Finch.

She is asleep, one arm limply over my torso. I hold her waist and listen to her steady, quiet breathing. She has finally fallen asleep. Cried herself to sleep.
William is opening the van’s door, and then he is looking at me.
“Why do you take her everywhere with us?” He asks me.
He is jealous. He is an old lover.
“Because she needs me,” I reply. William shakes his head at me.
“You need her. Why don’t you move on? You may be the only man that she allows to touch her, but you are her brother, and nothing more,” he says with malice.
“No, just because she says she doesn’t love me the way I love her does not mean she doesn’t love me at all,” I am whispering. William is crouching down so our faces our level.
“You need to leave fourteen years behind Nick.”
William’s curly hair is getting long, and his brown eyes are very serious. He is a bassist. I am a guitarist. Leave it to fate to lead us to each other.
Then William kisses me, and I let him, but I soon regret it.
“She is just a broken girl, who can’t be fixed. Take her home.” Then he leaves.
“He’s wrong,” I am saying to myself. “Birdie can be fixed. It’s been ten years, but you can be fixed Birdie.”

Who did it?
“Who did it Ellie?”
“I can’t feel,” she is whispering, and I can’t speak really, either.
“Come here,” I tell her. She is walking towards me, and then she is falling.
She is dead weight in my arms. She is limp, and her fingers are just barely there. She is struggling to keep her hold on me. I don’t have to think, I am aware of what has happened to her.
“No. No, Eleanor. You have to try to talk.”
“You’re the only one who’s allowed to touch me now Nikki.”
“Who did it?” I am whispering.
I see the blood on her legs. The pig. I will commit murder if I must.
“Nikki.”
“Ellie, tell me who!”
“Mattie. Mattie, Mattie, little Mattie. We took the bus. Me and little Mattie.”
“Matthew?”
“Mattie, Mattie, little Mattie.”

I am picking Eleanor up, and setting her back on the bunk. She does not wake up.
“I sing you lullabies every night. I used to. I love you,” I say very quietly.
Her eyes open just slightly. Then flutter shut again.
I watch her until I fall asleep against her. Out of all the men and women I have had, nothing compares to this. Too bad I can hold her hand, but not hold her heart up.
That’s not my place. I fear no one will ever do that. She won’t let it be.
It doesn’t matter anyway, sometimes I pretend. I make believe that this is enough. Like it was fourteen years ago, in the snow. The only time.

We are walking home. Ellie is laughing about something. Ninth grade is such a nice year, I am thinking to myself. You don’t have to worry about anything.
Ellie looks beautiful in the snow. I take her hand and I kiss it. She laughs at me, but I stop that laugh with a kiss on her lips.
“Oh,” she says, and she smiles a very wide smile. I smile a very wide smile.

In the morning, she is up before me. She is eating fruit, looking out the window. Her yellow hair is showing highlights. She looks at me and tries to smile. I smile back.