Sisters Are Strength

by Jessie
(Springfield, MA)

“Then why don’t you do it?”

“What?” I looked across the cramped truck cab at her. She was both my sister and my best friend, and what did she just say? To just go do it?

“I’m serious, Lexi,” she said as she met my gaze, her light blue eyes pinpricks of light in the darkness that surrounded us.

I laughed. There was no gusto in it, of course. Nervous laughter. I stared straight ahead through the dirty windshield. Silence engulfed the cab, broken only by the occasional staccato drumbeat of a big rig downshifting on the turnpike. We were sitting in my truck half-underneath the turnpike, waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up.

And she was telling me to follow my dream.

My dream of just going. Getting on the pike, following it to Route 70, and just driving. Wherever I ran out of gas would be the town I’d live in for a year. It was crazy, yes. But I’d carried this crazy dream with me since childhood, and my sister knew it.

And she was telling me to finally do it.

Yellow headlights fell across the cab, illuminating my sister for a second, making her look like an angel. I started to laugh for real. Then I reached over and pulled her close. We hugged for a long time.

That was the last time I ever saw her.