The following morning, Sam awoke to find that his sister had reversed positions with him, and lay with her arms over his shoulders, her breath tickling his neck. He quietly slid out from under her, and stood to find that his headache seemed better than the day before. This only served to make him suspicious, however; his eye was still unusable, after all.
As he entered the kitchen, he raided his host’s fridge for eggs, and began to put together some breakfast.
He thought back to his discussion the previous day with the professor; perhaps he’d been right about completing his leap. All he had to do was meet and make a good impression on that guy in the grocery store – what was his name again?
I should remember his name.
He just had to go back to Main Street, and pay attention to traffic this time around; surely he’d remember the name if he thought hard enough.
“Smells good,” said Katie, poking a head in the doorway.
“It’s nothing fancy,” Sam admitted, scraping the frying pan with a wooden spoon, “just scrambled eggs. I think there’s some OJ in the fridge, if you want it.”
Katie opened the door of the refrigerator, peering around for a moment, before taking the orange juice carton out and hunting for something to pour it into.
Sam pointed to a cupboard. “Glasses are in there, I think. Could you grab a couple of plates too?”
The two ate their breakfast at the kitchen table in near silence. To Sam, Katie seemed emotionally wrung out, and he couldn’t blame her. He felt the same way, after all.
Katie was the first to finish, and she carried her dishes back to the kitchen, before wandering back out with a funny look.
“You forgot to turn off the stove,” she said, looking a little spooked.
Sam bit his lip. It was, indeed, unlike him to forget something like that. And now it was time to explain to Katie why he did. He beckoned her back to the table, and she followed the direction with concern.
“I guess it’s starting,” he said through a long sigh.
“What’s starting?” Katie’s eyes were wide.
“I told you about my headache, right?”
A silent nod.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s beginning to damage my brain. Clearly, it’s starting with disruption to my memory. I don’t know what’ll be next, but I think this is just the beginning.”
Katie looked away from him, and down at her hands. “I see…”
“I have one small chance left to see if I can leap today. Will you… help me? I don’t know how fast this thing will progress and…”
“Of course I’ll help,” said Katie, shooting him a sad – but genuine – smile. “What are big sisters for?”
* * *
Sam rubbed a towel over his hair, and studied it in the mirror. Yolanda’s hair could not have been more different to his own; there was a lot of it, and it may have looked more at home styled in an Afro than anything Sam knew how to do. He ran a brush through it, which seemed only to give the hair even more body than before; it stuck out in every direction. Had it been this hard to style a few days ago?
He wanted to make a good impression, but with only one functioning eye and a compromised frontal lobe, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get his appearance right this time.
As he brought a mascara brush to his eyelashes, he grunted as the brush slipped and poked his eye. He dropped it, and rubbed at the eye – his good eye, too, he thought bitterly.
“You okay in there?” Katie asked, peeking a concerned head into the bathroom doorway.
“No.” Sam sighed. “I… I can’t do this.”
Loss of fine motor skills… check.
“Let me help,” said Katie. “I always wanted a sister to practise hair and makeup on.”
She grinned, taking up the mascara brush. “I’ll make you pretty, Sam. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a mascara brush in my eye.”
Sam smiled as she inspected the makeup available, and closed up the mascara.
“First off you should hold off on the mascara until after the eye-shadow, because the powder might get on your lashes.”
“Right, I knew that,” Sam said.
“And wow, look at this hair. There must be product for it somewhere round here. I’ve seen my friend Violetta use some kind of cream; she has hair like this.”
“Guess you’ve got this covered.”
Katie grinned, as she produced a bottle from the cabinet. “Makeovers are a teenage girl’s specialty, don’t you know? Go get a chair while I check out all this stuff.”
The makeover was something of a healing experience for Sam. Not the kind of healing that would halt the march of his affliction, but healing that took place on the emotional and spiritual level. He found himself a little less burdened, knowing that his baby sister was all in on helping him, whether he looked like her brother or not.
And by the end of it, the mirror image looking back at him was fresh and beautiful. Katie had chosen different colours than the well-used mauve, and he found Yolanda’s face lit up by a bright orange over her eyes, somewhere between the colour of peaches and apricots, and a similarly peachy pink on her lips. Her hair was styled into a well-formed Afro, and Sam had no idea how his sister had known how to do it – but it looked amazing.
“Sam, you look like a beauty queen!” Katie announced.
Sam looked up at her with a grin. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Thank you, she looks— I look great.”
“What do you mean it wouldn’t be the first time?”
Sam winked. “I, uh, might have won a beauty pageant once.”
Katie’s mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
“I’m not usually this much of a klutz with a makeup brush, you know. A parasol and a set of heels, on the other hand…” He cringed at the memory.
“Oh, yeah, right,” Katie laughed. “You’re just yanking my chain… aren’t you?”
Sam responded only with a wiggle of his eyebrows and a wide smile.