Birthday Candle

On Scott’s twenty-first birthday, he roared down southbound I-15 in his old Toyota Corolla, his seatbelt hanging unbuckled behind his shoulder. He had just passed Spanish Fork, Utah. Cars and trucks smeared as he weaved between them, becoming brushstrokes of coal against the mountains to his left, Utah Lake to his right, and the snow-frosted buildings on either side of the highway. Above, the cotton candy sky settled into dusk.

He chewed on his chapped bottom lip and ignored his phone, which vibrated on the passenger seat. Samuel was calling again. In his mind, Steven’s voice murmured, Murderer. Murderer. Scott pressed the gas to the floor. The seatbelt rattled against the window, and he ignored it—he had to put distance between himself and the rest of the Robinson family, then he had to keep that distance, and nothing else mattered.

Out of his peripheral vision, a spot of red bloomed, and he looked up just in time to see the Kia in front of him braking. He pulled the wheel, jumping onto the left shoulder in a move that would’ve gotten him kicked out of Driver’s Ed in high school. His front right tire caught a few inches of air, making his stomach flip upside down. He got back into his lane after he passed a line of five cars. One of them honked, but the sound was lost to the wind.

His chest heaved and his vision blurred with tears, but he didn’t slow.

Instead of going drinking in Las Vegas with his engineering buddies from UNLV, Scott had decided to spend his birthday and the tenth anniversary of his twin sister’s death with his family in Provo, in the guest room that used to be his bedroom before he moved out. When he had arrived at the house, he went upstairs to put his backpack down. The room held only a few memories of his living there: a piece of washi tape on the wall, a sock behind the dresser, the plastic stars on the ceiling. It was more of an obituary than a living space now. Each time he stayed over, he saw less and less of himself in the dusty corners and chipped paint. His hands grew clammy.

Steven came up the stairs and stood in the doorway with folded arms. He stared at Scott’s bound chest.

“How have you been?” Scott said.

Steven sucked in his cheek, shook his head, then walked away.

Just one night, Scott told himself. For London. Then he could go home in the morning and not see his family again until he returned next year. He finished unpacking and went downstairs.

The Robinsons ate dinner mostly in silence that evening, except when Samuel asked, “So, how’s college?”

“It’s fine,” Scott said, voice tight. “Midterms are gonna kick my ass, though.”

“You’ll get it,” Samuel said, chuckling. Then, he looked at the photo wall in the living room, and his eyes glazed over.

After dinner, the family performed a happy birthday dirge around a chocolate cake with a single lit candle on top while they looked through Scott like he wasn’t there. Happy birthday, dear London and Lauren, they sang. Happy birthday to you.

Scott tried to relax his shoulders and smile. His chest binder pinched his sides, so he adjusted it as discreetly as he could to inhale and blow out the candle.

Mom saw. She pressed her face into Dad’s shoulder, her mouth contorted into something between a frown and a scream. She fled from the kitchen, her cries echoing off the walls as she went to the front room. Dad followed her out. Steven and Samuel shifted their feet. Scott licked his pointer finger and thumb and pinched the candle wick. It hissed, and smoke tendrils rose, filling his nose. He served his brothers, then they went to eat on the couches in the living room.

Steven and Samuel stared at the balloons floating in front of the TV, and Scott stared at them—their short beards, their flat chests. The clock above Scott’s head ticked. Pieces of cake stuck between his teeth as he ate, even when he swished Sprite around his mouth to dislodge them. There was a lump in the cushion under his butt. He wondered what it would feel like to look like his brothers—probably comfortable. His ribcage throbbed under his binder; he tried to ignore it by looking at the pictures on the walls. Most of them were of London. The largest one was from her last soccer game a few months before she died. She beamed at the camera, holding a ratty ball against her hip. Strands of her strawberry blond hair blew around her face and tangled in her eyelashes.

On Scott and London’s eleventh birthday ten years ago, Mom and Dad had gifted them new soccer balls. Scott’s was red, and London’s was yellow. Scott had kicked London’s ball into the road, and London ran for it, propelled by her new matching cleats. One blink, and it was over. Scott heard a pop that could have been London’s bones crunching but could have also been the ball under the neighbor’s Chevrolet Avalanche. Mom and Dad charged out of the house screaming, and the neighbor got out of his car, his eyes and mouth open in stunned silence. Dad peeled London’s body from the ground and held her in his lap. Her cleats smeared red gunk on his jeans. Her head was still on the ground, barely connected to her body by her broken neck, eyes gaping at the sky.

The funeral was a week later, outside in the city cemetery despite the chill. A closed oak casket rested next to a hole in the ground. Yellow carnations with long stems wilted in vases around it. Snow fell on Scott’s face, and as the flakes melted, they made his cheeks look wet with tears. He wore one of London’s black dresses under his coat. It had a ribbon that was supposed to go around the waist, but before the ceremony, he put it around his neck like a tie and worried the ends until they frayed.

Mom approached him. One of the veins in her left eye had burst the night before, so the white was bloody and bright. Her hair was pulled into a bun. She pulled the ribbon off Scott’s neck, then grabbed his shoulder and turned him around so hard that he almost fell to the dry grass. She cinched the ribbon around his waist, and he tugged at it. “Stop that,” she said, flicking his ear. He winced. She finished tying the ribbon with a bow. “Don’t disobey me. Do you understand?”

Back in the Robinson living room, Samuel blew his nose, jolting Scott out of his memories. He set his plate and can on the coffee table and cleared his throat.

“What’s wrong?” Samuel asked. He crumpled his tissue and placed it on his lap.

“I wish you guys would start calling me ‘Scott.’”

Steven rolled his eyes. “Here we go,” he said.

Scott’s ears buzzed. He tried to remember the script he came up with in his last therapy session but to no avail. 

“Please,” he said. “It’s my birthday.”

“Ok, so happy fucking birthday, Lauren.”

Samuel nudged Steven with his elbow. “Come on, not today.”

“Yes, today.” Steven stood. His face and neck bloomed with red patches. “I’m sick of this shit from her.” He pointed at Scott, his finger shaking, spit flying out of his mouth. “She expects us to accept that she’s a man now, and if we don’t want to enable her delusion like everyone else is, we’re horrible transphobes. We’re supposed to be ok with that? No. This is just another one of her episodes. She’s crazy, and we’ve known it since she kicked that fucking ball in the road and killed London.”

“It was an accident,” Samuel said. “They were kids.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Scott could muster. He looked at his hands in his lap, the blue-green veins under his skin, the dirt under his fingernails, the black soot from the candle wick. His vision narrowed to a point. He could almost believe the world was nothing but his ears roaring and his dirty hands. Strained sobs sprouted from his throat.

“Oh, you’re sorry?” Steven stepped closer to Scott, brushing the coffee table and knocking the Sprite can to the carpet.

Scott nodded, meeting Steven’s eyes. Each of his sobs flared the pain in his ribs.

“Then tell that to London’s grave, you murderer.”

The roaring in Scott’s ears crescendoed. Murderer. His cheek stung. An urgency prodded under his skin, demanding and desperate. A kick to the ribs on repeat. The bounce of a soccer ball on asphalt. Murderer. He sprung from the couch and fished the car keys from his pocket, holding them like claws, and backed away from Steven.

“Lauren, wait.” Samuel ran to Scott and took his other hand. “He doesn’t mean it. We can all work this out.”

Scott dropped Samuel’s hand. He needed to leave; he shouldn’t have come. Nothing here was going to change. He knew that he was the scapegoat for his family’s grief, and he could no longer let them slander and slaughter him for it. Murderer. Murderer. He fled to the front room, toward the door, ignoring his parents, who were holding each other on the stairs. They must have heard every word Steven said and hadn’t done anything to stop him. 

Scott grabbed his shoes and held them under his arm. He searched for something to say—a goodbye, perhaps—but his mind came up blank, so he opened the door and left.

The cement was slushy from the snow earlier that day, and it soaked Scott’s socks as he splashed down the driveway to the curb. The Robinsons watched him from the porch, bathed in yellow light, their arms around each other. Scott opened the driver’s side of his car, threw his shoes onto the passenger seat, and got in, slamming the door so hard behind him that it echoed against the stucco of the other houses lining the street.

Now, his mind flickered back to the present. He was driving down southbound I-15 heading to Las Vegas and had just passed the Scipio exit. The cotton candy dusk had melted into gray winter nighttime at some point, probably around Nephi. Headlights and taillights blurred around him, and every loose item in his car rattled like death. The speedometer read 11:11, or was that the clock?

He turned the AC and the radio on full blast. Green Day’s “Good Riddance” crackled through the speakers. He tried to hum along but couldn’t focus with the incessant buzzing of his phone on the passenger seat. He glanced at it—Samuel, calling him for the eighteenth time.

Maybe he had been hasty, he thought, leaving like he did. Maybe his family just needed another chance. He should’ve stayed and tried to work it out with them. What if they could change, and Scott shutting them down over and over again only made them less likely to? Besides, it was not the day for theatrics. All of them were grieving. This day was about London, and Scott made it about himself by requesting something he knew would cause a fight.

He reached for his phone, and just as his fingers brushed the plastic case, a yellow soccer ball bounced into the center of the road.

Scott pulled the wheel to the left and peeled off the highway, his tires screeching. His car careened through the snow, carving a deep trail and kicking up flurries of white powder. His teeth clacked against each other. He cried and couldn’t hear the sound. He saw London’s head hanging from her neck, the popped soccer ball, and the vein in his mother’s eye. He saw his father’s bloody jeans, a carnation in Samuel’s hand, and a fistful of dirt in Steven’s. His family’s voices surrounded him, chanting to the beat of the seatbelt knocking against the car door. Murderer. Murderer.

A ditch materialized in the snow ahead. Scott yanked the wheel, and the car spun out, the force pushing his skull into the driver’s window. His ribs twisted. The car tipped to the side, catching air, and flipped upside down.

Scott collided with the windshield. It shattered as his body went through it. He soared for two heartbeats, the cold caressing him and the wind breathing in his ears. With the snowy valley below, the shadowy mountains around, and the endless sky above, he almost believed he was flying.

Then, the world crunched to white.

It was his eleventh birthday, and two gifts sat in front of him on the carpet in his family’s living room. One was a box with balloons on the wrapping paper, and the other was a bag with tissue paper sticking out of the top. London, sitting cross-legged next to Scott, had matching gifts. Mom, Steven, and Samuel sat on the sofa behind the twins, and Dad crouched in front of them with a video camera to his eye. The red light blinked, and Scott formed his mouth into a smile at it.

“Ready, girls?” Dad said. “Open the bags first. Three, two, one!”

London squealed and tore the tissue paper from her gift bag, tossing it behind her. Scott watched it float to the shag carpet, his vision fuzzy. “A new soccer ball! Thanks, Mom and Dad!” She pulled the ball out of the bag. It was highlighter yellow and so bright that Scott had to blink away the afterimage.

Scott pinched the top of the tissue paper in his bag. It crinkled between his fingers. He imagined the model car set he’d been begging to get for months. He didn’t care what car—a Mustang, a Charger, even a Beetle—as long as it was a car he could build with his own two hands and display on his bookshelf for everyone to see. Something that said Scott. Something that was his.

London had already opened her other gift. Cleats. She giggled and stood to hug Mom and Dad, thanking them profusely.

“Go on, Lauren,” Mom coaxed. She was smoothing London’s hair.

Scott pulled the tissue paper out and stared into the bag. Heat flooded his sinuses. He blinked away the wetness in his eyes. His ears roared.

“What is it?” London asked.

All eyes were on him. He slapped a smile on his face and pulled the red soccer ball out of the bag, setting it on the carpet. Then, he opened the other box, which contained a matching set of cleats.

“Cool,” he said. “Thank you.”

London dropped to the floor and put her arms around Scott, pressing their cheeks together. “We can practice for soccer next year!” she gushed.

Scott closed his eyes and tensed, trying to still his shaking hands, which were balled into fists. London hugged him tighter, like she didn’t notice.

“We need to set some ground rules,” Mom said. “No playing in the house or in the neighbors’ yards. You can play in the front yard for now until the backyard is done. Just don’t kick the ball into the street, and if you do on accident, ask me or Dad to get it for you. Understand?”

“Yep!” London nodded her head. “Can we go play now?”

“After cake,” Dad said. “Come help me frost yours.”

“Chocolate?”

“For you,” Mom said. “Vanilla for Lauren.”

London sprung up and grabbed Mom and Dad’s hands, dragging them into the kitchen. “Come on, hurry, hurry!” Her voice was a birdsong. Steven and Samuel followed them, playfully pushing each other.

Scott was left alone.

He slid a cleat onto his right foot, tied it, then stood to test it. It crushed his toes. He took it off and put it back in the box, then curled into the fetal position on the sofa, letting tears run down his cheeks.

When he woke up, he was back in the present. He was too warm, his body laid sideways with limbs splayed out, draped in a thin blanket of snow. The sky was deep gray. Clouds covered most of the stars, but some of them peeked through, taunting him. Murderer. The moon shone still and cold. His car, crunched like a Sprite can underfoot, was ablaze a few hundred feet away. There was a trail leading from it to his spot now—he must’ve crawled before passing out, but he had no memory of it. The air smelled of gasoline and smoke.

He blinked, and it hurt; ice crystals had formed on his eyelashes. His ribs screamed, and his binder pinched. 

A pair of hands grabbed at Scott and turned him onto his back. The hands came away coated in something dark and sticky. Frosting? Scott’s mouth watered at the thought.

“Oh my god,” the man attached to the hands said. He had a thick beard and glasses. “She’s breathing. Did you call 911?”

“Talking to them now,” a woman behind the man said. Her voice sounded far away. “Can she talk?”

Scott strained his neck to get a closer look at the woman, but he couldn’t move. He stared up instead, making a gurgling sound in the back of his throat as he tried to gasp for air. Snow dusted his face. He wondered if his family would come for him once they found out he had crashed his car. Would Steven apologize for what he said? Would they all work it out?

“Miss, what’s your name?” the man said. He tapped Scott three times on the shoulder. “Hello? Can you talk to me?”

The man’s face morphed into London’s: the same chapped pink lips, wide jaw, and freckled ears as Scott had. Her hair tangled in her eyelashes when she blinked. She grabbed Scott’s hand and rested it on his chest, then smoothed his hair.

“I’m sorry,” Scott wheezed. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” London said.

Scott closed his eyes. He was back in his parent’s kitchen. A vanilla cake with a lit candle on top was before him, the sugar smell strong enough to make his teeth hurt. Happy 11th Birthday, Lauren was scrawled across the top in pink frosting. He scraped through the letters with his pointer finger, crossing them out, then put his finger in his mouth and sucked on the frosting. It was buttercream: light, smooth, and sweet.

He looked at his family. Mom. Dad. Steven. Samuel. They all looked through him, their eyes gaping. Unblinking. Unchanging. Murderer, they murmured.

Scott inhaled, then blew out the candle.