Genes II: Waited, waiting.

Strong, soft hands carefully wedging the sheet between the mattress and the bed frame. 

“Hand me the other side.” He stretches out his arm, taking the worn cotton from Rosie’s hands. The fabric has little Batmen printed all over its body, a hundred different crimes and a hundred different lives changed. 

It is the old Batman, like the shows Rosie watches in art when Ms. Mariano is too tired to teach. She hands out markers and pads of paper, turns off the lights so the drawings are barely visible, and plays reruns of the original series. 

“He's so strong!” Eliza exclaims, watching Adam West pull himself up the side of a building. 

“They’re just walking, stupid,” Jake tells her, scribbling over his entire paper with a dried out black marker that only produces a frazzled greenish grey. 

“What?”
“They turned the camera to the side. So it looks like he's going up.”

“No,” Daniel says, “they built the building on its side. All they have to do is walk and hold the rope up.”

“Oh,” Eliza says, capping her marker and pushing her drawing of a heavily shaded sphere to the side. “He still looks strong.”

He pulls the sheet taut across the top bunk too close to the ceiling for anyone to actually get in, securing the other side and letting the rest fall down, enclosing Rosie inside a box of filtered light and dark wood. She can see his shadow in front of her, then fading away. She waits, waits, waiting for his figure to materialize again. 

“Peekaboo!” His disembodied head pokes in. Rosie laughs deep from her stomach, doubling over, relief of his return surpassing the fright of surprise. “Scooch over,” he says, swinging a leg over the railing and squeezing in next to Rosie. 

“What do you want to hear about today, my darling?”

“What were you telling me last time?”

“Hmmmm. I don’t remember…”
“It was about twins!” 

“Ah yes! Do you remember their names?”
“Ummmm. Voila and ummmm.”

“Viola. And Sebastian."

“Right. Voila and Sebastian.”

“Well, Voila and Sebastian were twins…” 

Rosie falls asleep halfway through act three. Soft, strong hands slip her under the covers. Soft, strong hands smooth her hair and close the door so gently she doesn’t even know he’s gone. 

Hot, stuffy air. The sheet keeps ticking her nose, being pulled in, pushed back, and pulled in again as she breathes. Shallow, to not use up the air she has left under the cover. Rosie tries to match her breath to the sounds of the voices downstairs. Loud voices. She breathes in on her mother’s lines, breathes out her uncle. In, out, in, out. Out again. Out, out, out. Her stomach suctioning, she wishes her mom would say something. 

Rosie rips off the cover, gulping in cold fresh air. She breathes in until her lungs press against her ribs, chest puffed in the dark. Pressing her pointer fingers in her ears, the yelling is quieter. Quieter than under the covers. Muffled, like when she tries to talk to her brother underwater at the pool. She can hear his voice, but no words. A faint gargle while the water presses in. 

She looks over at her brother in the bed next to hers, but his back is turned. His spine rises and falls slowly, evenly, every breath rolling down across shoulders rounded, disappearing under the covers. She traces the air's journey along the curve of a curled knee, finger catching in each small groove though his back falls even. She matches her breathing to his.

“Max,” she whispers into the darkness, her voice too loud in her blocked ears. His spine rises and falls. Rises and falls. 

“Max.” Her voice is much quieter without her fingers in her ears, much quieter than the voices marching in from downstairs. 

Turning her spine to his, she faces the chipping wallpaper. She likes picking at it in tiny flecks, taking off one petal at a time. He loves me, he loves me not. The flecks fall down, getting lost within the dust-yarned carpet, eventually becoming dust itself. 

—

“Come on, we're late.” Rosie's mom comes into the room, shaking out her wet hair with her hands. A drop lands on Rosie's cheek. She lets it stay.

“The shirt looks nice,” Rosie says. 

“Oh I don't know. It's black, that's all that matters. Why aren't you dressed?”

“I don't want to come.”  Her mom pauses, arms hanging in the air. 

“Its the last time you'll ever see him.”
“But it's not really him.”

“You may regret it when you're older.”

“I just… it's not him.”

“I get it.” Her mom sighs and pulls Rosie in close to her. They stand there, in the center of the room on the red shag carpet, strands wiggling up in between their toes. “You’re still coming to the funeral, though. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Are you alright to stay here by yourself?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”

“It's not him.” Rosie’s mom squeezes her harder, breathing in the top of her head, before releasing her. 

“I’ll call you when we're done.”

“Okay.”

Once Rosie hears the garage door close, she goes out into the hall to the linen closet. The sheet is at the very bottom, in the far right corner. Rosie doesn't know when she stopped seeing it show up on her bed, but she hasn’t been reunited with Batman in years. 

She has to stand on her suitcase to reach, messily stuffing the sheet in against the top bunk until it seems to hold. It hangs down unevenly, the right side nearly touching the floor, but it covers the opening and that's all Rosie cares about. Sliding up under the sheeted-wall, she sits in the center of the mattress, slumping down and tucking in her chin so she doesn’t hit her head on the slats above. She counts the scenes before her, looking for her favorite - Batman on a ladder saving a kitten from a tree. Instead, she sees Batman stopping a thief, holding a thankful woman’s purse in one hand and the criminal in the other by the collar. Batman scaling the side of a burning building, the flames almost completely faded out against time. Batman standing alone, back to Rosie, triumphant with his fists on his hips. 

She waits for his figure to materialize in front of her, for his shadow to block out the light and come into focus. She waits, waiting.