Page 53 of His Sound
13We Won’t Run || Sarah Blasko
MOLLY
I just got your email.They look fucking awesome. Can we use all of them?
JP’s text pings on my phone just as the bus is pulling into the Ottawa terminal. I’m heading back home for my brother and sister’s birthday weekend; Stephen is two years older than me and Kenzie is four years younger, but they somehow both ended up being born on November sixth.
I think you should try to narrow it down to one, I text JP back.
I sent him some EP cover designs just before I left Montreal. He gave me the track list a few days ago, so I’ve been able to play around with designing the full CD case. The song titles are all in French, but Google Translate helped me work most of them out. They’re quirky and kind of magical sounding, with names like ‘Have You Ever Wondered What Fish Dream About?’ and ‘Sinking is the Same as Swimming When You Don’t Know Up from Down.’
They’re also very long, which was a graphic design nightmare. I’m more convinced than ever that the project is JP’s own, and I’m practically itching with curiosity to hear the music. We’ve gotten closer than ever since the Halloween party, and with that has come the same mix of confusion and elation that I always feel around JP. Getting away from Montreal actually feels like a welcome escape, if only to clear my head.
Stephen is supposed to pick me up at the bus station and take me to Mom’s house. He has his own apartment in Ottawa now, but after the divorce, he spent most of his time at Dad’s place while Kenzie and I stayed with Mom. Kenzie still lives there; she just turned seventeen.
Stephen’s wearing his usual baggy clothing and unimpressed glare, lounging on one of the benches in the terminal. We both became much quieter after the divorce, but I got quiet in a shrinking violet way while he became more of a menacing lone wolf.
Still, a smile twitches across his features when he sees me.
“Hey, sis.”
“Hey, bro.”
He jumps off the bench and we start heading for the parking lot.
“How’s Montreal?”
“Good. Much cooler than Ottawa.”
We’re typically silent as we make the drive to Mom’s place out in the suburbs. We used to have to cram into the tiny apartment that was all she could afford on her own. Now that she’s a self-made real estate mogul, she lives in a luxury duplex. She’s still in work clothes when she greets Stephen and I by the door: business-length pencil skirt, black tights, and a white blouse.
We actually have a pretty good relationship, for the most part. She’s intense about my schoolwork, but other than that, she’s a superhero single mom. She throws her arms around my neck and I wrap mine around her waist.
“My baby!” she croons. “Home from afar!”
She steps back and drinks the sight of me in before she starts hollering for Kenzie.
My sister has naturally wild hair like me that she’s spent the past few years obsessively straightening. She knew more about make-up by the age of fourteen than I’ve learned in my entire life, and her Facebook makes it clear she’s one of the most popular girls at her high school.
“Oh my god,what?” I hear her shout before she appears on the staircase landing holding an eyelash curler in place. “Oh, hey siblings. I’ll come hug you once I’m done getting ready.”
She disappears, and Mom rolls her eyes. “Yoursisteris going to a party tonight. I told her she has to have dinner and cake with us first, though.”
This is how it’s been since I was eleven: one cake with mom, then the next night we get shipped off and have another cake with dad. You’d think they could have sat together in the same room for just one evening, if only for the sake of not overfeeding their children, but no. There were two cakes every year.
Four, actually, since they both made sure Kenzie and Stephen got their own cakes.
We have a casserole Mom made for dinner before presents are opened. I help Mom light all the candles in the kitchen, and we each carry a cake out to the dining room, singing the birthday song in off-key voices. There are way too many leftover slices—there always are—and I know I’ll be taking a Tupperware container of them with me when I go back to Montreal on Sunday.
Later that night, once Kenzie has coerced Paul into driving her to the party and I’ve finished helping Mom clean up, I flop down on the mattress in my childhood bedroom. Most of my stuff has been cleared out, so the space is at once familiar and strange, like walking past a wall covered in graffiti you had memorized, only to discover it’s been whitewashed overnight.
I pull my phone out and find I have a few new texts from JP, most of them still raving about the art I sent him.
Glad you like it. I’m sorry I took so long to respond. I’m visiting my family this weekend.
His reply pops up a minute later.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
