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Josh has only seen Sam cry once.
When they were twelve, Hannah and Sam had found a cardboard box in the street. They’d been friends for maybe thirteen months—he knew because he’d been keeping track of how long Sam had become an unofficial member of his household, and Sam had a knack for bringing out a more daring side of his sister.
If Josh hadn’t caught them smuggling a medicine dropper and a mug full of warm milk, he might never have known.
“You can’t tell, Josh,” Hannah had whispered with a fierceness he hadn’t been aware she possessed. He had half a mind to, but Sam’s fingers gripped his upper arm and the look in her eyes had him raising his hands in defense as “yeah yeah, okay,” stuttered out of his mouth. He remembers the smile Sam gave him and how it left his soon-to-be-fourteen year old self desperately confused, his stomach dipping in a not-so-unpleasant way. He had been past the point of thinking girls had cooties, but he wondered if maybe he’d been wrong and Sam had a seriously bad case of them that she was determined to spread to him. Well he didn’t want that, no sirree, so he decided to let them have their fun and waved them off.
Sam wouldn’t have it though. Hannah and her dragged him upstairs—gripped the sleeves of his thermal so any means of escape were futile, and rudely ignored all of his protests—where they found Beth, knees up to her chin as she watched the box with a sad frown that looked awkward and out of place when she usually had a smile tacked to her lips.
He remembers the neat scrawl on the side: Free kittens! and how they had lined it with clean, dry towels, fresh out of the dryer, and placed the box in Hannah’s closet. The kitten was a little ugly. He had said it too, and the slap Sam offered his arm stung enough to make his eyes water.
“It’s beautiful, even if it’s a little broken.” She huffed, got down on her knees next to Beth and scooped the kitten up with the same care he’d seen her offer his sister over the past year. She sat on the bed, and Josh followed her with little trepidation. Hannah and Beth wiggled up next to her and the three of them took turns feeding the kitten with the medicine dropper while chatting about what they’d do when it got better.
The thing was though, and Josh could see, the kitten didn’t have the energy to eat. It had all four of it’s legs, but they were curled and deformed and it didn’t seem capable of moving them. The way it meowed had seemed shrill yet too quiet, and he still remembers the way its back had been unnatural, stiff, and how his stomach churned every time the lugubrious thing twisted its head away from the dropper. It wouldn’t drink, and he watched Sam’s face, careful, as the calm slipped away and she started gnawing on her lower lip, her forehead creasing in frustration and panic.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, as tears gathered in the corner of her eyes. She put the dropper down, held the thing close to her chest and rubbed a thumb back and forth over its forehead. Her eyes had met his and he held her gaze, sage melting into grass. He licked his chapped lips and swallowed the lump that had been forming in his throat for the past hour.
“It’s dying.”
His sisters’ heads whipped around, Beth’s narrowed at him accusingly, Hannah’s dark and watery, as a sob bubbled up from Sam’s throat. “I know, I just thought…” Her voice cracked and Josh’s chest had tightened, warm and thick, as he realized she had dared to attempt the impossible.
Sam’s grip tightened around the kitten and she shoved her face against its baby-fine fur, hiding there, from Josh’s measuring gaze. Hannah rested her head against Sam and Beth’s fingers brushed through golden hair, careful not to let her own emotions out of check. He had felt as though he didn’t belong in the moment so he left, returning only when the moon lit up their yard.
They fell asleep, sprawled over Hannah’s twin sized bed, and each other, the kitten curled on Sam’s chest. She started when he opened the door, eyes catching his, even in the dark of the room. “Josh,” she breathed in, and her fingers drew up her chest until they found the kitten. Still, unbreathing. Her lips trembled, and then the rest of her did, too.
He remembers it implicitly, even now. The way her freckled nose crinkled, nostrils flaring, how red the white of her eyes were, her chest heaving violently as she tried to gather enough air to let the words tumble from her mouth between sobs. Her face was soaked from tears. Strands of hair caught in the steady steam, and he brushed them away, hands shaky. He thinks it might have broken her heart, and that maybe it broke his too.
The memory is still fresh in his mind as he unravels in front of her. He’s a little ugly, he thinks, and a little broken, and he wonders if she finds him beautiful, like he’s something she can try to save.
They buried the kitten under the maple tree in their yard, but he never got to bury his sisters and he kind of hates Sam for holding herself together when she fell apart over a kitten. But he loves her for it, too, so he grips her shirt as she wipes the tears from his face the way he had for her all those years ago.