When they were children, Patience and Isaiah broke one of their mother’s stone flower planters.

There were two of them, acting as a pair of underwhelming, unwieldy guardians stationed squarely on either side of the concrete staircase that led up to the house. The original paint that coated them was no longer white, stained with filth and cracked like the bottom of Miss Keyshia’s feet. Some areas were worse off than others, grayed where the paint had either naturally peeled off or where Patience herself had aided in the process.

The soil housed within them was always devoid of life, the seeds that their mother pushed deep down under remaining encased in their protective shells. Had they had any real use beyond being eyesores, there might have been a reason to let them be. Instead, as soon as their mother’s back was turned, in went their hands, snatching at the small white pearls that dotted the clumpy dirt. They even made a game of it, counting how many they could crush before they were caught.

Entire days were lost to the construction of cavernous holes gouged out with sticks in the pitiful stretch of patchy grass that they called a front yard. They were biologists, studying grasshoppers underneath domes where the primary building element was their cupped hands. Other times, they were collectors, selecting only the finest stones from the rocky ground. Almost always they were listeners, fine tuning their ears to catch the moaning of the wrought iron gate before it crashed into the outer screen door that, even then, had a battered look to it and flung open on it’s own accord when the wind kicked up. If they caught it early, there was time enough to scramble onto the last two steps with only the dirt caked underneath their fingernails as evidence. They could blame the holes on stray dogs or neighboring kids, who their mother already believed were ill-behaved and, for the most part, escaped unscathed.

That day, the wind had tugged at their clothes and scratched their cheeks, whispering the transition of summer to fall to the only ones who were around to listen. The sound became trapped in the shells of their ears, punctuated by the leaves as they scraped against the sidewalk.

Crouched close to the ground, they admired their prize; a grasshopper the size of Isaiah’s pinky. It was the color of sawdust, it’s tiny head endowed with large brown globes for eyes that took up most of the available space. Upon realizing that it was indeed a prisoner, it began throwing its body frantically against Patience’s hand in a vain effort to escape. It almost tickled.

Isaiah was much too close for comfort. On her knees in the dirt, she could all but feel his hot breath on her cheek as he pressed himself into her back to get a closer look. Wrinkling her nose, she considered releasing the bug right into his face - he was too much of a baby to catch them himself - but she probably wouldn’t have been able to catch it again.

Patience threw her shoulder back, triumphant when she felt it clip his chin. It was short lived; he yelped and she scrambled to her feet, half expecting her mother to come flying out of the front door. When she didn’t, Patience stuck her tongue out at her little brother and briskly walked to the other side of the yard.

He tried to keep up, jogging at her heels like a puppy until it became apparent that this was one of those times that she wouldn’t budge; he’d had his time by her side. He tried not to let his face droop too much as he picked a stick out of the grass, taking to one of the planters with a stick. 24 hours prior, he’d plopped a particularly thick earth worm into a shallow hole, covering it with a sheet of dirt before Shanice could pluck it out. He wanted to see what his efforts had yielded.

Neither heard the front door open, nor did they hear their mother descend the stairs.

“Boy, now what the hell I tell you about messin’ in my damn flowers?” Her hand clapped the back of his head, rattling his brain within his skull.

He cried out, wrenching his arm out of the dirt. He instinctively wiped his sullied palms on his pants. The planter itself, already balanced precariously on the edge for easy access, tipped from the sudden movement. Shanice threw out her hands reflexively, but caught only air. The planter came apart when it met the stairs, it’s brown blood spilling over her bare feet.

Tears were already leaking out of Isaiah’s eyes before his mother even looked at him. When she finally did, the dam shattered began to outright sob, globs of snot dribbling from his flared nostrils onto his top lip. She caught his wrist before he could make a run for the house, digging her fingers so deeply into his flesh that he was sure that her prints would remain imprinted on his bones even when she let go.

“Patience.” Their mother’s voice shook with the increasing effort that it took to restrain herself. “Gon’ head and pick out a switch right now since we already out here. You betta’ make it a thick one because if it break while I’m whoopin’ his ass, you gon’ get another one and you gon’ join him.”

But her feet were cemented to the ground. The grasshopper, closed within her sweating fist, began to lose vigor. As the last of her mother’s composure split wide open, Patience felt a needle of regret stab straight into her heart. Her tongue tripped over the frantic apologies her mouth tried to form, becoming snared on hiccups and tears that she knew only served to infuriate her mother more, but that for whatever reason refused to cease.

That night, Patience had cried until a headache put her to sleep. It was one of the worst she’d ever had, only exasperated by the throbbing in her backside.

That was how she knew that although it appeared to be her porch that she stood on, the presence of both planters, complete with little green buds peeking out of the soil, meant that it was an impossibility. If it weren’t for the planters, she almost could’ve deluded herself into believing that the boy who sat at the bottom of the stairs was alive and real.

He frowned, squinting at her. "What the hell you doin’ here so early?"

Next Chapter: 4