Haley
Lukas Tallent 

MY COUSIN and I don’t speak because he is in a coma. I am staring at him stare at the nothing behind his eyelids. He has gray eyes, but mine are blue. A tube juts out of the corner of his mouth because he can no longer breathe on his own. My flight back to school leaves in three hours. The airport is not far. Relief—his mom, I think—is on the way. In room 23, I am alone, but he is not.

My cousin and I don’t speak because he is drunk. Also I am up north, some thousand-ish miles away, and he is down south. I know that he will flip his Jeep over the retaining wall on I-75 into the median, the woods a few miles between Calhoun and Charleston, but he does not know this. Or perhaps he does, but by that time, it doesn’t matter anymore.

My cousin and I don’t speak because he has a girlfriend, and I do not. Mine has broke up with me again, which is turning out to be a recurring theme around the holidays. My cousin and I don’t speak because I can buy alcohol, and he cannot. At Thanksgiving dinner, my cousin and I don’t speak because his parents are together and mine are not. 

My cousin and I don’t speak because he plays basketball, and I play bass guitar in the marching band. We don’t speak because, at fifteen, he knows how to drive a car, and I do not. Dad doesn’t have time to teach me, and Papaw scares me because I worry about how much he knows and can’t look him in the eye anymore. At school, my cousin and I don’t speak because he is cool and I am not.

At Nana’s house, my cousin and I don’t speak because I am twelve, and he is eleven, and we are naked and lying side by side in the guest bedroom. It is late, and we are covered with each other, the only two still awake. And I can forgive us for this want, but he cannot.

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Lukas Tallent lives in Knoxville, TN.

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