It was around ten the following Sunday morning, when Sky and Star were both woken from a rather restless night by the sound of Brie calling up to them from the bottom of the stairs once more, “kids? Are you up yet?”
With a groan of disapproval from each of their throats, the two made their way groggily from their rooms to look down at her from the banister above, “we are now” Sky called back down to her hoarsely. Though, this morning, he had at least risen from bed wearing those same PVC pants from the day before rather than his usual sleep attire of just a pair of form-fitting boxers. And Star also had a pair of silk boxers on over the panties that were all she usually had beneath the tee she slept in.
Smiling slightly up at them, Brie spoke again, “your father and I need to run to the grocery store. We’ll probably be back in a couple of hours” she informed them with an only slightly cautious look.
“Should we be calling a sitter again?” Sky couldn’t help the remark.
“Don’t push it while I still feel bad for you two” she warned, though still managed the smile, “see you in a couple hours.”
The two looked back at each other with a still rather sad sigh as they heard their parents leaving. They were glad to have re-established some trust between them and their parents; as oddly as that change had come about. But they were still rather distraught about the events they had learned of the previous evening.
“Did you get any sleep at all?” Star asked him sadly.
“Maybe passed out for ten whole minutes” Sky returned with his own sadness.
“I don’t even know how I’m gonna talk to Crista now. Everything actually seemed better for a while, yesterday. But now we know how not better everything really is” she sniffled slightly.
“And the fact that it was our first time? Both of ours?” he shook his head as he turned sadly back toward his bedroom door, “I mean, the way you were sitting there crying as she screamed at us, and all I could think was; I just made love to this girl, and was about to finally be able to make her feel something good, for once... and now she’s crying and bleeding cause of what we did” he shook his head again.
“Sky” she breathed his name as she moved to touch his arm as he had now taken a step back toward his doorway, his back to her.
“I mean how fucking stupid were we? I mean, we had to know how easily we could have gotten caught. And then we were” he shook his head again as he moved back into his room, taking a sad seat on the bed.
“I don’t think either of us could have predicted what really was going to happen. It hardly was a time when we were thinking very clearly” Star attempted to assure him as she stepped into his room behind him.
“Well maybe we should have been able to. We can do enough other shit with our minds. Why not predict the future too?” he scoffed.
“Well this was before our visit to that weird silver room. Probably before we even knew we could do much of anything” she added as she moved to take a seat next to him.
“I think the power we really need is to be able to go back in time, knowing the things we know now” he sighed again as she laid her head on his shoulder.
“It’s still the same problem as this alternate reality. Even if we went back and made everything perfect again; the stuff in our heads would always be there, to always fuck up everything again. One way or another” she stated.
“So there really is no hope of us ever being happy?” Sky scoffed.
Star sighed sadly, “I think it’s a question of trying to live with all the shit in our heads and still find a way to move on.”
“And how the hell do we do that?” Sky asked desperately.
“I have no idea” Star whispered as a tear slid down her cheek before she turned to cover his mouth in a gentle, somewhat sad kiss.
He reached up to gently caress her cheek as the kiss ended, though they didn’t move apart, “there’s another kiss. What are we gonna fuck up this time?” he attempted to joke, but the emotion in his voice was hardly one of happiness.
“I don’t know” Star whispered back, “I just know that letting myself be afraid to even be close with you again... that would be just as bad as staying there, in our world, and letting them take away the way we felt about each other.”
“Yolo?” he offered with a small smile, as she sadly smiled back, and kissed his lips again.
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When the two finished making love that morning, and slowly began dressing again before their parents’ inevitable return, they glanced up at the sound of a text message beeping Star’s phone from where she had left it in her room across the hall, where both their bedroom doors had remained open while they had made love.
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Star and Sky gave each other a questioning look as they finished dressing and Star made her way back across the hall to check her phone. Sky followed her a moment later, after lighting that post-coital cigarette and looked at her expectantly as she gave her phone a confused look.
“That mysterious?” Sky offered, “or just from a really bad typist?” he added as he blew some smoke through his lips.
“From Crista” Star said as she continued to look down at the screen.
“Her fingers still work, huh?” Sky smirked.
“Ha ha” Star shook her head, though her mind was still on the message, “the girl is weird.”
“No wonder we get along with her” Sky added wryly.
“Her message: Does witchcraft wear off? Holy shit, lemme know!” Star looked up and shook her head.
“Maybe she’s drunk” Sky shook his head back.
“Witchcraft?” Star repeated, “what?”
“Don’t look at me” Sky smirked, “call her back and ask her what the fuck she’s talking about.”
“So we are still tryin to be friends with her?” Star asked, a bit of their previous sadness easily returning.
“I think that’s your call” Sky replied sadly as he took another drag.
Star took a breath and finally lifted the phone to call the girl back. Sky watched as Star mainly listened, her expression going from confused to downright shocked before finally ending the call and looking back at him with widened brown eyes.
“Yes?” Sky prodded, giving her the same questioning look again.
“Apparently, Cassie... she was able to move her arm again. It just happened, barely twenty minutes ago. They’re on their way to her doctors to try and figure out what the hell is going on” Star shook her head in disbelief.
Sky was quiet a long moment before he finally remembered the message, “does witchcraft wear off...” he repeated slowly.
Star swallowed hard, speaking just as slowly, “or do we really have the power to actually undo the things we’ve done? The things we didn’t mean to do? The things we regret horribly?” she breathed all those questions as she looked at him desperately.
“Un-paralyzing a girl who’d been paralyzed for the last three years?” Sky shook his head, “that’s a pretty tall fuckin order, Star” he told her with his own disbelief, as well as the tiniest bit of hope.
Star was quiet a moment, then looked up again, “combining our life essence with our soul-mate makes us even more capable of amazing things... Isn’t that what Veda told us?” she whispered as the two just stared at each other in further disbelief, thinking on the possibility.
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The next day at lunch, Crista came to join Sky and Star at a seat across the table from them once more. Star and Sky looked to each other a bit nervously before Star managed to find her voice, though barely, “hey” was her shaky greeting as she looked back at the thickly made up brownish green eyes looking back at her and Sky.
“Did you guys really do something to make my sister start to get better?” Crista asked them in a hoarse whisper.
Star and Sky just scoffed nervously as Star spoke again, “what are you even talking about, Crista? We never even talked to your sister... recently. And we’re not doctors” she tried to add for weight.
“But are you... the other thing?” Crista asked, now in a whisper as she cast a glance around the cafeteria where none of the other kids were thankfully sitting very close anyway.
Sky scoffed more loudly then, “what happened to not believing a word Cassie said?”
“Yeah, well the doctors said she’d be paralyzed for life. And they have no clue why she’s getting any feeling or movement back at all” Crista shook her head, “and now that I know...” she just shook her head as she nervously glanced down at her phone.
“Know what?” Star asked warily.
“Know that you two aren’t really brother and sister, and...” she shook her head again, “knowing that makes the other part of what my sister said seem a lot more... believable” she added as she looked between the two of them.
“Pardon?” Star asked with increasing discomfort.
“I mean, come on. People like us are way more open-minded about who we might actually have sex with, but nobody’s that open-minded” Crista added awkwardly, “but now that I know that you two aren’t really twins, or related at all... the idea of you two doing that with each other; it doesn’t really seem that far-fetched now.”
Star and Sky looked at one another with obvious discomfort, considering it was only one day earlier when they had given into making love to one another yet again. Sky took a breath, “so, are we talking about us having sex, or us being so-called witches?”
“Well, I didn’t believe either, before” Crista admitted, “but now that I can see how one might be really possible” she blushed slightly, “it makes me question how true the other thing my sister said was. Especially now that no one seems to know why she’s even getting better. You gotta admit; it’s really weird” she told them softly as she looked back at them questioningly.
Star and Sky struggled for some kind of response then. It was true that the two of them having sex wasn’t nearly as scandalous as the other girl had originally thought. But, admitting to there being any truth in Cassie’s story did allow for the possibility of believing the rest was true. And though they weren’t witches, per se, admitting to their abilities in any way was not only admitting to their responsibility in what happened to Cassie; but it also opened the door for exposing exactly how different the two of them were. And it was a slippery slope, to say the least.
Sky attempted to quell the girl’s suspicions any way he could, “just because the doctors don’t know why your sister’s getting better; that doesn’t mean we had anything to do with it. Come on, Crista” he attempted a smile.
“Yeah I wouldn’t think so either, except when I saw the two of you together the other day. It’s obvious there’s something between you two” she told them knowingly, “and if that’s true, then what else Cassie said could pretty easily be true too. I mean, you said you were fourteen your first time, Star, right? And that it was a really hot goth boy?” she blushed again as she looked at Sky before averting her eyes again, “and you seem to know an awful lot about Sky’s... skills” she added with a small laugh and a brighter blush, “even fake brothers and sisters probably don’t know that many details about each other’s love lives... unless they’re involved in them, right?” Crista told them as she looked up at them with the same question in her eyes.