My Beating Teenage Heart by C. K. Kelly Martin

lately, “She wouldn’t want this.” I think the message in as reassuring a tone as I can muster and for that, my mother is my example.
    When I was small she’d sense, when I was too quiet, that something was wrong and would lay her hand on the top of my head and say, “Why so glum, chum?” I wasn’t sad very often back then but there were instances when I measured myself against my sister and knew I fell short. At a friend’s sixth birthday party I leaned back in my chair and one of the slats broke as the chair crashed to the floor with me in it. While visiting my grandmother, sometime during that same year, I picked the dead leaves off one of her plants, and with the unhealthiest plucked started in on those next in line until soon the plant was almost bald, only five green leaves clutching sadly to its stem.
    At times like those I was harder on myself than my grandmother or my friends’ parents were; I knew Celeste would never make such mistakes. But my mom’s warm voice, the tickle within it that reached out to cheer me up, would lift my spirits again.
    So this is what I do with Breckon. I think of what my mother would tell him if he was me. Often I tell him that Skylar’s okay and that he doesn’t need to worry about her. I don’t know that for certain but considering my own circumstances I’m fairly confident that Skylar’s personality still exists—swimming amongst the stars maybe or hovering around someone else’s bedroom the way I am now.
    I know Breckon doesn’t hear me or feel my presence but I can’t stop trying. Moose and I have that in common.
    Breckon’s still in Skylar’s room, in almost a trance state, when his father arrives home. He doesn’t hear Mr. Cody’s approach and it’s not until his dad’s standing in the open doorway that he takes any notice.
    Breckon’s father looks much older than he does in the family portrait hanging in the kitchen. He’s folded his shirtsleeves up and his tie has been loosened and hangs askew. “Here you are,” he says with a twinge in his voice.
    At first Breckon remains still. Then he takes another moment to collect himself, stretching out his hand to run it over Moose’s fur. “Did school call you?”
    “They say you’ve been missing classes all week,” Mr. Cody confirms.
    “Not all classes.” Breckon’s eyes are on Moose rather than his father.
    Mr. Cody jangles his keys in his pocket. His eyes skim Skylar’s room and hold on the WALL-E robot in the farthest corner.
    “We should just … leave it,” Breckon murmurs, motioning to the room. “Leave everything how it is right now.”
    Mr. Cody steps inside Skylar’s bedroom and picks up the nearest dinosaur, a poseable protoceratops. He pries open its jaws and then snaps them shut again. “No one’s going to change anything,” he says. “Not anytime soon.”
    My mind begins to drift as Breckon and his father speak, my personal history beckoning me. Until this second I didn’t remember Farlain Lake, yet I went there with my cousins several years in a row. My dad’s friend lent us his cottage for two to three weeks every summer while he wasn’t using it. Aunt Sandra, who had fallen in love with my future uncle Ian in Edinburgh while discovering her Scottish roots, would fly back from Scotland with her family to go to Farlain Lake with us.
    My cousin Ellie was half a year older than my sister, and from our very first visit there they were inseparable. Ellie and Celeste tried to negotiate a bedroom swap that would result in them sharing a room while I bunked with Ellie’s brother, Callum, who, though only fifteen months older than me, seemed to find me babyish.
    At least, this is what I had put his reluctance to play with me down to when I was six. As a result, when my parents consulted me about the proposed swap, I told them I didn’t want to share a room with a boy. I was so sorry for that the following year that it stuns me to think that I could ever have forgotten about those