UNDER PERFECT SKIES

1: Almost Invisible

October 5th, 2026

My dress for the funeral is too tight. It arrived a size too small and I didn't try it on until the exchange window had closed. The zipper digs into my back, and my ribs strain against the seams with every breath. Even the heels Mom picked out are already rubbing me raw.

Last night, I prayed for today to be clear. Blue should be the final color the sky gives Axel. But God hasn't heard me in a while, and outside, storm clouds paint the world grey. Wind shoves me across the driveway, and I slide into the backseat of Dad's Escalade. It smells like leather and whatever cologne he wears, thick enough to taste. Up front, Mom is quiet beside him.

I settle next to the only brother I have left. I need Aiden to take care of me the way he used to, so before Dad drives, I nudge his shoe. This has been our are you okay? signal for years. We used it with Axel, too. Nothing. Fine. But he's not getting through Axel’s funeral without nudging me back.

Dad tilts the rearview mirror until he finds me. “Christ, Anais, fix your face. Did you sleep?” Then he starts to drive. Aiden doesn't even glance at whatever's wrong with my face.

I pop in an earbud before scrolling to an old video of Axel lining up tiny soldiers, narrating some battle plan. His voice is almost perfect in it. The pitch is right, but the aliveness isn't.

This can’t be what I hear when I remember him. I stare out the window and summon his real voice, the one with no pause button or end, but my phone buzzes in my lap and he’s snatched away before I can reach him.

Kye: Don’t go quiet on us today, ok? If it gets too much, text me.

I almost like his text. Kye is trying to be there for me, but my mouth curves down for half a second instead, and I press the screen against my thigh. I hate that he sent it. I need this from Aiden, not his best friend.

Dad parks beside the chapel. The grass here is pale, washed out like the color's been drained from it. Axel deserves better than half-dead grass and untrimmed shrubbery. The math of it thins the spit under my tongue: my brother, just another body in a row of bodies. I press back into the seat.

My eyelids snap shut tighter than I mean, and I breathe through my nose so I don't lose it right here. Fields of green and gold roll in around me. For a second I'm actually there—soft grass at my ankles, pine trees pushing up from the hills, too perfect. One after the other, like the plastic soldiers Axel would line up and knock down with his homemade slingshot. I almost hear him run up behind me, but the footsteps are too heavy.

I open my eyes before my brain tells me to, and something clamps down on my chest. It doesn't let up, then I adjust to the pressure and smell leather. Cologne. The SUV surrounds me again, and knuckles bang on the glass, making me jump hard against the seatbelt. Mom is at the window.

“I've been trying to get your attention, baby.” She pulls my door open and presses a tissue into my hand. I unbuckle, then she steers me toward the chapel. “We can't be out here forever.”

My lips taste like saltwater. I wipe my eyes and smudge the little makeup I have on, the tissue already shredding to nothing. I take a step, and my legs forget the order. Deep breaths, I tell myself, like another unheard prayer.

We join Aiden and Dad by my brother’s casket near the podium. It’s a small mahogany one that's Axel-sized. This is all wrong. I keep waiting for someone to tell me when Axel’s coming back, that this is all staged, and that Mom and Dad just sent him on a vacation—one only for him.

I wish it were just me and my baby brother. That’s how it usually is. Was. People crowd in anyway. Aiden excuses himself when Kye gets here. They blend into a sea of relatives, friends, and the many people from our community. An aunt I barely know tells me I’ve gotten so tall. I say thank you to no one in particular, though. These are Dad's people, not mine, and certainly not Axel’s.

He looks at peace, like he’s sleeping, but I didn’t expect him to look like this. His hair had been thinning from chemo, but he refused to shave the last patches of brown. Now he's bald. Pale, almost waxy. His hands are folded over his chest, and he finally looks free from everything his body put him through. From everything we’ve been put through.

Part of me is jealous. The other part feels guilty that I am.

“Why’d they shave his head?” I ask Mom.

“They just did.” She looks away.

I can smell liquor on Dad's breath while he’s talking with his brother nearby. My cousins and Dad’s parents trade formalities with me like we’re strangers instead of blood, distant in that way Dad’s side usually is.

I walk over and stand by the seats arranged for my brother's service, away from this awful crowd. All I can do is stare at everyone, zoning out until they merge into one another. Aiden and Kye eventually join me, and their faces come loose from the smear.

“Hey,” I say to my brother, leaning in to hug him before he sits, but he only gives me a half-hug then goes straight to his phone.

“Hey, Ness.” Kye shoots me a dull smile. He and my brothers have called me that for years, since I was eight—Ness, or Nessy.

Kye does a double take over my face before meeting my eyes, probably noticing how much my mascara has run. I stand up to side-hug him, and it almost feels normal. Then his hand settles at the small of my back. Aiden wouldn't hug me like this. I don't know what to do, so I wait for him to drop it. He doesn't.

I let go first and look to see if my brother caught that, but of course he didn’t. He’s staring at his shoes now. I don’t think he’s seen me in weeks. Axel would have noticed, though. He noticed too much about me. I think he was the only person who saw me clearly. He steps back, shooting me a sad look, and we take a seat with Aiden in the middle.

Kye is at our house five or six times a week, so much that Axel used to call him Kye Johnson, like he was one of us. Since our brother passed, Aiden has been going to Kye’s instead.

“Ever gonna come back home?” I ask my brother, who only nods. I thought he would let me in like he used to when things got hard. He hasn’t. “Are you taking care of him?” I bug Kye now, pulling the corners of my mouth up before dropping it.

Aiden looks at me finally, but like I said something genuinely wrong. “Please, Anais, not now. I’m fine—just stop. I’m too tired to talk, really.” Then his face relaxes, and he looks down again. Maybe he’s being honest.

Maybe he can’t stand being home. I know every time I pass Axel’s room, I rip in half. But I’m tired too. It’s been hard to sleep knowing I'll wake up and Axel never will again. I toss and turn and sprawl and cry before sleep finally comes, the only time things seem to make sense lately, and I want to tell Aiden that.

“Don’t worry,” Kye starts, “I am. Promise. Did we wake you up when I dropped him off last night?”

“No.” But I hadn't slept at all. And it was hardly last night. I heard Aiden get home earlier this morning, around four-thirty-ish. I also heard Kye help him up the stairs. My brother was obviously drunk and probably hungover now.

“Good.” Kye gives me a real smile. “Who's taking care of you?” His eyes latch onto mine too long, like he's waiting for me to say no one. I look to Aiden, who huffs a breath and excuses himself. I miss when he took care of me.

The second he’s gone, Kye slides into my brother's seat. His arm drops across the edge of my chair, and his fingers brush just behind my shoulder. I lean a bit sideways, leaving an obvious stretch of space between us.

“I’m hanging in there, you know how it is. Mom’s there for me when she can be. Just sorta… well… I’m just sorta here. What’s his problem?” I ask.

He leans closer to my ear, close enough for his cologne to suffocate me. “I don't know, he'll come around. We'll start kicking it back at your place soon. I’ll bring him.”

“Oh,” is all I manage. Something about how close he is swallows every word I want to say. I can't think. My pointer finger scratches the webbing of my thumb and I press my other hand over it to stop.

“Hey, did you see my text?” he asks, like he didn't just send it.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I was busy. Got a lot going on today y’know?” I say, leaning back to make more space again.

“I know. I’m here if you need anything, okay? Seriously.”

My smile muscles pinch, catch, then quit. He keeps looking at me anyway, his eyes dragging across my face in a way they usually don't, then he draws in a long breath.

“I better go.” He gets up and walks to my brother, handing him tissues from a table he passes. The space he leaves behind feels like air finally reinflating my lungs.

I sit back and watch my family act like we're perfect, like the past few months didn't happen. Like I haven't watched Axel hooked up to machines, his hair on the pillow, his arms thinning to nothing. He was getting better. He even made it back home for a little. Then it was over.

I have to remember him alive. Axel always tried to fix things. He would cheer Mom up, and stand up to Dad even when it got him thrown across the room. But he was the only one who spoke about it like it could end: “When I'm as big as Aiden, Dad will literally have to fight me.” He said it like a joke, but I believed him.

His service passes and everyone fades into my periphery while the priest delivers his eulogy. After, Mom stands up front, sharing memories and struggling to keep her composure.

Next comes Dad.

“Son, I hope you’ve found peace, and, and—” His voice breaks, but he’s not crying. “We’ll miss you dearly. I’ll keep this family strong for you, my boy in heaven.”

Liar.

“Watch over us…”

He pauses and turns to Aiden, who steps forward:

“Hey, it's nice to see you all. I just wish it could be under better circumstances. Damn, we just celebrated my twenty-first.” He pauses. His voice breaks, and for a second I think he’s about to cry, but it doesn’t come. “What can I say? I taught him everything; how to throw a punch and play basketball. He picked it all up faster than I ever did. I wish he could have grown up.”

He looks at me briefly.

“Ax, I miss you. I hope you're not hurting and keep looking over us, alright?” He clears his throat at the end, and gestures for me to join, smiling like he wasn’t just a jerk. I walk to the podium beside him, but I don’t know how to talk about my baby brother like he’s past tense. And instead, I’m back at Sloan Kettering.

Dad’s parents made sure Axel had the best doctors money could buy. It didn’t matter, though—his doctor said it was advanced leukemia. Chemo immediately. I thought my little brother would live simply because he’d have to. For me.

The day my brother collapsed, I folded my hands and begged God like I had never begged before:

I’ll be a better sister, just let our family be lucky, don’t take him from me—take Dad instead, please God, take him and save Axel. Amen.

God didn’t hear me then either.

I couldn't fix my brother by covering his ears in the bathroom while the sink ran loud enough to block our parents fighting downstairs. I would have done it forever if it could have kept him alive.

“Do you need a tissue, Anais?”

The voice pulls me back. It's an uncle I only see on Thanksgiving, and I realize how far inside my head I've gone. I look up and there are too many eyes pressing into me, watching me struggle to find my voice.

“Oh.” I blink. “No. It's okay.” I thought I could imagine today away, but time caught up to me, and Axel never left for vacation. He left me forever.

“Thank you all for being here. I know Axel wouldn’t have liked how sad this is. I wish we had more than eleven years with him, they were the best. He was always so happy. I wish I had his optimism. I’ll miss you until I see you again. You were too good for this place…”

I pause, meeting eyes with Dad.

His words echo in my head before I stop them:

“STOP BEING SO GODDAMN STUPID. YOU’RE JUST WEAK. GET OUT—GO!”

Axel endured so much before the diagnosis.

“I miss him more than anything.” My voice shakes now. “I wish we could’ve seen you grow up too.” I look up at the sky like he might be there, watching. Just me and him, for the last time.

“I love you, Axie.”

I lean to nudge Aiden's shoe, and he nudges back. Ahead of me, the chapel narrows into those many eyes—Kye's in particular, burning into me.

“You’re finally free.”

I wish I were too.

I’m not.

2: On and On

October 15th, 2026

Days melt into one another and I want to skip school. Everyone would understand, and it’s dumb that I have to go back on a Thursday. But Mom says it’s time, so I go.

“That’s not like you,” Kye says, leaning in my doorway. I texted him for a ride earlier since Aiden is passed out in the basement, hungover from having some girl over last night. Dad is asleep too, and he won’t let Mom drive the car without him. As long as Kye isn’t busy with work, he can swing it. “You usually don’t wear sweats?” he says.

I shrug, “So?”

“Well, at least do your hair.” He gets close, his palm fitting against my cheek, pushing loose strands of hair out of my face. I lock my flinch down before it shows.

Stop is on the tip of my tongue, but I need a quiet ride. I step back and spit out something smaller instead: “Can you not?”

He laughs like I'm the dramatic one, then we head out. Ten minutes later, he’s pulling into my school’s drop-off lane; his truck is so tall that I see over the sea of cars choking the curb. He rolls to a stop, and some sophomore at the entrance does a double-take.

“Coach Turner? Yo! Haven’t seen you in a minute. You used to coach my team, remember?” The kid yells loud enough that heads turn. He jogs over, smiling wide like he just saw someone famous. Kye always does that—going into a space and suddenly it’s his. Sometimes I wish it worked like that for me too.

“Of course, man. Looks like you made JV? Good stuff,” Kye says, eyeing the junior varsity jacket the kid has on. They fall into small talk while I’m wedged between them, watching. That’s the thing about him, and my brother too: everyone knows them, everyone likes them. It makes me feel crazy. I finally squeeze past.

“C’ya,” Kye calls after me.

“Bye,” I mutter, looking anywhere but back.

The JV guy jogs to catch up with me, eyebrows raised. “Coach Turner’s your brother?”

I roll my eyes. “No.” Even though by now he may as well be related to me by blood. I walk away, somewhat frustrated because the world spins like it’s supposed to, but ten days ago I buried my baby brother. And today I have to go through the day as if my world didn’t come to an inexplicable stop.

The bell rings. I watch people bent over their phones or laughing down the hallway. I want to grab one of them and ask how they’re doing it. Lucky them, thinking about anything else besides their brother, dead and rotting six feet under. Axel hated rotting things.

I head to my locker and start to take out some of the textbooks.

“Anais, right?” I turn, it’s this boy from math class. We don’t talk a lot. He’s annoying. “I uh, I heard about your brother and—”

“What?”

“Yeah, I heard and I'm sorry, really sorry, for your—”

I don’t need this right now. “No, please shut up. Why are you talking to me about him?”

“Sorry, it's just… your brother came over, at least, I think your brother? Aiden, right? I just overheard him and my sister; it was like a whole thing, her boyfriend—”

“Whose boyfriend?” I cut in.

“My sister’s?”

“Aiden's dating your sister?”

“No,” he says.

“Then who?” I need him to get to the point.

“Kye. He made a toast to your brother. Axel, right?”

My jaw drops before I catch it. “Yes… Axel,” I say. I can't believe Kye, and especially Aiden—a whole toast for Axel, happening without me.