"I want to have your babies," said Jack, popping an orange Tic-Tac into his mouth.

It only occurred to him that he should've lowered his voice when several people in the diner turned around and stared at them. He tried smiling and waving back, a "carry on, carry on" gesture, but it took a lot of "carry on"s before they finally did.

It didn't help that he, quite clearly a male in his mid-twenties, had spoken those words while sitting across from an obviously underaged girl. He saw a woman sitting two tables down using her cellphone and hoped she wasn't calling the cops to book him with statutory charges.

Tommie's expression didn't change as she continued trailing the contents of the salt shaker all over the table. So far she had spelt "FWEE" and was halfway done with a concluding "K".

"You are so weird," she muttered.

"When you want to have babies," Jack amended. "I mean, you're fourteen now. No babies yet. Just, no."

Tommie glanced up from her work and looked at Jack as if he'd just handed her a used wad of gum. Considering she'd previously been avoiding eye-contact the whole time, that was an improvement.

"Jack," she said, her tone indicating I'm going to speak to you very slowly because you're an idiot, "you're my brother. You are not having my babies."

The old lady sitting in the booth behind Jack swiveled her head, her mouth open. Jack resisted the urge to slide low in his seat, and instead pretended not to notice. After a moment of silence, which Tommie used to finish her "K", the old lady's companion managed to coax her attention away.

Tommie's head remained bent as she studied her table-word, as if pondering what else to add to it. Jack watched her, noting how the late afternoon sun gilded half her features. Her hair, dyed all colors of the rainbow, had more pink in it since the last time he'd seen her. He felt pleased to have noticed.

He cleared his throat. "Well, just thought I'd, y' know, throw it in there."

"Consider it thrown."

The waitress came over to eavesdrop on the pretext of refilling his coffee, but eventually had to retreat when neither sibling said a word. She hesitated on seeing the big white "FWEEK" on the table, but left quickly when Jack glanced up at her.

Tommie grasped the pepper shaker between three fingers and waggled it contemplatively. Her eyes didn't lift from the salt words as she finally mumbled, "You can't even have babies."

"Well, no," Jack jumped in immediately, "I realize the biological barriers to that. Though I would if I could. But I'd find somebody to have your baby with. I mean, like a surrogate mom."

"What would you be there for? You can't give your . . . you-know. They're my eggs. They can't mix with your . . . you-know. That's illegal. And gross. God I can't believe I'm talking about my brother's sperm. . . ." she muttered.

Jack failed in his attempt to hide his grin, but managed to compose himself before Tommie glanced up. He slipped the last Tic-Tac into his mouth -- a green one this time -- before placing the empty container next to his coffee cup.

"Actually," he said, "I meant marrying somebody willing to have your baby. When you find someone you want to have a kid with, you and he would put your, um, stuff into her and she'd carry it to term."

It occurred to him that this moment was probably a rite of passage, one of those significant forks in the road of life, and wondered if he should jot the date down for memory's sake. Dear diary, today I told my sister where to put her "stuff."

Tommie started sprinkling pepper liberally on the table. "That's not fair," she pointed out. "You can't marry someone just so she'd have my baby."

"Well, I'd have to love her first," he admitted.

"And she'd wanna have your baby, not mine."

"But she wouldn't be opposed to having your baby. She'd have to agree to it before we tie the knot. Like in a prenup or something."

"You are not --" She looked like she wanted to slam the pepper shaker down but forced herself to take a deep breath. "Can we just drop it?"

Jack watched her, met her eyes for a brief moment before she glanced away, and found himself wishing she had thrown the shaker down. Or against the window. Shout, punch, smash something. Anything. He knew he would have.

Instead, she returned the pepper shaker to its place and slouched back in her seat, looking like she'd rather be anywhere but here.

They'd left the diner and were walking toward the creek when she finally spoke again.

"Besides," she said, "I don't even want children."

He kept his voice nonchalant. "Really?" he asked, hands in his slack pockets, matching his stride to Tommie's shuffles. Her oversized carpenter pants made thwuping noises with each move. "I'd like a big family, myself. Sorta like ours. I've always thought having lots of siblings was fun."

"That's 'cause you're not living with them anymore."

Jack stopped and looked down at Tommie. She met his gaze briefly before glancing away, at their destination fifty feet ahead of them.

They used to play in that creek when they were little, the six of them, while Mom watched from the shade and mended their clothes. Dad worked two jobs at the time, so he usually wasn't around. In fact, Jack couldn't remember his dad ever returning before 10pm until he was in ninth grade.

Jack looked at that creek, now clearly overgrown even from where they stood, and remembered laughter, splashes, screams of "I'm telling!", filtered sunlight and dusty dirt roads. Oregon summers were a killer, and the creek had been their secret weapon.

He returned his gaze to Tommie and wondered what she saw, whether she shared the same memories. He didn't want to admit she might've been too young to remember. He was the oldest, after all. She'd been seven when he'd left for college.

Maybe he was just the brother who dropped in every four months to say hi. Maybe she didn't remember the creek. Maybe he was just the prodigal son Mom always hugged and missed. Maybe she never remembered Dad working late shifts, only that he got laid off when he was fifty and that was the first time they'd ever seen him cry. Maybe she never realized Lou was the brains of the family, just the brother who shot himself before his 15th birthday. Or that Carol and LeAnn once wore identical pigtails, or that Alex nearly severed his thumb when he was six while playing with an axe.

Everytime Jack had to leave, whether to return to college or, later, to get back to work in Portland, Carol and LeAnn always begged him to take them with him. They wanted to see the world, they wanted to see a place that didn't survive on iron-grid factories. "Just a week, Jack," they'd cajole. "Just for a month."

It would turn into a competition of who best deserved a holiday at Jack's place, then Alex would step up and say, "But Jack, I'm your faaaaaaavorite brother." And Mom would order them to give their final hugs while Dad patted Jack awkwardly on the shoulder, as if he didn't want to dirty Jack's shirt.

Tommie was drawing on the dirt ground with her right shoe now, hands shoved into her pockets, her head bent.

"How come you've never asked to come with me?"

She looked up. "What?"

"When I come to visit." He was biting the inside of his mouth, knew he was biting, told himself to stop, but couldn't. "When I go back. Everyone always asks if they can come with me. How come you've never?"

She gazed at him seriously, and he found himself fidgeting beneath those eyes, like they saw too much of him. Like they saw too much for such a young girl. "What would you have answered?" she asked.

He hesitated. "I don't know."

She nodded, as if he'd just confirmed her thoughts. "When you do know, then I'll ask."

They continued walking. He watched her take the lead and remembered when Mom had first called him to tell him about Tommie's hair. "I think she's reacting," she'd fretted over the phone.

"Well," Jack had answered, still numb, his mind and mouth fumbling, "reacting's good."

He wondered if Tommie'd ever told her friends about what happened. All the doctor and specialist visits had taken place up north, so they probably didn't know unless she'd said anything. Mom kept telling Jack that Tommie never brought home any friends, but Jack knew they existed. He'd waited outside her school once when she was ten, to surprise her and fetch her back home and he'd seen her talking to a few girls.

He realized he hadn't waited outside her school for a long time.

Her attendance had understandably faltered a few months ago, after her first couple of visits to Dr. Vickers who finally managed to clear up the mystery of why Tommie still hadn't had her period yet.

Jack tried imagining himself eleven years younger, when the world was bigger and endless and full of unlikely demands, and be told that his body wasn't working properly. He had enough trouble accepting words like "cysts" and "operation" and "removal" being passed around the dinner table like salt.

The words that kept circling around his mind when he'd numbly placed down the receiver after the first call returned to him now, just as loud and clear: Not my sister.

He was sitting at the edge of the creek, his shoes and socks off and his slacks rolled up, feet underwater. Tommie's pants were rolled up too, above her knees, and she was wading toward the middle of the stream.

"You feeling any after-effects?" Jack asked. The surgery had been a week ago.

Tommie bent over to pick up a rock. "Just what they said I'd have. Small twinges, spotting. Thank god I don't have periods."

Jack was just leaning down to rest when his brain registered that last sentence. He scrambled back up again. "What? What what what?"

Tommie stared at him. "What?"

"Exactly!" he said, pointing.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Then, by silent agreement, Jack laid back down again and Tommie continued picking rocks.

"It's icky," she continued. "Imagine every month having quarts of blood pouring outta you, down there. And you have to wear stuff 'tween your legs the whole time and worry about whether it leaks. One girl in school skipped English and Math 'cause she was wearing white jeans and was hiding in the bathroom waiting for it to dry."

"For what to dry?" Jack asked. It took a moment and a pointed silence before he got it and said, "Oh."

"I don't see why it's such a rite of passage anyway. All it means is you get to have children. We don't make as big a fuss when a kid cuts his first tooth. It means he gets to eat, but you don't see African tribes celebrating that."

Jack kept his eyes on the sky. "Well," he said slowly, his chest brimming with something that. . . well, brimmed, "I guess it's because society is made up of families, so the power of having a family is heady stuff."

"Exactly," Tommie said, "and that's where you have all those jerks trying to control society by controlling women, 'cause by controlling women they control women's bodies and therefore the world."

Jack pulled himself up onto his elbows and stared at his sister in surprise.

She slid a few rocks into her pants pockets and shrugged defensively. "I read."

"Apparently." He whistled. "Wow. When I was your age, I thought reproductive choice meant choosing whether to have a boy or a girl."

"When you were my age, you probably thought Fallopian was a dirty word."

He barked out a startled laugh. He could've sworn he saw Tommie's eyes twinkle for a moment before she turned away. Hell, he would swear that. He felt so giddy he wanted to tilt his head back and laugh hysterically.

So he did. A flock of birds fled a nearby tree as a result.

Tommie glowered. "Stop that."

"No, no," Jack grinned, splashing his feet in the water, "I'm on the verge of something momentous here. Finally, I get a peek into the female psyche! Whereas before, all I ever got a peek at were their boobs. I don't want to see your boobs, by the way. Tell me things!"

"You are so --"

"Weird, exactly, which is why I need this. C'mon, I'm a guy. I need enlightenment. Only you can give it to me. Oogh-oogh, aagh-aagh."

She appeared very unimpressed with his grunting.

He sat up, cross-legged, his hands together while his most innocent expression played across his face. "Teach me, O master."

She scooped up a patch of mud and flung it at him.

"My shirt!" he screeched. "This is my best shirt! I got my first promotion in this shirt!"

"You've only gotten one promotion!"

"And it was in this shirt!" He leapt to his feet and splashed into the creek, not caring that he hadn't rolled his slacks high enough for that, and his hand dug underwater.

Tommie squealed out a laugh -- a laugh -- as she danced away and tried not to let the rocks in her pants weigh her down. He landed a splotch against her shoulder.

"Yes!" He pumped his fist, then placed both hands on his hips and did his best Superman impression. "Claim defeat now, evil villian, or you shall peri -- oof!"

He got a clump right in the smacker.

"Yeack!" He stuck his head underwater and tried to get the taste of whatever creepy-crawly that'd been breeding in that clod of dirt out of his mouth. "That's disgusting! I can't believe you did that!"

He gave a mountain of a splash in Tommie's direction and heard her gasp. "Ooh, you wimp! You are so having my baby!"

"Not on your life!" he yelled, covering his head when she pelted him with more clods of earth she'd pulled from the bank. "I'm having Carol's kid! At least she appreciates me!"

"Carol appreciates anyone driving a Ford Focus!"

"That's it, I'm having her twins!"

They were a soggy, bedraggled sight by the time they dripped their way home. The sun was setting behind them, mired in a sea of pink and orange hues.

"You should come home more often," Tommie said. "Mom misses you."

"Yeah?" He slung his arm around Tommie's shoulders and pulled her close, slowing his steps to fit hers. That was something he'd missed, matching his stride to a sister's. Doing it with any other girl just wasn't the same. "We'll see. Depends on the work week. It's quite a drive down."

She was quiet for a while, and Jack wondered if he'd said the wrong thing. She stopped to unload her pockets of rocks, and he waited for her to finish before resuming walking with his arm around her.

"Jack?"

"Yeah, Tommie?"

"Can I come with you to Portland?" She looked up at him only briefly before staring straight ahead. "Just for a few days. You can bring me back next weekend. Then when I go to school, I can tell my friends that's where I've been."

Maybe they didn't share the same memories, the same childhood, the same lives, but this moment was theirs. Maybe she would have memories of the creek now, good ones, and maybe he wasn't just the prodigal brother, he was the weird one who talked about contributing his hypothetical wife's uterus in the middle of a diner. Maybe the words "wet" and "muddy" on a scandalously bright afternoon would be the one thing to make her break out in giggles until she was forty.

Maybe she'd be a shooting star when she grew up, saving the world and everyone in it. Maybe she'd just be a plain old star among other stars, never shining brighter than she had to, but she was his star and that was all that mattered, and really, everything, everything that has to matter doesn't really have to matter unless you want it to.

"Sure, Tommie," he said, as if she'd just asked to borrow a book, "just get your things ready by ten tomorrow."

He kept his head high, not looking down, then felt Tommie's arm steal around his waist, fingers holding on to his soggy shirt. The sun left shadows in the wake of their footprints, and plenty of light ahead.