Paige Lindsay

Here's the last that I wrote for Marvel Universe.

Paige Lindsay

I saw what happened. I just didn’t care. Once, when Gillian was little, Sam was telling her another Puxley and Poxley story, these stories about two pixies, which are like fairies or something else that doesn’t exist so-why-bother. Sam had been telling these stories since we were little. He stopped telling them to me years ago because I had no interest. But Gillian always loved them. He would tell her about how Puxley and Poxley were real, but the pixie queen wouldn’t allow them to be seen by people, so they could only appear if she were blindfolded. So she’s let Sam tie the cloth napkin over her eyes. And she believed, like Santa Claus.

So this time he told her they were going to take her up the Candy Mountain, and he held her hand as she climbed up the couch. She stood there with this huge grin on her face as he squeaked, in his little pixie-voice, “We’re so proud of you, Gillian!” A second later she’d fallen off and hit her head on the hardwood floor. Mom and Dad rushed in and started yelling at Sam, who was older and should have been watching out, and then they started on me. “Why are you yelling at me?” I said. “I knew she’d be fine.” Mom was like, “How’d you know that?” So I told her the truth. Sometimes, I just know.

Like, once Sam got real interested in my diary. He said there was girl stuff in it, but I told him that I was writing about the birds in the backyard. Anyway, he tried lots of stuff, like hiding in my closet and peeking out the crack to see me writing in it, but I heard his heart beating. Then, one day I went outside to write about this pair of cardinals, and I turned around and looked right up at the closed window where he was standing, binoculars in hand. I just knew. I had a wicked headache, though.

Sometimes it’s kinda scary. Last year Sam talked one of his friends into racing his nice car. That night I knew that something was going to go wrong. After the crash, they needed the jaws of life to get Sam’s friend out. Some nights I dream that I’m driving a car and it’s so dark I can’t see anything. I knew that boy was going to get hurt. I know I should have cared enough to have tried to stop it. I just ... didn't.