Half An Hour by Zary Fekete

The sky was hazy. The sun shown straight down from above, piercing through the upper sky until it fairly burned as though through a magnifying glass.

Reka sat listlessly in the porch hammock. The messages in her phone buzzed while she scrolled.

It was just past noon.

Reka’s mother stood on the porch, shading her eyes from the sunlight. She looked down at her daughter.

“Come on,” she said. “He’s been asking all morning.”

“No,” Reka said.

“Why not?”

Reka shrugged. “He’s annoying.” She rolled onto her side keeping on eye on her phone.

“Come on…just for half an hour. It will make him so happy.”

Determined to make her mother stop talking, Reka stood and stretched. “Well, where is he?”

Her mother disappeared into the house. A moment later, the sound of feet on wood, then carpet, and then wood again. The door burst open and Reka’s eleven-year-old brother Aron spilled out onto the porch, both hands clenched rightly around the upright frame of a red kite.

He blinked at Reka in the bright sunlight.

Reka stuffed her phone into her pocket. The screen was still glowing. She held up a finger at her brother. “Half an hour,” she said. Then she turned and started walking down the driveway toward the empty fields below. As she did, a shadow fell across the driveway.

Reka’s mother stuck her head out of the doorway. “There’s clouds coming. Come back if it starts to rain. I’ll have lunch ready soon.”

Aron dashed past Reka, holding the kite awkwardly, and shouting at the darkening sky. He reached the center of the first field before Reka had gotten to the bottom of the driveway. A car barreled past her down the road, raising a cloud of dust. Power lines buzzed where they threaded between the towers in the ditch.

Reka pulled out her phone and checked the signal. She grinned at a message and started typing something back. She absently crossed through the furrows of dirt in the field. By the time she reached the center, Aron already had the kite’s string unwound onto the ground in even patterns.

“Will you hold it?” he asked.

Reka pocketed the phone grumpily, but she took the kite from her brother. Here the breeze was stronger. A shadow leapt across the field as the sun disappeared behind a wall of clouds in the north. Aron stuck his finger in his mouth and held it up. Once determined, he slowly back away from Reka until the string was almost tight.

“On three?” he said. She nodded. He counted down and then began to run. She took a few steps into the wind after him and then tossed the kite upward. It caught immediately and was soon high above.

Reka could hear Aron’s triumphant cheers in the distance. A screech of cicadas came from the distant grove of trees. Her phoned buzzed again. She pulled it out, stopping to read the screen. There was a link that led to a gossip story. She clicked through. There was a video attached. She pushed play. Her eyes played around the screen as the video flickered.

Then she tripped on a root and cursed. She kicked at a chunk of dirt and it flew awkwardly to the side. She was about to return to her phone, but then she looked down at the field. Raindrops were striking the dry earth all around her.

Reka looked up. The cicadas had stopped.

She called out, “Aron!”

Nothing.

The silence continued. She raised her voice threateningly. “Aron! Come here!!”

Still nothing.

“Where are you?” she cried more loudly, looking around her, half-expecting her brother to pop out from behind her. Reka had the uncomfortable feeling that too much time had passed.

Suddenly the sky let go and sheets of rain poured down.

She became frightened.

She ran forward, reaching the edge of the trees. She plunged into the thicket, calling out hoarsely, “Aron! Aron!”

She didn’t see him. She lunged frantically around trees, swiping aside the smaller bushes. Leaves whipped at her face. She twisted through the trunks, looking around madly. All around her were trees, dense and unresponsive.

She burst through the branches on the far side of the grove. The next field was already soaked and puddles were forming in the brown mud. She saw Aron. He was across the field, clinging to the string of the kite.

“Aron!” she screamed. But he couldn’t hear her.

She ran after him, slipping and skidding. By the time she reached the middle of the field, Aron was already nearing the top of the hill where the road ran. The power lines split the sky in loping patterns.

Aron ran below them. The kite above.

There was the sharp crack of electricity.

Reka screamed. Her feet slipped and something struck her head.

All she remembered was mud.

---

After the ambulance left, Reka sat on the porch. Her phone was in her pocket, buzzing. She didn’t feel it.

A policeman asked her mother something.

Her mother said, “They went out together.”

“Who was watching him?”

Reka looked up before she realized he wasn’t talking to her.

Someone had retrieved the kite. It sat on the opposite side of the porch from Reka, shredded and streaked with char.

The clouds were gone. The sky was hazy. The sun shown down bright as a magnifying glass.