Ollie Falls Asleep

One out of every twenty people in the world are the dreamers, and they hold hands with the sky . . .

The boy thought that maybe if he wished hard enough, he could go right through the sky and into the clouds.

"Wishing's childish, Ollie," his older brother admonished grumpily. He sat up from the ground, because suddenly finding the shapes in the clouds was childish too. "Nothing good ever comes out of em. Wishes, I mean. You wish for something all your life, then never get it; what's the good in that?"

"You get old quicker if you never wish, Rory," Ollie said after a while of pondering matters of stars and oceans and peanut butter and pineapple sandwiches. "When we went to see Gramps at the old folks' home, I knew I didn't ever want to be old. Not ever."

"Well, you might just get your wish, there, old son," Rory said with a laugh derived from mixed emotions. He laid back in the grass again. "Lots of people die young."

Ollie said nothing in response to this; he was already off to another topic in his own mind: Sea otters. Sea otters who could talk.

Misinterrpreting his brother's silence, Rory hurriedly said, "I-I don't mean you're gonna die young. You're not. I just-"

"Neither are you."

"What?"

"You're not gonna die young either."

"Yeah," his brother replied nervously. He hadn't thought much about this subject before, but he already knew he didn't like it. Not even a little. Not even at all. He decided to change it. Fast. "Let's go get our bikes and ride down to the crick. 'S about time I taught you how to fish."

"Wilson Harbrough taught me how to fish last summer."

"What?" Rory sat up once again, blades of grass falling out of his tawny hair. "Willie Harbrough? Wide Willie? That fatso? Since when are you buddies with trash like him?"

"Aww, don't say anything bad about Willie. Sure, so he grew up in a trailer park. We were raised on a farm. So what? What difference does it make? We all live in the same world, unnerneath the same sky. We all get buried unnerneath the same dirt. We all drink the same water. We all might even share the same blood, way deep in the DNA, somewhere. You and me and the president, who knows, we could be thirty-ninth cousins twice removed or something. There's no end to how many things could be possible, Rory! Don't you see that? Our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great--"

"Two hours later, Ollie," Rory sighed affectionately, which was basically code for 'get to the bloody point, kid.'

"--great-great-grandpa could have rode a dinosaur to school! He mighta been a caveman! Or-or an astronaut in another universe!"

"Oh, Ollie. What'm I gonna do with you?"

"Mmm, well maybe one of these days you'll do me the favor of listening to me for once." With that, he jumped to his feet and charged down the grassy, flowered hill towards the lake on the other side. "Last one down's a caveman!"

"Hey, no fair!"

Rory took off after his brother, laughing, never realizing that this would be the last summer he would have with his brother, his best friend in the world, the little kid who daydreamed everywhere, who reached for the stars.

Author's Note

I heard a song earlier called Ollie Falls Asleep, and this spit itself out of my brain. Awkward.
Enjoy, lovlies!~