Chapter Fifty-Five: Big Little Brother

Graveyard: a burial ground, especially one beside a church.

*

Robyn was still in hospital, pending a psyche eval.

With Ava and the Penrose parents keeping watch of her, I didn't feel too bad about agreeing to a day trip with Alexis a few days later.

We waited at the train station, Alexis sitting on a green bench with an earphone in one ear and her eyes closed as she tilted her head into her hand. I stood beside her, hands in my pockets, eyes periodically shifting from the rail to the schedule.

Alexis' day-trip was wrought with mystery, the mystery being I had no clue where we were going, just that we had to catch the 17. I scanned the schedule a third time, noting how many stops train 17 made across the country. My attention went to Alexis' bag; a cutesy lime green backpack with multiple coloured pins bulging from the straps and rim of the zipper.

I was concerned she'd be too cold throughout the day, given the cloud cover slowly approaching. Alexis had opted to wear a brown skirt and a green sweater, the only thing of real warmth being her dark red scarf and matching beanie.

My attention was distracted by the announcing lady declaring that train 17 was on its way, before listing off half a dozen locations it stops at.

Alexis hadn't reacted to the voice, so I nudged her with my foot. "Babe, train's coming," I informed.

She opened her eyes and blinked away a sort of drowsiness as she pulled out the earbud. "Wonderful…" she mumbled.

The train came to a creaking stop before us, a handful of people sprinkling from the cars and promptly disappearing in taxis. Alexis looped arms with me as she scooped up her backpack and followed me onto the train, she almost tripped on the gap between the station and the step.

When we entered a car, there was no one in sight.

Alexis sat by the window, her blind eyes staring at the scenery as the train groaned and creaked and slowly moved forwards.

"Are you going to tell me where we're going now?" I asked. I sat across from her, our knees barely touching.

She smiled, "What? Now that you can't bail on me?" she joked.

I returned her smile. "I wouldn't bail on you."

She rested her chin on her hand, eyes still focused outside, as her smile slowly dropped. "We're getting off at Lickbury Station," she informed.

I frowned. Lickbury Station was almost three hours away. "What's in Lickbury?" I asked.

Alexis sighed as she answered, "My brother."

*

Lickbury Station was more colourful then Windmill Lake's station. It was much busier for one thing, and because of this several stalls and performers had set up around the area entertaining people or selling their wares. There were flowers stalls, jewellery sellers on large blankets, people decorating columns with flags and paper leaves. Throughout the platform, people skilfully played instruments for tips, and groups of kids and adults alike had set up cardboard dancefloors to break dance on. The overlapping of instruments was equally jarring and amazing.

Alexis was largely indifferent to the noise and the strange festival styled goings on of the locals. She relied heavily on me to navigate through the noise, only stopping once at the flower stall. Alexis had such a delicate touch with flowers, rubbing the petal texture between her fingers. "Touch has become so fetishized," she had once told me, "A gentle touch, a simple caress, everything tactile oriented is given the sexual treatment, when it can equally just be a touch."

She bought a colourful bundle of flowers and we were on our way.

Unlike the train station, the streets were quieter. People minded their own business aside from a warm smile or the murmur of good morning on their way past.

At first, Lickbury looked like a small city. Its buildings were tall, there weren't too many grass fields or trees, and every few corners there was a bus stop oversaturated with ads for laundry detergents, your local MP votes, local plays, no smoking and different foods.

At first, I thought this was a strange date idea. Alexis dragged me all around the small city. We stopped at hot dog vendors and sampled about six different types, we passed pet shops and talked our way into petting some of the puppies, we sat at free-ride bus stops and caught buses four stops at a time before we had to pay for anything.

After a few streets, the small skyscrapers turned into smaller apartment buildings. More colour came to the window stalls in the street and colourful graffiti decorated any blank walls apparent. Soon, those buildings turned into separated houses, tiny cottages surrounded by grass, enormous trees, and speckled with daisies and weed flowers. What I found most jarring were the roads; once tar, now dirt.

"You going to tell me where we're going now?" I asked, "You've used me as your sign reader all morning."

Alexis was strolling on the side of the road, her hand running over the white picket fence that lined the road. On occasion I looked past the fence to the fields in search of livestock, but aside from a hare I didn't see any animals.

"Don't we all need some mystery in our lives?" she stated. The bouquet of flowers hung loosely from her other hand, her grip on them gentle, but the way her hand swayed when she walked made me worry for the petals on the blooms. Before I could question her again, she inquired, "Do you think about death, Landon?"

The mention of such a heavy topic made my mouth go dry. So, this is what we were going to discuss.

"Only recently for obvious reasons," I answered as I pocketed my hands.

Alexis nodded, "Any other times?" She reached her hand up off the fence, as if trying to touch something.

I pondered how in depth she wanted me to answer. For a long time in my life, death was something I thought about a lot, specifically how to avoid it or if it was likely. I understood that anyone could die at any moment. Afterall, no one was invincible.

"Sometimes I find it strange how fragile life really is," Alexis remarked when I didn't answer, "We spend our entire lives building it up, making it this grand existence for our bodies with money, sex, possessions, yet in the end it can be as simple as a heartbeat, or a piece of metal, or rope, or pills, or even another person, and just like that." She snapped her fingers. "Gone. Leaving behind nothing but the shell we occupy for it too to decay into atoms of nature from which we came from."

She returned her hand to the picket fence and sighed. "Despite all that we try to do to avoid the inevitable, the inevitable finds us." She kicked at the dirt, forming a small cloud that she walked through. "Our minds are fortresses, emotionally jaded palaces that thinks, 'the tougher we are, the more exposed to shit we are, the less likely we are to get hurt.' But that's just not accurate, is it?"

I pursed my lips, merely walking beside her in silence, intrigued by her rambles.

"Is ignorance what makes death evil? Is experience what makes it seem blissful?" Alexis wondered, "And if either is the case, does that mean we have any right to try and avoid it, or to aid others in avoiding it?"

"Where's this coming from, Alexis?" I asked, slowly getting worried by where this line of thought was leading.

Alexis smirked, obviously hearing my tone. "Suicide is such a taboo kinda topic, isn't it?" Alexis' hand stopped at a gate post, somehow even I hadn't seen it. "If we mention it to someone who's failed, people get scolded, accused to triggering them or something. Yet if we don't speak about it, then they think it's not okay to talk about, think it's not something everyone else goes through, and then when someone says, 'I know what you're going through' it's met with, 'How on earth could you have any clue?'"

I followed the pole up to a sign which bordered the gate: Lickbury Cemetery.

*

"My brother and I had a thirteen-year age gap."

Alexis and my arms were linked as we ventured through the graveyard.

"When he turned sixteen, he was so excited to start driving that he offered to take everyone out on a family drive."

I scanned the names of the tombstones, noting the extravagance to which some people dedicated to some stones; statues of angels, depictions of Jesus, crosses, flower etchings, and one realistic depiction of a German Shepard.

"Do you suppose everyone meets death before it takes them? Or only ever meet it when it actually comes to get them?" she asked. "My brother had crashed the car something horrible, but none of us were killed."

I stopped walking when I found Alexis' family name.

"My head had been knocked around, and I don't remember much, if anything at all. Just that one day, I could see my fingertips, look in a mirror, guess how tall trees were just by standing next to them, and the next, everything just disappeared."

Vincent Baine was a polished black gravestone with silver writing, weathered slightly from age, but still somewhat maintained.

"I didn't understand what caused it, and to this day choose not to, just that it was irreversible and a miracle if I ever saw anything again," she explained, "My parents blamed my brother, and my brother blamed himself. In the two years that followed, he overcompensated in everything that he could possibly do for me, whether out of guilt or just brotherly obligation I sure as hell couldn't tell the difference."

Alexis sighed as she kneeled before the stone. I took a step back as she placed the flowers on her brother's grave, reaching forwards and running her hands over the writing that spelt his name.

"Even when I was five, I didn't quite understand what had happened," Alexis stated, "But looking back on it now, everything to look out for was there. Long days in his room, sudden outbursts at everyone but only swift apologies for me, the calm before the storm…"

Alexis sat crossed legged on the bed of grass and sighed as she rested her head on her hand.

"When I started forgetting his voice, I realised he was actually gone for good. And at the glorious age of five had my first crisis, with death at its centre."

Alexis had her back to me, but when she breathed in her body trembled.

"I can't hate him for it. But that doesn't mean I can forgive him either."

Alexis stood up, adjusting her auburn hair as she crossed her arms across her front and sighed. "If it's all the same to you," she said, "This isn't something I'm ready to go in depth with…"

I nodded, noting the space between us. "Of course." I reached forwards and placed a hand on her shoulder, the motion prompting her to lean her cheek against my hand as I stood beside her.

"The whole thing with Robyn reminded me of something I've been kinda avoiding," she had told me, "I'm turning eighteen in August, so… that means I'll finally be older then my big brother."