Bugs

I never liked bugs. I always tolerated them for my sister's sake.

Being the older brother meant that I had to be on bug squashing duty. My sister Charlie, didn't stand a chance against the terrifying spiders and earwigs that invested our shared bedroom.

Though bug-squashing was a treacherous ordeal, I didn't mind being the strong one. I liked helping my sister when she was in trouble. After she died, I didn't think it was my favorite thing to do anymore.

Charlie was two years younger than me. My mom used to say we were attached at the hip and that we spent all our time together. Even with our contrasting interests we always seemed to find time to play outside with each other.

We used to run around my grandpa's farm without a care in the world. For some background, my dad left us when we were just babies. Mom took my sister and I to live with grandpa and to be honest, it was one of the best things that happened to us. We got to do whatever we wanted out there. Charlie and I were free when we were outside. We got to pretend we were anything, from knights, fighting terrifying dragons to raiders of lost jewels scattered around the property.

We seemed to have pretty overactive imaginations, but with overactive imaginations came disbeliefs.

I remember one time we thought someone was watching us from the tree line. A tall figure with grotesque looking features just waiting to prey on two innocent kids. Charlie ran to my mom and told her about the figure. Turns out it was only a skinny pine tree my grandpa was planning to cut down. However, it didn't stop Charlie from crying wolf to my mom every time she saw something out of the ordinary.

Every time Charlie saw something she thought wasn't right was another time my mom just stopped trusting her and thought it was all a joke.

The day of Charlie's accident was one of those days.

We had been playing in the woods behind the farmhouse when we found a little bird in the brush. It must have fallen out of its nest and landed on the ground. Charlie had always loved animals so when she said she wanted to be the one to pick up the baby I didn't hesitate to let her be the hero for once.

She bent down and picked up the baby, brushed it off, and stood on her tippy toes to put it back in its nest. She had to get deep into the brush to reach the bird and when she was done she seemed really proud of herself. Her eyes looked like they had stars in them...

When we went back home we took our shoes off and put them by the door. Charlie walked into the living room and sat on the couch as I went to tell mom we had come back. That's when I heard the loudest scream come from the living room.

My mom and I frantically ran to Charlie's aid. Grandpa bolted into the kitchen from the backyard as we made it to her side.

Charlie was crying saying she saw a bug crawling on her t-shirt. Since we lived in the country it wasn't out of the ordinary for bugs to latch onto our clothes when we came in from outside, but she was beside herself at this one. She said it was small and had six legs. My mom, grandpa, and I just shrugged off her terror, told her to take a shower, and it would all be ok in the morning.

When we got into bed that night Charlie was just as frightened as she was when we first heard about the bug. I told her everything would be fine and we could go see what happened to the baby bird in the morning. I like to think that made her happy when what came next brought so much pain.

In the morning, I woke up to mom, grandpa, and Charlie sitting in the kitchen with grandpa pulling something off of Charlie's arm. It looked like a little coin. It squirmed and wriggled within the tweezers my grandpa held. I learned later it was a tick. A big one too, almost the size of a dime. The thing still had some of my sister's skin hanging out from its little pincers.

Charlie refused to go outside that day. When I asked her why she said she had a headache and was scared of what might come after her. I thought she was being ridiculous and decided to just play video games instead of going outside.

Later that night, Charlie wasn't doing much better. The bite she had earlier had gotten red and swollen. She didn't look ok at all and the headache she said had spread around the whole back of her head. Again, my mom thought she was just overreacting. She did nothing to help my sister's pain but give her an ice pack and Motrin for her headache.

Within the next week, the bite had gotten an ugly ring around it and Charlie became a recluse. The last time we had been outside was the day she got the tick and the lack of adventure seemed to get to her. The number of movies we watched that had to do with some sort of crusade was insane and even I, an adventure lover, just wanted to watch a rom-com.

The nights were the worst though. The fatigue she had during the day went away as soon as night fell. Charlie just would not sleep. She seemed to be paranoid, unable to process what was happening. She always asked me to check the sheets before she got into bed.

One night, I woke up to her sitting in her bed rocking back and forth whispering, "tick... tick... tick.." She began frantically scratching her body furiously. I was terrified and I didn't know what to do. My sister wasn't herself anymore and I was frightened to see what she had become from a little insect bite.

That was the night we took her to the hospital. We waited in the waiting room for hours. Mom, grandpa, Charlie, and I practically slept in the hospital that night. Until finally the nurse called our family to the room.

Charlie got checked out by the doctor. He examined her thoroughly and came to the conclusion she had contracted Lyme disease from the tick bite.

That little creature gave my sister an incurable disease. She had been suffering for a week from helping a baby bird back into its nest.

The disease, the doctor said, didn't kill but my sister would be incurable. I read somewhere that out of the 100,000 people diagnosed and affected, only about 700 people died.

Charlie must have been 701.

She passed away a few weeks after going to the hospital. She was only 14. I was 16 when my baby sister died and it was the hardest thing I ever went through. Losing my dad at such a young age built up my resilience. But that was when I thought I'd have someone by my side forever.

Charlie was the one person who always knew how to connect with someone. She was my rock. She was the one person I could be brave for. The one person who always knew how to make anyone feel better, and she was gone. Who was I supposed to be brave for now?

I moved out when I turned 18. I couldn't bear living in the same house my sister died in. I couldn't bear to sleep next to the bed my sister took her last breath in. I vowed when I left I would never live in the country again. I would be happy with my instant coffee and bustling streets.

Grandpa died on my 22nd birthday. I hadn't been keeping in touch with him and mom. So his death came as a surprise to me. I had vowed to never go back to that farm and face the memories that remained. Even the death of my father figure couldn't draw me back there.

So I didn't go. I didn't see the man who raised me get lowered into the ground next to my dead sister. I didn't see mom's pain as her only son didn't show up to the funeral.

The pain must have been too great because she died soon after him. You hear of people dying of grief all the time but mom was so strong. After Charlie, I thought she would have gone to the light but she stayed. She stayed with me and grandpa. I kind of blame myself for her death. So this time I'm not gonna run away.

In grandpa's will, he gave the farm to me and mom. In turn, she gave it to me if she ever passed. So now, I'm the proud owner of my childhood home. I thought maybe this would be the only way to make myself feel better about Charlie. In some sort of way, I was right.

I had so many emotions when I moved back. I laughed and cried, even screamed. But I knew that my mom's little boy was home, and for her, I would go to the moon and back.

Today was the day of mom's funeral. I decided to go back to the spot where Charlie and I found the baby bird and walk the path all the way back to the house. I wanted some peace before I saw all three of my family members buried. I guess I must have strayed a little too far because my legs swept along some brush on the ground. I didn't think anything of it till I came home that night after the reception.

I took off my pants to find a little red bump on my calf. I rubbed my finger on the top on it and it felt hard. My heart skipped a beat as I walked into the bathroom and grabbed grandpas tweezers. I squeezed the scab and lifted up slowly.

What came out of my leg was a little bug, the size of a dime. It squirmed and moved its tiny legs mechanically. Its pincers snapped as my heart dropped to realize I had been bitten by a tick.

I threw the creature in the toilet and flushed. My skin crawled as I bolted to the shower and scrubbed the daylights out of my body. I was hyperventilating when checking the rest of myself for more of the disgusting parasites.

When I was tick-free I threw my clothes in the dryer, put on clean pj's, and got into bed. I stared at the ceiling for what seemed like hours until I drifted into a dreamless sleep.

The next few days were anticlimactic. The worst that happened to me was the average migraine and hot flashes. I sort of forgot about the bite until I cut my leg on a piece of wood from the kitchen table. I looked down to inspect the wound and found not blood but a similar circle around the bite where the tick had attacked me a few days earlier.

Lying in my bed now I itch all over. I think I'm gonna go to the hospital to get tested. I can't help but think about Charlie. I keep looking around my childhood bedroom, to the closet, to the door, to the vanity in the corner of the room. I keep seeing little dots moving around in the dark. I can't make out what they are but every time I close my eyes the seem to scurry just a little closer.

I think I just need some sleep. Tomorrow maybe Charlie and I can go adventuring again.