Sweet Soul (Sweet Home 4)

Elsie’s attention moved back to the table. I stayed rooted to the spot, my chest heaving in embarrassment, when Elsie blinked up at me again, her long lashes shadowing on her cheeks. How she looked in this moment bowled me over. Heat shot up my spine and I knew I’d remember that look for the rest of my life. If I could have captured her face in a photograph, glancing up at me like this, I’d be hanging it on my wall to stare at every night.

Dancing from foot to foot, needing to leave and forget my stupidity, I was about to walk toward the door, when I felt trembling fingers reach out to grip onto my arm. She tugged softly. I inhaled long and deep when I saw her pink lips mouth, “Please.”

Seeing this silent word grace her lips had me lowering myself back down on the small wooden seat by her side. Elsie smiled at me, then removed her hand. She pulled the too-long sleeves of my hoodie down to the middle of her palms and pointed to the jar.

She nodded her head in the direction of the clear glass jar and placed her hand over her heart. Taking another deep breath, though still feeling foolish, I explained why I’d brought her here.

Taking the jar in my hand, I moved it closer to us and asked, “You ever been to Alabama, Elsie?”

Elsie shook her head, but didn’t lose her concentration on the jar. “Well, in Bama it gets real hot.” I laughed a single laugh at the memory of the intense humidity. “I grew up in Bama, Elsie, in Tuscaloosa. We moved away when I was fifteen, five years ago now. Up until then, Bama was all I knew.” I lost focus on the jar, my eyes blurring at the memory of my childhood. I could feel Elsie’s eyes on me.

Coughing, I continued. “Anyway, like I said before, we didn’t grow up with all this.” I gestured to the room, and the house—everything. “We lived in a trailer in a real bad part of town.” My voice deepened, growing graveled. “There was me and my two brothers, Austin and Axel… and my mamma.” I swallowed down the lump building in my throat. As if sensing I needed the support just to think of my mamma, Elsie’s hand hovered above mine. My breathing paused as I waited expectantly for what she would do.  Then as controlled as she could, Elsie lay her hand on my arm, squeezing it just a fraction.

I wanted to lift my eyes to meet hers, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure I could cope with looking away from her hand. Strengthened by her touch, I spoke again. “I never knew my pop; he’d gone before I was old enough to remember him. But my mamma... my mamma was the best.” My lip hooked in a smirk. I surprised myself that I’d smiled remembering something good about my mamma, not how she was at the end.

“Like I said before, we couldn’t often afford electricity, so she would take us out to the woods near our trailer park,” I held the jar in the air, “and she’d fill the jar with lightning bugs.” I laughed and shook my head. “We’d fill as many jars as we could carry and put them all around our house. The bugs lived where we lived, so we had no problem catching them and keeping them for our light.”

My vision blurred on the jar as I became lost in the memory. It was like I could almost see those lit up bugs in my hand, as if I was stood in my old tiny room. “I hated the dark too. The stuff that happened outside our trailer wasn’t what a kid should see, so I needed light to sleep. And my mamma, she lit up the house like a Christmas tree with those jars.”

Shaking my head to release me from the memory, I felt my cheeks heat up with divulging so much. The jar was tight in my hand, and when I risked a glance to the side, Elsie’s eyes were glossy with unshed tears, and her small hand gripped tightly onto the locket around her neck.

My chest tightened at seeing her response, but as she squeezed my arm again, I knew she was asking me to keep going. Getting myself together, I placed the jar in front of where she sat.

Elsie watched me like she was hanging on my every word.

“Here in Seattle, we don’t get no lightning bugs, but Lexi wanted Dante to have those same Bama lightning bug jars in his room. I don’t know where she got the idea from, but she made him these because she couldn’t get the real thing.” I shrugged. “She made me help her. And I don’t know…” I sucked in the corner of my lip, before releasing it. “You made me think of this, when you said you don’t like sleeping in the dark.”

Moving her hand off mine, Elsie took the pad of paper from the pocket of the hoodie and set to writing a note. I read it. “Show me.”

“It’s kinda stupid and childish,” I said, real embarrassment ripping through me.

Elsie scribbled on her pad again. “I don’t care,” she wrote. I could see by the bright expression on her pretty face that she really didn’t.

I couldn’t believe it was well past midnight, and I was in Lexi’s craft room making fake firefly jars.

Feeling Elsie’s rapt attention, I picked up the jar and placed it down before me. Taking a glow stick that I’d borrowed from a drawer in Lexi’s desk, I cracked it, activating the neon liquid inside. I cut the stick in half with scissors and dropped them into the jar. Shutting the lid, I shook the jar until all the liquid had sprayed on the sides. I took out the empty plastic tube, re-shut the lid, then tied the ribbon around the top.

Laying the finished jar on the table, I sat back and announced, “It’s done.”

Elsie’s hand reached forward and she picked up the jar. Her forehead was creased, clearly trying to work out what I’d just done, then she looked at me with raised brows. Getting up from the chair, I walked to the light switch. I immediately saw panic on Elsie’s face, but I asked, “Trust me.” Every part of Elsie was still, but when her shoulders relaxed, she nodded her head.

I flicked off the light, and as soon as I did, I heard Elsie gasp. The jar, the glass jar in her hand, was beaming yellow neon light, its bright glow lit up the room.

I walked back to the table, and apologized. “It ain’t as good as the real thing, ain’t no lightning bugs buzzing about for you to watch, but it’s good enough for here and now. To be your light.”

I wasn’t sure if Elsie heard me, because her eyes never strayed from the jar. As the minutes passed in silence, I was worried her new hearing aid might not be working. But when her head finally turned to me, a huge smile was on her face, a huge blinding smile that knocked the breath right out of my lungs, I knew she’d heard me just fine.

Her fingers traced the splashes of glowing fluid on the inside of the jar, then she tapped her hand to her chin and lowered her hand. She’d signed something to me.

My eyes fixed on her lips, she dipped her eyes and mouthed, “Thank you.”

Chapter Seven

Elsie

The jar was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, but what this boy had done for me, what Levi Carillo had taken time to make me, was the prettiest thing of all.

He’d cared enough to bring me to this shed and make me this light, so I wouldn’t be scared. So I wouldn’t be afraid of the dark. He wouldn’t understand, but nobody, nobody, had done anything like this for me in years.

At this moment I was glad I didn’t talk to people. The clogging of my throat meant I wouldn’t get out the words even if I did. So I’d ‘spoken’ using the few pieces of sign language I thought he’d understand. He deserved my thank you in its purest, sincerest form.