Their grandma paused, concluding her tale, and her voice was so stoic and thoughtful that the two girls, too young to understand nostalgia, thought she was sad or scared.
“It’s alright, Nana.” The younger one takes her hand and pats it gently.
Her grandma grins, coming back to the present “Yes, yes, that’s merely how the story goes,” she answers resolutely. “Now you two promised,” she reminds them, getting up from the edge of their bed and walking to the door.
“Go to sleep, alright.”
“Alright,” they both respond as their Nana shuts the door behind her.
“Do you think we’ll hear it, Piper Pan’s pipe?” The younger cousin asked in a whisper.
The older cousin shrugged. “Maybe, but we’ve been to Nana’s house plenty of times, and we’ve never heard it before.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” the younger cousin whispers back disappointment apparent on her face. “What do you think the music would sound like?” she asks. “You know, if you heard it?”
“You mean you don’t?”
The younger one shook her head and her cousin didn’t respond, just carefully rolled over to her side and went to bed. She didn’t want to say it in front of her cousin, ‘cause she didn’t want her to worry, but she knew exactly how the Maestro’s music would sound. It would be the most melodious melody.
Because in truth, though no one knew, the older cousin was terribly and chronically miserable.
She hated being everywhere. She hated school where boys and girls made fun of the way she talked and how she looked. She hated home where her creepy uncle was always around, so when she had heard Piper Pan’s words, anyone who wanted desperately to be anywhere but here, she knew that if she ever heard it, this mischievous pan pipe, that it would be the most beautiful lullaby in the world.
So after her younger cousin had fallen asleep, she tiptoed over to the window, unclasped the lock and pressed it open just a smidge. Then she went back under the covers and wished very hard until she fell asleep.
But Piper Pan didn’t come.
Not the next night or the next or the week after that or the weeks after that.
But every night she opened the window just a crack and waited, staring out into the stars until her eyes became droopy.
And every morning before the sun came streaming in her nana would walk by the room, notice the open window and close it again.
And neither mentioned it to the other, but as the younger cousin’s Auntie pulled up in her car to pick them both up, Nana pulled her to the side and asked. “Will you watch out for your cousin for me?”
The young girl looked up at her nana quizzically. She had never been the responsible one.
“How?” she protested. “She lives across town, and besides she’s older.”
“Promise me,” her nana insisted a little more adamantly.
The younger cousin shrugged. “Sure Nana, sure,” she agreed
“And remember that I love you,” she repeated. “Past the stars and the moon, past the universe itself. There is no space or place where my love does not reach the both of you.”
“I love you too, Nana,” she responded the way children do, the same way puddles reflect the sky but are not nearly as deep.”
The two girls got in the car, and after they were asked about their summer and all necessary niceties, the older cousin put in her earphones and the car fell into awkward silence as she stared out the window.
And it seemed that was all she did.
She stared out the car window and the bus window when school started and the window during class as her teacher taught, and the one in-between their beds when the younger cousin slept over.
“What are you looking at?” the younger cousin finally asked one night when she stayed over for the weekend.
“I’m not looking, I’m waiting,” she answers after a moment.
“For Piper Pan?” The younger one scrunched her face, realizing what was happening. “I thought you said she wasn’t real?”
“I never said that!” she answers back sharply. “I said she probably wouldn’t come, but…”
“But what? Why’d you change your mind?” the younger one demands with itchy impatience.
“Cause I’m almost 13.”
“So?”
“I hear it all changes after that, girls don’t play and run, they just have to wait to fall in love or something, they don’t think, they don’t dream, and every month their insides fall out of their bodies, every month.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” the younger one huffs, her tightening with fright.
“I’m not, I’m not, that’s the truth, I’ve seen it already, Zuri doesn’t care about climbing trees anymore, and Maria doesn’t answer questions she knows that answer to…and last week…last week Sofia had to go home early ‘cause of stomach cramps and if I stay here that’ll happen to me, and mom doesn’t listen, and nobody cares, and I hate going to school, and I hate staying home and I hate her, I hate him I hate everything about EVERYTHING I—” the older girl stops, noticing that her cousin was shaking with fear.
She turned back towards the window. “So I’ll wait for the Maestro to come. I mean, after all, if she doesn’t then she doesn’t but if she does–I’ll probably leave and never come back.”
The younger cousin looks at her, the corners of mouth turned down and her eyes watery with concern.
“And you could come too,” the older one tries to assure her, standing up suddenly and excitedly.
“We can sail the seas and sky finding hidden treasure. We can dive with mermaids to the underwater cities, see beautiful things and fascinating inventions. We can learn to fight and dance, and meet the strangest and most interesting beings,” she says jumping from the window sill to the bed.
“We could even fly,” she insisted, throwing the covers over her cousin and tackling her.
“And sleep in trees and listen to pan pipes.”
The younger cousin yawns, “Yeah, that would be fun.”
“”It would, but it doesn’t matter, does it? Those are just stories, and I’m just being silly.”
The younger cousin yawned again, holding her cousin tightly. She wanted to say something comforting, but her lids were too heavy and she couldn’t find the words.
Or so the story goes, and so it goes.