This is the cat that Julian can hear crying outside: lost. Cats don’t sound lost unless they’re lost. He wishes there was a certain cry for boys to make when they were lost, but there isn’t.
This is who’s next to him on the bed: the Brother. It’s the Brother from his mother’s story, and Julian knows for sure because he did a quiz.
“If you’re really the Brother,” he had made sure to ask when the Brother came to pick him up that morning at James’s house, “what color is our door at home?” “Red,” the Brother had answered. Good. “If you’re the Brother, what’s my mom’s favorite food?” “Butter.” Good.
“You’ll be spending Tuesdays and Thursdays and Sundays with me,” the Brother had explained then, while the snow fell sadly behind him and on him, as if he didn’t matter. “Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays here.”
“But those are all the days,” Julian had said, standing in the doorway, watching one particular snowflake that had made a crash-landing into the Brother’s black hair. They’d learned the days in school that year: each day went with a color, until the week made a rainbow.
“Yes they are,” the Brother had said.
“What days does my mom have me?” Julian had said, though he feared he already knew the answer.
“No days,” the Brother had said. “For now, no days.”
Things his mother had not told him about the Brother: that he had a piece of pointy skin at the end of his arm that looked like a sea lion, that he had hairs on his chest, that he had a black spot on his face that might jump out at you, that he smelled like smoke, that he didn’t look very magical at all; he had too many hairs on his face.
Things his mother had not told him in generaclass="underline" that she would have him for no days.
Now he doesn’t want Tuesdays and Thursdays and Sundays. He doesn’t want Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays, either. If his mother has no days, that’s what he wants: no days. He doesn’t want this whale’s back, heaving and black in front of him on the bed. The Brother in the bed with him is scary. He wants the Brother from the story.
This is the story: There were a brother and sister who loved each other as much as was humanly possible. The sister loved her little brother so much that every night, when he was asleep, she baked him a hundred cakes. The little brother thought the cakes just appeared there every morning, as if by magic, and though he loved them at first, he began to take them for granted. He stopped jumping for joy when he saw them. He stopped tasting every single one. He stopped grinning when he woke up to the smell of frosting.
At this part in the story, Julian would be panting with anticipation. He would always say the same thing. “But it was his sister!” he’d say. “It wasn’t magic, it was his sister!”
“Shhhhh,” his mother would say. “Let me finish the story. It was only when the little brother saw a fleck of batter on his sister’s face one morning that he knew it had been her. His own sister, staying up through the night to make him the most beautiful cakes. He couldn’t believe it. Meanwhile, his sister had become terribly sad, thinking her cakes were worthless.”
“And so he wanted to give her something back!” Julian would nearly shout.
“Quiet now,” his mother would say. “You’ll wake your dad. Yes, he wanted to do something for his sister in return, to show her how much he loved her back. So he did what he did best. He began to draw.”
“A hundred pictures every night!” Julian would say in a loud whisper, his eyes wide.
“A hundred pictures every night,” she would say. “Pictures of all the people they knew. The butcher, the guy who owned Café Crocodile, the man who played the guitar in the park — everybody from around town, all their friends.”
“And did the sister like the drawings?”
“Yes, she did, very much. She loved them. She hung them up all over the house.”
“So why did the brother leave?”
“How do you know that the brother left? I haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet.”
“Because you told me the same story last night,” Julian would say, grinning and burying his head in the sheets.
“Well tonight is a different night,” his mother said. “What if I told you that the brother was still making pictures for his sister? Or that he never left at all?”
“Well, then, that would be a different story,” Julian said.
“It would be,” his mother said, with a wink.
“How would it end?”
“It wouldn’t have to end,” she said. “It would still be going. The brother would grow up to be a man, with a big voice. He was a magic man, you see, who could see into people’s heads and hearts. And he would find a wife who was also magical, and they’d have a magic child, move into the house next door to his sister, who also had a child. Their two children would learn how to make cakes and make pictures, and they would stay up all night, making things for each other and then calling each other with tin cans from their bedroom windows.”
“Tin cans?”
“Tin cans. With a string between them, to carry the vibrations, which turn into sound.”
“But that’s not the real story.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the sister is you!”
His mom would ruffle his hair and smile. “And how do you know so much, little man? How on earth do you know so much?”
“I just do know,” he would say, nestling his head in the place between her chest and her arm. And always: “If I draw one hundred pictures, can I be like the brother?”
“Sure,” his mother would say. “But you’ll have to do it in your head, because it’s time for sleep. You can use your imaginary pen. Take it to bed with you. Draw up anything you want to dream about, anything you need.”
Now: He wants to dream about her. He needs her. He needs her teakettle voice and her soft hair. He needs her cake smell and her lotion smell. He needs to go to the window and yell for her. But if he moves he might break the spell of the Brother’s sleep. Plus, it’s snowing out, and if he opened a window, some might get in.
A truck kabooms down the street outside, tossing Julian’s heart into the air. He has to find his pen. Should he wake the Brother up? Could he? Or would the Brother yell? Would the Brother have a mean face on?
Julian’s eyes land on something scary in the corner of the ceiling: something with wings, as big as a baby bird. It waits like an evil stain with two white eyes.
Wake him up, whispers the creature. Julian plugs his ears. He doesn’t want the creature to talk to him.
I said wake him up, pea brain! says the creature. Julian scrunches up his nose, sits up, looks straight at the creature, whispers: Okay! But be quiet or you’ll wake him up yourself!
With his littlest finger, Julian touches the Brother’s shoulder. The Brother doesn’t move. With his second littlest finger, he touches the Brother’s bicep. Nothing. With his third littlest finger, he touches the very tip of the Brother’s arm: the sea lion’s nose. Suddenly the Brother jolts up in bed, swings his head from side to side, and lets out a gruff yelp.
Julian scrambles off the bed and onto the floor. He peeks his head just up over the mattress.
“What the hell?” the Brother says, his eyes bobbing with sleep. There is his mother, right there in the lightest parts of the Brother’s eyes; what a relief.
“I mean, I’m sorry,” says the Brother. Eyes up a little bit, just enough to see the Brother wiping at his forehead with his one hand. His face is lit up from only one side, where the kaleidoscope is coming in, and Julian can see the little hairs coming out of his chin, like a bad cactus.