'From Phoenix, with Love' by Nicole VanderLinden

A turn signal did you in, blinking on-off as you drove along I-10 outside of Phoenix. You were pulled over because you were fourteen and a runaway and driving a stolen car. My car, as it happens, your older sister’s. Your head just over the steering wheel, your wretched puberty taking its time. Other things stolen: my Phantom of the Opera cassette, which I’d play on the way to school and which you said would make you punch the dash unless I swapped it for Pantera. Also, my guitar.

You pawned that guitar in Phoenix. For how much, I’ll never ask. And what’d you buy with the money? Food? Gas? Or—oh, you really did this—shot glasses and keychains, vacation trinkets in cactus themes? A t-shirt that said From Phoenix, with Love.

Once I had my car again (but not my guitar), I played Jesus Christ Superstar on repeat for a full eight weeks as we went to and from the high school, the tape flipping back and forth, the original Broadway Jesus dying on a Tuesday only to storm the temple before first period Wednesday.

Remember when I used to push that birthmark on your cheek, that little raspberry stain, and call you Wally-waba, as if your birthmark was a button, that word a spell, and how that sent you into a stratosphere so furious our parents had to ban the word, that stupid nonsense word? Remember when you took my hamster, my Punky Brewster, and threatened to break his neck?

A year after Phoenix, once you were long back in Ohio, your girlfriend started working at my McDonald’s. She’d run away with you, and now I had to train her on the fry vats, and I bit back some things I wanted to do. I didn’t put extra vigor in shaking the baskets; I didn’t splatter her with oil.

Even so, James. I kept that shirt, the one from Phoenix. Did you know? Because who can hold a grudge against a brother who conflates running away with vacation, who thinks convenience stores are gift shops, who keeps a tiny raspberry on his cheek? Who once wrote “sunny Orlando, Florida” on a napkin because he thought he’d won a trip, who once spent all the money he owed me on the board game Clue, because it was the luxury edition, and who knew when I’d want to play?