I’m up in my tree fort, lying flat-belly in the little crow’s nest, doomscrolling on YouTube. A twig snaps below and my eyes flit. My dad’s old walkie is propped up against the wooden beam, radio static turned down to the lowest volume. The branches of the forest around me are thick with newly grown leaves, some budding white flowers, but I still have a clear view down to the winding path cutting from my neighborhood to the high school. That pesky black squirrel is back, zigzagging across the gravel. He skids around and then up a tree, and vaults through the rustling limbs like Red Bull gave him wings.

The clock in the corner of my screen reads 4:43 PM, so I figure I have a few more minutes until my sister, Chelsea, appears.

What if I bailed now? Nah…I couldn’t do that to her.

I swipe to the next video, but it might as well be a blank screen.

I’m starting to think I may have been a bit too ambitious. I like fixing things, and I don’t know why, but my sister seems to think I can fix anything: Littlest Pet Shop Flower-Power-Purple-Eyed-Hamster Bobbleheads, record players…relationships were new though.

“You want me to WHAT?” I’d spit an entire chocolate chip cookie back onto my plate to keep from choking.

“Just make sure I break up with Don. Please…” she had whined. “I’m gonna chicken out. I just know it.”

Now you have to understand, girls like my sister, they just complain. They never fix. And so, when she asked me to help her take action, to make sure she followed through…in a weird way, I was proud. Besides, I’ve watched enough bad TV in my fourteen years, I’m practically a mountain of relationship wisdom.

Chelsea had hunched on the stool, thrusting an entire cookie into her mouth. It’d been too much and she’d spit half of it back out onto the marbled countertop. It’s really gross how girls eat when their friends aren’t around.

“Listen to me Chels. It’s got to be instinct. In-stinct.” I’d poked her between the shoulder blades, like I’d known what the heck I was talking about. But I had a reputation to protect.

She’d coughed, spraying crumbs. “Liam, stop!”

“Say it.” I’d poked her again and again, same spot. “Rip it off like a Band-Aid. Say it.”

She’d scrunched her nose. “I don’t think this is working out!”

“Again,” I’d poked.

And I’d made her repeat it another dozen times. A good brother, right? What I didn’t expect was for her to ask me to actually be there. I mean, who wants that?

But you know what, her success isn’t up to me. Not my circus, not my monkeys. She’ll nail it or she won’t. It’ll be over fast and I can go home and play video games…alone.

I hear footsteps and my screen lights up with Chelsea’s incoming call. I heave a breath. “Just like a Band-Aid.” I slide the bar to accept and set the phone beside me.

I prop myself up on one elbow and tuck my dad’s old Tokyo Marui VSR-10 airsoft rifle against my shoulder. The edge of my forehead itches where the mossy leaves of my camouflage hood trail into my vision. I blow a sharp breath up into my face and the leaves dance out of the way. The wind picks up and they fall again.

My grassy sleeve drags like a mop dog’s hair as I reach over and turn the dial on the walkie until I hear the staticky echo of the birds singing and the crunch of the gravel. Then I see my sister coming up the path.

She’s wearing those pink jean shorts, or maybe they’re orange. There’s a name for the color. Trout or sardine or something. Between the combat boots, T-shirt, and backpack, I’m waiting for her to yell, Vamonos! and chase down a fox. But considering the only survival skills in her back pocket are how to bruise someone with a TV remote and not choking on copious amounts of cookies, it’s probably for the best that she doesn’t.

She treads slowly around the bend. Almost to the tree with the rotted split in its side, where I hid my second walkie—the talk button taped down nice and secure so in the totally unfathomable case that she hangs up on me, I’ll still have audio. She passes the rusted metal bench and hesitates about thirty yards out as the BB flies.

One purple earbud gleams as she looks up at me and tucks her phone into her back pocket.

“You ready?” I ask.

“Camouflage. Really?” her voice comes over the phone, soft enough that my contingency walkie barely crackles.

Love how she didn’t answer me—there’s the sign a girl’s about to bail. Like I said, they never seem to stay the course. They aren’t straightforward that way.

I look down the grass-wrapped barrel of my rifle, sighting the edge of the path Chelsea’d just walked down. “Incoming.”

Her feet grind on the path toward home as she makes a show of drinking in the forest.

Don’s jogging up behind her, wearing that Reese’s shirt from Halloween, when the two of us dressed like candy bars and sprinted across the entire neighborhood in two hours flat just to prove to Chelsea it could be done.

That crackhead squirrel scurries across the path in front of him and Don dodges. His lanky legs slip on the gravel and my jaw drops. He’s got those electric blue Jordans that I can’t get Mom to buy for me.

Bro plays the stumble off with a spin. Dang, that was smooth. His drawstring bag bounces on his back, curly hair waving.

The walkie crackles beside me, playing over his voice as he yells, “Hey, wait up!”

Chelsea raises her hand and coughs, muttering to me, “You’ve got a weird echo going,” as she slows to a stop.

I wince and reach over, dialing the walkie’s volume down a smidge. I spot Don with my rifle again, whispering, “Alright, Donny-boy, time to send you packing.”

Chelsea whips her chin over her shoulder, then her eyes snap forward again, wide like Don’s a ghost or something. She bounces on her toes as if she’s about to run. “I can do this.”

“You can do this,” I say. “Band-Aid, remember?”

She spins around.

Don slides to a stop, turning up a wave of gravel. “Thought you were running from me for a second.”

“What? No. Me?” Chelsea stutters and gives a throaty, woodpecker-y laugh that even makes me wonder if Don’s body will turn up in a mass grave someday.

I let my head hit the floorboards and, for a second, consider hanging her out to dry. Unfortunately, I have to live with her after this. As Don starts rambling about his day, I tell Chelsea, “Say you need to talk to him.”

“I need to talk to you,” she spits out, throwing herself forward and cutting Don off mid-sentence.

He backsteps. “Okay…we’re talking right now.”

I grit my teeth, “About something important.” I’m purely running off ‘90s dramas now.

“About something important,” Chelsea repeats.

“About you,” I say.

“About you.”

“No, no!” I throw my hand in the air. “About you you! Both of you. Together.”

“About…” She shrugs her shoulder. “Us?”

“Good. Now show some conviction.”

She smiles. Like a psychopath.

And Donny? Donny’s a brick wall. Not even an eyebrow raised as he blinks that toothy-clown grin away. He gives her a go on nod and tucks his hands into the pockets of his basketball shorts. Because Don’s nice like that.

I tap to mute myself, groan…and unmute again. “Say the line.”

“The thing is, I don’t…” she wrings her hands, “want to study for finals.”

Don glances down the path and shrugs. “Well, we could study together if you want.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s sweet.”

“Chels…” I say.

Chelsea tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “But I thought you and your dad were working on the truck this week.”

I perk up. “Bro, wait, is he putting in the leather seats?” Don has an old Ford Highboy he bought about a year back. He put in a lot of work to get that thing from a rusty bucket to the gleaming red and white prize that it is. I’m not a car guy, but it’s pretty cool.

I miss what Don says next, because a shadow falls over my head. The squirrel is back, zipping in circles along the railing. I grit my teeth.

“I can’t wait to see it.” Chelsea strangles the straps of her backpack then takes a step down the path. “Well…”

“Tell him,” I warn.

“…I should probably get home.”

There it is. Not fixing the thing. Ten bucks says that she’ll complain about it tonight. Well, not to me!

I shift the rifle, pull the bolt back, switch the safety off, and aim for her exposed forearm. “Say it.”

I pull the trigger, right as the squirrel jumps onto the ledge beside my head. I flinch, and my shot goes wide. The squirrel gives a throaty scream and scampers off so fast it leaves claw marks in the wood.

The next thing I know, someone is wailing.

I drop the rifle and crawl to the very edge of the platform in a rustle of fake leaves.

Don’s collapsed on the ground, holding his shoulder. “Oh, he got me!” He yells like a bad theater kid, wriggling and rolling and sweeping his eyes across the floor of the forest. “Chels, help me. I’m down!”

She just stands there, looking back and forth between her howling boyfriend and me—the random bush planted on the ledge of the tree fort.

Don lifts his head and hollers in the wrong direction. “You can’t win, Liam! If you strike me down,” he gasps for breath, “I shall…become…more powerful…than you can possibly imagine.” He drops his head against the gravel and lies there for at least twenty seconds.

I press my fist to my forehead. Who am I kidding? I can’t do this.

“Chels,” I speak into the phone. “I’m sorry, but you need to stay with him.”

“What?” Chelsea squeaks.

Don pops his head up. The walkie crackles. “It’s Star Wars.”

I go on. “He’s smart and he’s cool and he fixes his own cars and he trolls people with me in Lethal Company and screams like a Ringwraith and I don’t get”—I breathe—“why you want to break up.”

She spins around and hisses. “He’s clingy.”

Clingy. I did all this—went to all this trouble—because she thinks Don of all people is clingy?

I ball my fists. “You’re clingy.” I grab my phone and hiss directly into the mic. “Did you tell him?”

“No.”

I roll my eyes. “Listen, you need to sit down and have an honest…”

Below, Chelsea rips her earbud out and tucks it into her pocket.

Complaining. That’s all they do.

I toss my phone aside. It clatters across the floorboards as I grab my rifle again. Thankfully my walkie still lets me hear their end. I turn it up.

Don sits, turning his head back and forth. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Your brother.”

Chelsea looks around. “I don’t think he’s here.”

“But I—”

“Maybe it was an acorn or something.”

I sight her down the scope, unsure what my next move is as I reload.

She asked for your help, the thought punches me in the gut. My fingers draw from the trigger as I hang my head.

All Chelsea ever does is complain, but here she was, trying to take action, even if it was a very stupid action. And she asked me for help. It…it’s my circus. Shoot. She made this my circus, my monkeys.

I scrunch my nose. My hand is sweaty on the wooden grip as I find the trigger again.

“You sure?” Donny reaches for Chelsea’s hand. “Stings like airsoft.”

She pulls him up then nods.

He frowns, eyebrows lowering as he rubs his shoulder. “Well, anyway,” he shakes his head and the suspicion seems to clear, “I was thinking maybe we could get dinner tonight?”

“Yeah,” she says.

I blow out at breath. “Like a Band-Aid.” I pull the trigger, feeling the blow in my own soul even before it lands, hitting her square between the shoulder blades.

She flinches, spewing the phrase we’d practiced. “I don’t think this is working out.”

I lower the rifle and reach over to the walkie, switching it off.

The wind kicks up—one giant sigh rustling the leaves and bending the branches until they groan under the weight. My hood falls as I roll onto my back, staring at the emerald canopy.

I sniff the air. I can practically smell Chelsea’s fresh-baked breakup cookies in my future. Fingers crossed there’ll be less spitting involved.

J. Hulse White

J. Hulse White is a first-year apprentice at The Company. She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, to which she credits her sense of humor, aversion to murky waters, and fondness for pierogies. She, of course, loves writing, but in her free time also enjoys board games, slaving over eternally incomplete crafts, and being the passenger princess on sporadic road trips.

Cover art by Levi Matthews
Connect on Instagram @levimatthews.artist or on his website, LeviMatthewsArtist.com.