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“It’s fine,” Piper insisted.
“It’s not,” Henry retorted, voice laced with something she couldn’t name.
Piper bit the inside of her lip to quell the rage that bubbled up. Henry had flown in from Newtown armed with fresh-cut flowers and Missy’s homemade card. While Piper read the tween’s congratulations and admired her illustrated self in glittery cap and gown, her brother had coaxed his bouquet into the vase he’d found under her kitchen sink. Piper had picked that up at an on-campus wellness event last spring, where it remained empty unless visitors came by.
She wasn’t sure when things had shifted, but she could feel it now, as they sat slightly too close to each other on her small futon. Henry’s knees were practically touching the coffee table in front of them. Piper didn’t want to be combative, but she could have killed him tonight.
“It…” she began. “Doesn’t. Matter.” She clenched her teeth. He didn’t get to do this tonight.
“I…I wasn’t there,” he stuttered, and Piper exhaled furiously as she involuntarily rolled her eyes.
“It’s fine, Henry. I didn’t need your help getting this degree.”
Henry stared straight across the narrow living room at the opposite wall. Piper could see his eyes track towards her in his periphery.
“You are eighteen years old,” he began, gravel in his throat. “I left you to go to the other side of the world when you were fourteen.”
“I thought you were safer at school…but you struggled a lot here, didn’t you?”
She'd struggled a lot here. Piper had pushed, kicked and clawed through the death of her old life and the shock of a new one. She’d lost only two semesters; one to medical withdrawal, another to a study abroad program for the major she'd abandoned before she truly found her footing and came alive. She was a phoenix, and Henry’s ruminating felt like dead weight.
“Why are you doing this? Why can’t you be happy for me?” Piper realized she was halfway to yelling. Henry let the punishment wash over him. Piper didn’t understand, and she didn’t care.
“You don’t get to do this right now. Not on my weekend. If you’re going to be in your feelings, then I don’t want you here,” she snapped.
Henry opened and closed his mouth soundlessly at her. He looked like a fish. Her stupid fish brother. He closed his eyes for a moment before drifting into space and uttering the most horrifying and astonishing sentence she’d heard him say all night.
“I think I need a hug, or something.”
It was Piper’s turn to balk at him.
“You what?”
“A hug,” Henry repeated quietly, staring at his hands, brows furrowed as if he couldn’t believe what he'd just verbalized.
Piper stuttered, glancing over her shoulder at no one. Surely, Jasper and Charlotte would buzz in at the gate, and she could rush downstairs and bring them up, and snatch the pizza out of their hands, and let them descend like hawks swooping in on their missing piece to have a gross cuddle pile and –
“-Piper, will you please give me a hug?” Henry asked, and there was something so fraught in his rapid voice that it scared her.
“Yes! Yes, okay, yeah,” she breathed, reassuring him first, then herself.
Piper rose to her feet before realizing that he hadn’t gotten up with her. They didn’t do this. It was always Henry and his long arms that lifted her into the air, that got pushed away as she got older until that starless night where she was sure she’d never get a hug from her brother again. Now, she let him hug her whenever he wanted. But when did Henry ever ask for anything like this for himself?
She was barely taller than him standing anyway, so she resigned herself to encircling her arms awkwardly around Henry's shoulders from the side, her knees pressed up against the side of his leg as he remained sunken into the low futon. It was a stiff gesture, and Piper wondered if Henry had felt the same one afternoon, when she'd looked at him with swollen eyes and finally said, “I could have helped you.” Henry had scooped her up immediately, but Piper had remained rigid, still reeling from the betrayal as he’d stroked her hair. Henry leaned forward a bit, his palms braced against his thighs. Everything about this felt wrong. Piper wondered if she should let go until she felt him slump against her.
Henry was bigger than her; his weight threw her off center until he pulled Piper back in towards him. Everything felt backwards a bit. There was no shield. This was the first time she could see above her brother's head. She held onto him as the world continued to tilt. What the Hell was she supposed to do now?
Henry took a fragile breath, and for a moment, Piper was afraid he might cry. She wouldn’t know how to handle it, not because she hadn’t seen it, but because she couldn't possibly make it better.
But Henry was her big brother through and through;, and when he spoke, his voice was clear.
“I know you didn’t need my help getting this degree,” he chuckled. “I’m a high school dropout, Piper, what good would I be?”
“You would be good,” she answered rather lamely.
“You don’t need my help with anything,” Henry continued fondly. He sounded almost in awe of her. “You’re amazing, Pipes. You did this, you did everything, all by yourself.”
“That’s not true!” Piper found herself pleading with the root of the invisible story.
Henry laughed, hugging Piper harder as he pressed his forehead into her shoulder.
“You know it is. I wasn’t there. I hurt so many people.”
Loathing. The root was loathing. Piper couldn’t see her brother, but she could feel him clutching her as though she’d float away. She had been hurt at times, and lonely, yes, but the words didn’t add up. He was her hero, through and through.
She had never been good at consoling, had never been asked. But, like every other scary new situation life had thrown at her, often alone, Piper did what she did best; she persisted. She could be big for a minute.
“Shut up. You were there.” You were everywhere.
“You didn’t know it was me.”
“That doesn’t matter. I do now.”
“I let you go off to college by yourself.”
“I let me go off to college by myself,” she said firmly. “You were there,” she repeated, finally knowing where she would take them.
“When I used to get mad, and break stuff on purpose, like Mom’s music box from her grandma – shut up!” Piper smacked the side of Henry’s head as he chortled, before returning her hand back around him.
“When I did stuff like that... Mom and Dad would always tell me that they loved me afterwards, and that I was a good girl... but you were the one who would always come in and say, ‘Piper, you’re a good girl,’ while I was still in time out.”
Henry was quiet underneath her. Piper rocked back on her heels.
“I used to say that to myself all the time, even now,” she continued. She could hear it in the cadence of an eight-year-old boy - no pauses and an optimistic lilt on ‘good’.
“Sometimes, I think or say it after I do something that I know is bad." She grinned wickedly and slapped Henry’s arm as he laughed.
“But I also say it when things are hard.” She had said it to herself the first time she made it past Swellview City Limits for a shady deal on unlicensed merchandise. She had said it to herself when the blimp crashed and it was all her fault. She had said it after nights she’d swerved her protective friend group and lied about her age. She'd said it in inpatient after her fifth blackout.
“So, no matter how far away you are, don't worry. I can still hear your stupid voice in my head, calling my name, like nails on a chalk board.” Piper, you’re a good girl.
“You were there to tell me to take a leave of absence so I wouldn’t fail out.”
“That was Charlotte.”
“Yeah, I know, dumbass. But she told you and then you told me a million times.”
“Couldn’t have two failures. That’s like... International House of Failures,” Henry muttered.
“Charlotte says you need to unlearn your elitist attitudes about that.”
“So does Missy.”
“So do it.”
“I should.”
“You should. Get your GED."
Henry blew a loud raspberry in response.
"You flew in from Dystopia when Charlotte didn’t get her grant.”
“She didn’t call, for like, three days; I was afraid she had died or something.”
“You didn’t think to call her?”
“Jasper did.”
“And you flew in on first shift for CharWatch. What did you guys do?”
“She was lying on the ground, so I sat next to her and made her bench press my arm.”
“You flew 8,000 miles to sit on the floor?”
“We did movies and takeout the first night to get her off the floor, then I started cooking the second night, ‘cause I knew she’d get mad and start to hover if I messed up her spice rack. Boom - no more Charlotte on the couch.”
“So you were there for her.”
“One could say that, yes,” Henry mused.
“Jasper said you took a nasty fall for him in Newtown last week.”
“Instinct.”
“You were there for him.”
“Instinct.”
“You're here three days early for my graduation.”
Silence.
“You’re a good girl, Henry,” Piper said affectionately, carding her hand through his curls.
“Thanks!” he said in a high-pitched voice, causing her to smile crookedly as his breath hitched against her in what she hoped was a laugh.