She leans her head on my shoulder. When she hugs my arm, her gentle
grip reminds me of my little sister. Of how she always rested against me when she grew tired in the back of our parents’ car. “What about you? Why do you write?”
I look at her and she’s closed her eyes against the breeze that passes
over the stream. I turn to face the shadows. “Because I have to. Because it’s what I’m good at. Those feel like the same thing.” She hugs my arm tighter. “Do you love it?” She buries her face in the side of my arm as if afraid of what the answer might be. I know I disappointed part of her already with the turn we took.
I shrug my bag off my back and set it beside me. I unzip it with the arm
she’s let me still have and pluck a journal from inside it at random. I lay it in my lap. “I always have. I’m trying to love it again.”
That seems to relieve what tension she was suddenly feeling. She lets go of my arm and looks down at the notebook. “Do you know where we’re going next?”
“Nope.” I open the book and flip through the pages. All filled with my
chaotic scrawl and hardly legible to anyone but us. “That’s up to whoever comes to get me.” I look down the path we came from. I hope when she arrives, she’s gotten the spark in her eyes back.
