’t leave how they left. It’s too tragic and too lonely.”
I turn my head so I can face him. He’s referring to both our parents’ suicide. We lost Dad when I was ten and Tyler was seven. Mom has been gone for two weeks now. She left behind a seventeen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy, who both have no one, except each other to hold on to.
His emerald green eyes gradually meet mine, and he smiles a smile so pure my heart melts. But I know deep down, at the very bottom of his soul, he’s anything but happy. A dark misery that tends to unfold when all the lights are out, when all the witnesses are gone will come out to play. The anguish will ruthlessly strip him raw and bare, and when that happens, he will never know any suffering before it. I only know this because it’s happened to me. It keeps happening to me, and each time it occurs, the pain never dulls, it only peaks and intensifies, growing thicker and heavier until it swallows you up in a pit so black you would have thought daylight was a folktale that loving parents told their children to keep the scary monsters at bay.
“We should make a blood oath to never take that route,” Tyler says, still smiling his heavenly smile.
“It’s kind of voodooish. No?”
His smile widens. “Are you afraid to take a walk on the darker side with your brother?”He says that as if he speaks from experience.
“When you’re in hell, I’m in the same fiery boat. So if it’s a blood oath you want, a blood oath you shall receive, my little dove.”
I dig into the pocket of my jeans and pull out my red Swiss army knife. It was our father’s knife. It’s sort of depressing that I don’t remember much about Ivan Waters. The only things that are crystal clear is, his laugh and the color if his vivid smoky green eyes, and this red Swiss blade. He used to pop open small cans of cherries with it. It was his. Now it’s mine.
I unfold the sharp knife from within.
Tyler gives me a concerned glance.
“It’ll hurt only for a second, after that you won’t feel a thing,” I assure.
“That’s what the nurses say before they stick you with the biggest needle you ever saw in your life, and you always feel it afterwards.”
I make an annoyed face, pretending to be irritated. “I’ll show you.” I press the tip of the razor-sharp blade into my thumb and nick myself. The pain doesn’t even register. I’ve gave myself bigger cuts than this small thing. Blood seeps out the small slit. “See? Harmless. Like I said, I didn’t feel a thing. Now it’s your turn.”
He scrunches up his face, holding his thumb out towards me. Blood makes him woozy. It always had. He always faints when I get nosebleeds.
I kiss his thumb before I nick him really quickly. He flinches and gasps, but the worst part is already over. “We should say something cool, right?”
He nods, staring down at the drop of blood oozing from the wound. “Yeah, something cool like, ‘I pledge to live my life as long as I’m given breath to breathe, love to need, space to seed.’”
“That’s beautiful,” I whisper, my throat burning from the tears I refuse to shed.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
We press our bleeding thumbs together and say in chorus, “I pledge to live my life as long as I’m given breath to breathe, love to need, space to seed.”
We drop our thumbs after a moment and return to staring at the sunrays. “What does it all mean?”
His eyes widen and he gives me an incredulous stare. “Now you ask?”
I laugh at his bewildered tone.”Sorry?”
He sighs, shaking his head with that lovely smile on his lips that I hope will never fade. “Breath to breathe because as long as we’re sucking down oxygen with functional lungs, we shouldn’t have any excuses to not live. Love to need because we all need love to grow and become better versions of ourselves. Space to seed because one day—” he places his hand flat on my belly “—we are going to be parents. We’re going to be great parents. The best. We’re going to be the parents our parents couldn’t be.”