On the Way Home

“If you had a dog made of chocolate, would you eat its poop?” my sister asked me as we rounded the corner going to the darker part of the village. We were met by an unfriendly breeze, and as I struggled to tame my hair, my sister went on to say, “I mean, considering that the poop was made of chocolate too.”

“No, Janine, I would not eat its poop,” I told her, looking straight ahead at the road. The solitary street light was many meters away, illuminating only a small circle of dirt road, but we had walked this route so many times before that we didn’t need light to know where we were walking anymore. We grew quiet, listening to our own breathing, to the soft crunch of the pebbles beneath our feet, and to the wind that gently whispered in the trees.

“Even if it was chocolate poop,” I continued as we stepped into the circle of orange light. I looked at my sister, surprised that I had to tilt my head up just to see her face now. She had grown taller than me. The light had given her shadows beneath her eyes and highlighted the pimples on her forehead. She looked older, I realized. Not old, exactly. Just older.

She asked me, “Even if it tasted better than Hershey’s?” All of a sudden I wanted to stop talking about chocolate dogs. I instantly wanted to ask her about boys. Who do you like? Does he like you back? My sister and I always talked about everything except boys. I had learned to accept this, because I never did share stories with her about my own love life, or the closest thing I had to one. But as I looked at her much older face, I caught a glimpse of how much she had grown since I left. She wasn’t a child anymore, and neither was I. We were old enough to discuss boys all we wanted now. So why couldn’t we?

As we stepped back into the darkness, I worked up the courage to open my mouth and ask the damned question. Who’s your crush? I rehearsed the line over and over in my mind. Get it over with quick, like pulling a band-aid. It wasn’t supposed to be that hard. Autograph books could do it. Why couldn’t I?

I saw our house in the distance. Our walk was almost over. As Janine opened her mouth to ask me another silly question, I quickly blurted, “Do you like any boys right now?”

Stunned silence. We had stopped walking. The wind stopped whispering, and I could hear my heart beating in my ears. I felt myself turning red when Janine said, “What, you mean, like like?” I nodded, feeling my lungs starting to collapse.

“No,” she said simply, and I sighed a sigh of sadness, regret, relief. Maybe she hadn't grown up so much in my absence. Maybe she had. We walked in the cool darkness until we reached home.