Wrapping her arms around my neck, she gave my lips a lingering kiss. “I’m going tocomeback.”
I placed my hands on her hips and stared deeply into her brown eyes. “I know you will.” Though in the back of my mind, I wasn’tsosure.
15
Casey: What Could GoWrong?
The man waitingfor me near baggage claim was nearly unrecognizable. In fact, at first, I’d ignored his efforts to get my attention until I took a closer look and nearly passed out from theshock.
“Luke?”
“Who else would I be?” He smiled, but there wasn’t a drop of levity behind it. Even his eyes, always so expressive, gave off nowarmth.
“I’m… I don’t know. You look totallydifferent.”
Granted, it had been a couple of months since I’d seen him last, but Luke had made the transformation of alltransformations.
“Did you dye your hair?” The mere uttering of the sentence seemed ridiculous, but here I was staring at my brother, whose normally dark close-cropped hair was now licking at his ears and highlighted with streaks ofblond.
“No, I just woke up one day and it was thiscolor.”
“Really?” Somehow that made more sense than himdyeingit.
“No. Of course I dyed it. Or a friend of mine did. I take it you don’tlikeit?”
“I just… I’m shocked, is all. It might take some gettingusedto.”
The other thing that was tripping me up was his weight, or the lack thereof. He caught me eying him and answered my question before Iaskedit.
“I’ve lost someweight.”
“Some? Are you okay? You’re not sick,areyou?”
“No, Casey. I just lost some weight. Nobigdeal.”
“It’s not some weight, Luke. You’ve lost everything! I mean you look…youlook…”
I’ll tell you what he looked like: a completely different person. And it wasn’t just his outward appearance that had me all weirded out, there was a change in his overall personality as well. No longer the jovial goofball, Luke had a strained exterior now, as if his light, which had always burned so bright inside him, had burned out. My god, I’d been wallowing in my own sadness for so long that I hadn’t even stopped to consider what Luke was going through. Sure, Mom had said she was worried about him, but she didn’t mention this full-bodymakeover.
“Would you please stop staringatme?”
“Sorry. You could have warned me. I mean, would a Facebook update havekilledyou?”
Instead of answering, he bent down and hugged me. “How are youdoing,sis?”
I fell heavily into his arms, feeling sluggish and worn and in need of my big brother’s comfort, even if he now looked like abeachbum.
“I’m okay,” Isighed.
“That’s not whatJakesays.”
I didn’t answer. What was the point in defending myself when neither one of us would believe it anyway? “How’s Mom? I talked to her just before the flight. She soundedprettygood.”
“Yeah, but you know Mom. She’s pretending everything’s fine in order togethome.”
“You don’t think she should leave thehospital?”
“Not if, when she gets home, it’ll be business asusual.”
