[Review Contest] Brave

All right, reviewers, here's a short story for your reviewing pleasure!

When Charlie visited me the Saturday after her funeral, she wore the clothes she was buried in.

The viewing was Thursday morning, the funeral Friday afternoon, and Saturday evening I went to Red’s even though my friends said they’d understand if I didn’t feel like bar-hopping. I didn’t. But it was either mope at the bar, drink a Labatt, and check out Miranda, the Saturday bartender, or mope at home and watch Law and Order. Moping at home is a lot more pathetic, so I went to Red’s.

When I got home, Charlie was waiting.

The lights were still out, but the moment I opened the front door I heard the TV going. Before I left I'd been watching Animal Planet, but now Supernatural, Charlie’s favorite show, was on instead. I watched for a minute, thinking that maybe it was some sort of sign, and then I flicked on the lamp. That’s when I saw her.

She sat cross-legged in the beat-up gray recliner in my living room, gazing at the television with her arms around a pillow. She wore a ruffled black dress that had once been a ballet costume and a pair of neon-green, polka-dotted sneakers, no socks. She looked like she had when I last saw her, except that she wasn’t in a coffin.

Someone onscreen died in an explosion.

“The writers are killing me,” Charlie said. Then she looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. “Figuratively, I mean.”

“Sure,” I said, but I stood there like a moron with my hand still on the light switch.

“I can move, if you like. I know how much you love this stupid thing.” She patted the arms of the recliner and switched off the TV.

“It’s not that,” I said, although it was true I loved it. Enough to kick her out of it when we were growing up. Enough to steal it from our parents’ house when I moved out six years ago. I started wishing I had let her sit in it more when she was alive, but I stopped myself quick.

She pushed herself up onto the back of the recliner and turned to face me, swinging her legs like she had when she was a kid. The chair didn’t tip over like it did then. Once when that happened I had to drive her to the hospital for stitches because she hit her head on the side table on the way down. I was only fourteen at the time, but no one else was home.

She must have been thinking the same thing, because she tapped her fingers on the chair and said, “Nice that I can finally do this. So that’s one perk, at least.”

“Perk?” I said. “Perk of what?”

She raised a dark eyebrow at me. “Well, I am dead.”

I blinked.

“I only had one beer,” I said. She chuckled.

“You’re not drunk. I really am here. I just happen to be dead, that’s all.”

I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t; my mouth had gone dry. She rolled her eyes, hopped down from her seat, and went to the kitchen. In a minute she was back with a glass of water. She handed it to me and settled on the back of the recliner again, watching me. I watched back as I drank.

She sighed and pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “Seriously, Mattie, sit down. I don't think I can catch you if you faint.”

“I’m not going to faint.” I sat against the wall with my legs sprawled in front of me, looking up at her. “Have you seen Mom yet?”

Charlie shook her head. “I’m not going to. She’d want me to stay, and I can’t. I only have until midnight. Stretching my luck just to come see you. Normally it’s not allowed. That’s what they tell me, anyway.”

That left us only seventeen minutes. My mind flooded with things I should’ve said but didn’t, questions I’d had since her death. There were so many of them that they jumbled together, and when I finally opened my mouth nothing came out. Charlie bit back a smile.

“See, that’s exactly why,” she said. “Lifers can’t handle apparitions.”

She leapt lightly off the back of the chair and made an arc high through the air. I scrambled to my feet to catch her. My heart hammered in my chest, but she landed on her feet with a laugh. I slid back down to my place on the floor.

“You were such a risk-taker,” I said through my teeth. The hammering subsided. “Always, even when we were kids. Scared the living hell out of me.”

She sat beside me. You always hear that ghosts are ice-cold, but I felt her at my side like the comfortable warmth of a heating pad.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about it anymore,” she said. “Do you know, I met your guardian angel? Lumen. I think you’d like him. He’s surprisingly chill.”

“What about yours? You should tell him thanks for the great job he did.”

She picked a stray hair off her dress. “I didn’t have a guardian angel.”

“No? That explains a lot.”

“I had you.”

My throat constricted. I’d heard fifty people tell my mom at the viewing that it wasn’t her fault, but no one told me. I hadn't told them I felt responsible, but maybe it was because they all agreed that I was.

Charlie looked sideways at me. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

I couldn’t look at her. I leaned forward and ran my hands through my hair.

“I'm your brother. I'm supposed to protect you.”

She smiled faintly. “You can’t protect people from themselves.”

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the kinds of sounds a twenty-six-year-old dude makes when he’s crying and trying not to show it.

"Are you crying?” Charlie asked.

“No. Something got caught in my contacts.”

“Let me see.”

To her credit, she didn’t call me a liar or anything. She just shook her head and examined my eyes like she actually expected to find something in them. Her fingers were a vague warmth against my jaw. My watch showed 11:52.

Her eyes were hazel, brighter than they'd been when she was alive.

“I should’ve come home more,” I said.

She grinned, patted my cheek, said “Probably,” and leaned back against the wall.

“I’m serious. All those times I called at two in the morning, when I first moved out? I kept thinking something bad would happen to you while I wasn’t there. I had to call and check on you or I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said quietly. I put an arm around her. It was like hugging a heater more than a person. The incredible warmth she gave off made me drowsy, but I fought it. I wanted to stay with her as long as I could.

11:56.

“Oh, hey,” she said. “Something I wanted to tell you before I go.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Give that bartender your number.”

I blinked. “Miranda?”

“Yeah. She’s into you. Invite her over for a beer and a Supernatural marathon.”

“Why not Law and Order?”

Charlie snorted. “Law and Order’s not sexy. Honestly, Mattie. This is why you can’t get laid.”

“Thanks.”

11:58. Charlie stood up and so did I, stretching and yawning and fighting the urge to close my eyes so I wouldn’t miss her when she went. Already she was starting to fade around the edges. She hugged me.

“Be careful,” I said out of habit. She laughed.

“Nothing bad’s going to happen to me, Mattie.”

I could see past her to the television now. I reached for her, but my hand went right through her.

“Goodbye, Mattie."

“Wait,” I said. “Wait. You didn’t leave a note. Just tell me why. Just so I know.”

“I was scared,” she said.

She flickered in and out like a badly-tuned television. The colors of her clothes and eyes and hair faded until she looked like she was stuck in an old photo.

“Scared of what?”

She smiled, a little sadly.

“Living,” she said, and then she was gone.

I stood staring at the blank television screen. The silence was deafening. I needed a dog; a dog would have made the apartment seem less stupidly empty. Okay, so it wasn’t my fault, not really. You can’t protect people from themselves, she’d said. But you can let people talk about what scares them. You can let them know they’re not alone.

“I wish you’d told me,” I said to the empty room.