the shadow child CHAPTER TWO

I first found my parents hanging upside down in an overturned red pickup. You see, Clark? You're not the only one. The only difference was that when I crashed, nobody saw me hover near the window and smile like the cherub that I am.

At least that's what Julian says I am. He says that only I could smile at my mother dangling helplessly beside my broken father, but he doesn't understand - I bridged two worlds in that moment - I was almost alive, and I could feel the pulse of her blood as her body cradled me. I had just enough life left to feel the warmth of my mother, and I had died just enough to be aware of it. How could I not smile? I had only an instant to embrace my life before I floated away from it, and I smiled at my mother because she'd been a beautiful home.

Clark and I are not so different. He descended, I ascended, neither of us by our own choice, each of us thrust into a world we didn't understand. When I collided, I left destruction in my wake - suffering, heartache, loss - I leveled my family with one stellar blow. "What did you do, Clark?" That's what my father said, with bitter accusation, but it was me who traveled through the sky and left brokenness behind me. Clark never dodges culpability though, and took more blame than was his to bear. He's a good brother. He's a good son too. Better than me.

My father loves us both fiercely, and that has never wavered, but for one instant - one moment that was just long enough - he was too stricken by my leaving to let Clark know how unchanging his love is. My father slipped through the door of my mother's hospital room and let it fall behind him, and as the latch clicked into place, Clark's impervious body became a momentary shell, empty of reason. In one day, I'd cost my parents both of their sons.