yellow curtains

Yellow curtains. If I could, I'd breathe them in, all the whispy ghost-like fibers clinging to my teeth and tasting like the aftertaste of orange juice.

Russel cried out in the middle of the night and stole away the dream with the yellow curtains, but I always remember the image of them wafting around in the wind. Yellow curtains tinting the sunlight and saturating it as it poured in the window.

"Where are we going?" Russel asks me, tiny dark hand in mine. We're walking down the highway and his shoes are slapping the pavement, too big for his feet. I want to shrug but I know I can't, and I point. My arm feels like lead when I lift it up.

"We aren't going home," I say, and Russel nods like he's known this all his life. He's never looked scared, no matter how far we wander and no matter how hungry we get. I wish I could say the same, but I know I can't.

We find an old store. The big neon lights on the sign have long since faded and fallen out, pixie dust coating the lot under it, and I don't have the patience or energy to try to decipher what it once was. But it's a building, tangible and there. My mind feels like it's shorting out and backfiring from seeing only road and sky and sky and road for miles and miles and miles.

"Astor I'm hungry!" Russel says, tugging at my arm. I detangle my grip from his and nudge him towards the door, and he's only eight but he's way more capable than me or anyone else gives him credit for. Russel trots up to the door, fearless, opens it and disappears into the dim to find food.

I walk behind him, crossing my arms to pick at the loose threads on my elbows. I pull one out, feel bad and try to thread it back in. It falls down onto the pavement and I crush it under the soles of my dirty boots.

I open the door and step inside. Russel peeks at me from an overturned shelf, a little dimple at the corner of his mouth when he smiles. I muster a twitch that passes for a smile back and he vanishes again.

I don't know how to drive yet. I'm just thirteen, but I figure nobody's going to pull me aside and teach me anytime soon. So I steal a car. And it's pretty easy to. A lady left her keys on a dangling little chain and when she turned her back I didn't think and I just took. It's harder to find the car in the lot, so I get caught from wasting too much time looking both ways before crossing the street.

Russel doesn't have a script or anything, he comes up to me crying my eyes out in front of the police and he grabs my hand.

"Officer my brother and me have to go." The cop sputters, all red in the face from yelling at me, and the lady I swiped the keys from coughs and looks anywhere but at us. And I just cry harder, and Russel says some bullshit about how our mom is waiting for us. The officer wants him to take us to her so he can yell at her, too, and Russel just shakes his head.

"He just likes to grab things, he was gonna give them back." But I wasn't.

Russel's favorite food is mushrooms. I can't stand them. They taste like dirt and feel like cold skin in my mouth. I get better at stealing so I can grab all the mushrooms Russel wants, though.

One night we're eating and Russel looks up at me. Sometimes I feel pinned down by his eyes, like he's so much older and wiser than anyone on this earth. He grabs my hand, my fingertips calloused and bruised.

"Promise it's the last time you'll steal," he says, and I swallow.

"Where did this come from?" I ask him, feeling something curl up and die all alone in the pit of my gut.

"Just promise."

And I do, but of course I break it.

We're hungry for a year before we get a break. Russel's wiggling his toes through the holes in his shoes, still too big for him, but I've never managed to get in and out of a clothing store without being caught with something.

I taste blood on the tip of my tongue. I curl up tighter in the driver's side seat, the angle hell on my neck. Russel snores across from me, my old coat draped over his skinny body.

It doesn't have to be like this, I tell myself. I could start up the car and drive the eternity back to home, back to yellow curtains and the smell of orange juice in the mornings, and Russel wouldn't have to sleep cold and hungry in the passenger seat of a junker car.

I turn and prop my knees up against the steering wheel. I'm so short that the seat is pushed up as far as it will go, so my arms are all squished down to my sides and if I wanted to I could just reach up and fiddle with the keys in the ignition. Start it up, feel the engine turn over and drive the car forever and ever away.

But even if I could make my brain work long enough to want to do that, I end up just staring at the peeling leather over the steering wheel. My chest starts hurting, like my heart is beating up against my ribs, and all my thoughts start swirling and pixelating and drifting and floating away into the same endless black nothingness I send them to every night.

I don't even catch that my breathing starts to hitch until I choke on it. The tears flowing out of my eyes cool immediately against my cheeks, and I imagine how funny that would be if the tears would freeze like little diamonds and I could sell them and buy us a new car. One with a good heater and good enough gas mileage that I could drive twenty-four hours a day and never have to stop.

And I could just buy a house, but I don't know at this point if I'm ever meant to be still. My mind doesn't feel like home unless I can't see the scenery going by from how fast we're going. Maybe if I just keep on driving I can catch up to how fast it goes.

I'm still crying by the time the sun starts to rise and sends its glare through the windshield. My eyes feel like sand, and I swear I've rubbed and pulled off every last one of my eyelashes over the course of the night.

I sniffle one last time and dry my face. It feels swollen and tender and my hand is like ice against my cheeks. The cold wakes me up and I sit up high in my seat, my hips screaming from being forced out of their new natural position of scrunched and bunched up.

I put my hands at 10 and 2 and jump when warm fingers cover them. I look over into Russel's sleepy face and he smiles and squeezes my hands before curling back into a ball on his seat.

"Hey, hook your seatbelt." My voice is raspy and pitched. Russel doesn't even look at me, so I lean over him and grab the belt from over his head.

We leave that night and a lot of nights like it behind in the dust as the engine starts up and we drive away.