Black and Blue and Brown Sugar

The summer before seventh grade, I took diving lessons and I remember many things from that summer but none quite like the scent of the body wash I used in the showers of staples high school, a few towns and a couple tax brackets over, a scent of cartwheels in open fields and dirty bare feet upon clean sheets. My mother hated the sickly sweet of the brown sugar smell but I was somewhere between twelve and thirteen and the next best thing was cotton candy scented perfume from CVS so she relented. I never found the bottle again but I'll never forget the smell of it, my wet hair upon my shoulders and spread across the pillowcase covering my face because what else is there to do when your little brother can't sleep.

He didn't sleep for months, stayed up for hours asking where people went when they died and why and would his playground crush still be there and who would play with her now that she was alone. Her brother left standing in the backyard by the massacre of a makeshift zip line and a mistake of chance. A small town was left silently picking shards of mirrors out of fourth grade boys fists because there's nothing to say in the silence of aftermath. Princesses drown in the mouths of teary eyed adults.

To this day, I hate sitting on curbs, because I still see my brother's face when heard the news that the sun had set too early and to this day I still hate that he won't cry at wakes and to this day we still knock on the wall between our rooms, just to make sure we are both still there, breathing, bathing in brown sugar. Sickly, sickly sweet.