by Jay HOLLEY

Emi­ly hugged on­to the back legs of the yel­low lad­der, strad­dling two of its gal­va­nized feet with her size four bal­let slippers.

“Hold tighter,” barked her slight­ly-old­er broth­er Bran­don from a few rungs above. Bran­don was quite scared as he climbed to the rick­ety sum­mit, stood on sneak­ered tip-toes, and un­hinged the plas­tic cas­ing of the smoke detector.

“I’m hold­ing as tight as a girl can hold,” Emi­ly as­sured him, “but maybe if you weren’t such a fat­ty I could hold a lit­tle stronger.”

Bran­don pulled a fud­gesick­le stick from his jeans pock­et and wig­gled it un­der the bat­tery. The bat­tery popped from the plas­tic hous­ing and fell to the green car­pet be­tween Emi­ly’s toes. Both sib­lings looked at the gleam­ing sil­ver 9‑volt and smiled at their conspiracy.

“Shut it back and come down here,” Emi­ly in­struct­ed her slight­ly-old­er broth­er, “shut it back.” Bran­don’s legs were wob­bly but he stretched back to his tip­toes, snapped shut the smoke de­tec­tor and eased down the paint-splat­tered ladder.

Bran­don and Emi­ly closed the fold­ing lad­der and to­geth­er leaned it against the her­ring­bone wall­pa­per. They sat in front of their much-old­er broth­er Aaron’s room tri­umphant, tak­ing turns press­ing the bat­tery’s ter­mi­nals against their tongues.

“What if there’s a fire,” won­dered Bran­don, “and Aaron dies for lack of warn­ing.” Emi­ly frowned, then mo­tioned for her broth­er to pass the battery.

“I’m pre­pared to take that risk,” she an­swered, her re­sponse mum­bled be­cause of the elec­tric cur­rent scram­bling across her mouth.

“Yeah,” agreed Bran­don, stretch­ing out his fin­gers and mo­tion­ing for the bat­tery’s re­turn, “what did he ever do for us?”

Filed under Fiction on February 22nd, 2008

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