A Short Story by Gail L. Fontana

My sister’s birthday is next week.
Well, it would be.
If she were alive.
I guess it’s still her birthday.
Holly would have been 13.
It’s been three years since she died, and I’m happy to say that I haven’t stopped thinking about her even once.
The whole world has gone on its way, as if she never existed.
Not me though.
I can still see her face, hear her voice and her laugh.
But I don’t talk to anyone about her anymore because I got the feeling I was boring my friends.
My parents don’t talk about her, either.
At least not to me and vice versa.
I don’t like to see that curtain of sadness fall over my parents’ eyes when I mention her.
But it’s been three years!
Keeping my sister bottled up inside me makes me feel like I might combust like a firecracker.
Last year, I went ahead and put together a little birthday tea party in honor of Holly.
I made scones and cookies and muffins and tea sandwiches while my parents were at work.
When they sat down to eat, my mom asked right away, “Is this for Holly’s birthday?”
I nodded.
My mom took her napkin off her lap and laid it on her plate before getting up from the table and walking into her bedroom.
I didn’t say anything until I heard the door close.
“I screwed up, didn’t I?” I asked my dad, as I laid my head on the edge of the table.
My heart ached like it had been stepped on.
He shrugged.
“Might have, Kaylee-girl.”
He took all the food I made to his office.
“Sorry, kiddo,” he had said. “We’re all trying our best.”
Call me crazy, but I had thought it would be fun to, I don’t know, talk about Holly a little.
Tell happy stories.
This year, I’m going to try something else.

Shortly after the tea party fiasco, I found a list that Holly had written.
I found it tucked way under the mattress of her bed.
Have you ever touched something from the past?
I remember my breath caught in my throat and my fingers felt sizzly.
It was like time travel to see my sister’s handwriting while sitting on her bed.
Her paper!
Her words!
Written by her own hand!
Too bad the time travel stopped short of me actually seeing Holly.
Now, I pressed the wrinkles out of the paper for the umpteenth time.
It was a list of things Holly wanted to do before she died.
A bucket list of things to do before she kicked the bucket.
I wish I knew if she had written it before or after her diagnosis.
Wish number one was travel to Tuscany in Italy.
Wish number two was to grow a field of iris flowers.
Wish number three was to have a farm full of rescue dogs.
Number four was to eat a tub of Cool Whip all by herself.
The last wish on the list was to ride a Bobcat tractor.
I figured the least I could do was honor her by making the wishes come true—even if she couldn’t be with me when I did them.
I tapped my cheek.
Wait a second.
She could be with me!
Now don’t freak out, but we have my sister’s ashes.
We never buried her.
My aunt had told me at Holly’s Celebration of Life—which my aunt planned, by the way—that Mom had never thought she’d need to find a cemetery.
She just knew my sister would pull through.
My aunt said my mom knew deep in her soul that Holly would be fine…until Holly wasn’t.
So no plans had been made for burial.
Holly’s ashes are in a cardboard cylinder with a picture on it of a farm and a wheat field and a rainbow above the barn.
It’s sitting in my mom’s closet.
I’d take Holly with me.
I couldn’t do much about Holly’s first wish right now.
Maybe one day I’d take Holly to Tuscany.
The second wish—the field of irises—would take some time.
The third wish, too: We were a long way from having a farm full of rescue dogs being that we lived in an apartment and had zero dogs.
The Cool Whip wish?
Easy enough, but not grand enough.
But that last wish?
The tractor?
That I figured I could do.
With a little work.
We live in the city, but I could ride my bike into the country in about an hour.
When I was in kindergarten, my mom took Holly and me to the foothills, apple-growing country, to pick apples and drink fresh apple juice.
After that, we went every year.
Holly’s favorite apple farm, Bueno Cerro, was where I would find a Bobcat tractor to make my arrangements.
“I’m going for a bike ride,” I said to my mom and waited for her standard questions.
“Who are you going with, where are you going, when will you be back?”
“Not with anyone, just riding around, a couple of hours at least.”
I crossed my fingers, hoping my answers would give me a pass.
“Just riding around by yourself? For a couple of hours?”
My mom gave me a funny look, squinting as if that would help her see into my brain for more details.
I just raised my eyebrows.
“Be careful,” she finally said.
No, my sister did not die while riding her bike.
That warning was just standard-issue parent stuff.
I pedaled past the entrance to the freeway and past the very last stoplight in town, up a bit of a hill and then, there it was: apple country all laid out like a whole different world.
I rode straight to Bueno Cerro and there was the tractor, sitting forlornly at the edge of a row of trees.
Of course, it was early in the season.
The trees were still full of pink blossoms that somehow, miraculously, turn into apples.
I spied the farmer just as she spied me.
She stood up from the rocking chair on her front porch, shading her eyes with her hand.
Her other hand went to her hip.
“Hi,” I said, waving and leaning my bike against a tree.
“We’re not open yet,” the farmer called.
“No. I know. I was hoping to ask you an enormous favor.”
I was close enough to her now that I could see her eyebrows furrow.
“Did you need some water?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I want a ride on your tractor.”
Might as well just come right out with it.
No sense in beating around the apple bush, or whatever.
“My tractor? I don’t offer rides.”
The woman had stepped off her porch now and we met in the middle.
“It’s not for me. It’s, ummm.”
Huh.
How to explain it’s for my dead sister?
Once again, no sense beating around the apple bush.
I explained the entire situation, coming to a stop after I told her about Holly’s wish for a ride and how I wanted to honor her memory.
“Well, that’s a sweet gesture,” the farmer said. “But our insurance won’t cover someone young like you joy-riding on the Bobcat. Not without your parents’ permission. I’m sorry.”
To her credit, she really did look sorry.
But not half as sorry as I was.
There was no way I’d get my parents to approve that.
I nodded.
“Thanks anyway.”
I walked back to my bike and started to pedal away.
“Wait a minute!”
The farmer jogged to the road.
“You’re welcome to bring your, uh, sister and have a picnic in the Bobcat. That’d be close, right?”
I smiled and weighed the idea of no ride at all for Holly versus spending time on the tractor.
“Thank you,” I finally said.
As I cruised back home, between the rolling green hills and fields of fruit trees hugging the road, I felt an excitement and a burble of happiness I hadn’t felt in a while.
I would bake Holly’s favorite cake and come back next Saturday for her actual birthday.
There was just one glitch.
I’d have to do my baking in secret again.
Maybe my dad would be ready to celebrate Holly this year.
But I was pretty certain that my mom wouldn’t be into it.
At.
All.
I wouldn’t be able to frost it without them seeing, though.
So I came up with a better idea.
Holly’s wish number four.
I’d pick up a tub of Cool Whip on my way to the apple farm.
All week long, my mom had been giving me squinty glances as if she knew something.
On Thursday she came right out and asked, “You’re not planning a party for Holly, are you? My heart’s not ready, Kaylee.”
“Nope. Not a party. But, Mom,” I asked as gently as I could, “How can you not be ready? It’s been three years. I want to remember her and be happy. Don’t you?”
My mom shook her head slowly.
“Kaylee, I probably won’t ever be ready to celebrate the child that I lost.”
I watched my mom walk into her bedroom.
I guess I could understand it when she put it like that.
But just because I understood a tiny bit, didn’t mean I wasn’t going to honor my sister and celebrate her silliness and joyfulness and the day she was born on this earth.
On Saturday morning, I grabbed Holly’s bucket list off my desk so I could check off the accomplishment as it was happening.
Mom and Dad were working at their computers in the living room, so I snuck into Mom’s closet and picked up the cylinder of Holly’s ashes.
It was surprisingly heavy.
I took the frozen cake, called out, “I’m heading out for a bike ride. I’ll be back in a few hours. Going by myself,” and left the apartment.
First stop, buy the Cool Whip.
Then I pedaled myself, Holly, and her cake into the country.
The farmer was waiting for us on her porch and waved as I walked toward the tractor.
“Want some apple cider?” she asked.
She brought over a couple of plastic cups and a jug of the best-tasting apple cider, pouring herself some, too. “Cheers to your sister.”
“Cheers to Holly.”
I settled my sister on the seat next to me.
“Sorry I can’t give you a ride on this thing. But without your parents’ permission….”
The farmer left me the jug of apple cider and headed back to her porch.
I turned to Holly and petted the cylinder of ashes.
“You know I miss you, sissy. Sorry we can’t go for a ride. But I made you a chocolate cake. And, look, a whole tub of Cool Whip—just like you wanted—to spread all over it.”
I wrinkled my nose.
I felt like a six-year-old talking to some imaginary friend.
This felt stupid.
I reached into my pocket for Holly’s bucket list and my pen.
And came up empty!
“Where did it go?”
I looked in all my pockets and in the bag.
“It must have blown out on my ride!”
I couldn’t believe I’d lost it!
I wanted to see her writing.
I wanted to hold the paper she had held.
I wanted to run my hands over her words as if I was touching her hand.
And now it was gone.
Just like my sister.
“I’m not going to cry on your birthday, Holly. I’m just not.”
As I sat there by my stupid self, in the stupid tractor, with the stupid cake, trying not to cry and failing, I saw our car cruise to a stop behind my bike.
How on earth did they know?
I might have said a curse word that I shouldn’t have.
The farmer came out, meeting them on the driveway.
I put the cake away and the Cool Whip, settled Holly back in the bag and screwed on the cider lid as my parents walked up to me.
“We found this in the hallway.”
My mom handed me Holly’s bucket list and my dad put his hand on my shoulder.
“I thought you weren’t going to do anything for Holly.”
I looked at my mom, whose eyes looked like mine probably did, all red-rimmed and teary.
“I said I wasn’t planning a party,” I told her.
My dad looked into the bag.
“If there’s cake, it’s a party, kiddo.”
I just shrugged.
There are some things you can’t deny.
Like parties and death.
“Move over,” my mom said as the farmer came out of her house dangling a key.
I didn’t understand, so I just sat there.
“Are we going for a Bobcat ride, or what?” the farmer asked. “You and your sister first, then it’s your mom and dad’s turn. Let’s go!”
That Bobcat engine turned right over after a quick cough like it had been caught napping.
I looked at my mom’s face and she was smiling like I hadn’t seen since the doctor told her Holly had a great chance of beating cancer.
The farmer drove through the rows of trees then into an empty field.
“Hang on,” she said.
We toodled through the orchard and around the barns, scaring some chickens in the process.
When we circled back, I got out and my mom actually climbed in!
My dad kept his arm around my shoulder until they got back for his turn.
I wiped a stray tear as my mom reached for my hand.
“Thank you for this, Kaylee. I thought it would be too hard. But you were right. We need to celebrate your sister.”
She hugged me tight.
“Happy birthday, Holly.”
Mom’s face lifted to the sky.
I figured Holly was right here.
Where else would she be?
I knew that each time I checked off one of her wishes, she’d be with me again.
And every time I say her name and talk about her, she’ll be right here with me.
“Hey, Holly’s first wish was to go to Tuscany. What do you say to that for next year?”
My mom laughed.
Whether we go to Italy or not, or grow fields of iris or have a ranch full of rescue dogs, one thing’s for sure: we’ll be celebrating Holly’s birthday every year.
Because celebrating the people you love is always a good thing.

~gail
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