Featured in Farrago Magazine Edition Five 2026

Design by Anika Bartholomeusz

CW: grief, family conflict, reference to the 1986 Challenger disaster

L-32 hours and counting

My sister called yesterday. At 8 am, like the chipper early bird she always was—I would never wake up this early—but I had answered all the same.

I had felt every pause in her words placed delicately between us, something pretty to light up the uncomfortable space. She had called me in a tentative voice. Hey, she said, will we see you at dinner tomorrow?

What for? I asked innocently. A beat. I could tell she was biting her lip in annoyance.

Before my flight. You did remember, right?

Oh, right. The dinner that will inevitably solidify our distance for good.

Don’t be like that. I’ve missed you.

In an emotional or just a physical sense?

Don’t.

Truth be told, I didn’t think I wanted to see her anymore. I didn’t want to see her success. I didn’t want to see her happy, in spite of me. I didn’t want to see her leave me behind.

My fingers ran over some clay I was moulding yesterday. I had taken a small slab of it while I was on the phone with her; at least if I couldn’t swallow my unease, I could let the clay take the emotional beating. I remember the sinking pit in my stomach when I looked down to see what my shaking hands had made, the slightly lumpy form of a cheerful dog beaming back up at me.

It reminded me of the dog my sister still had, the one she’d gotten when we were in high school, whom she used to have to drag away from sniffing every suspicious item on the street. The guileless appraisal in the clay dog’s eyes and head tilt pulled questions like strings on my chest that I couldn’t answer. We named the dog Challenger—in good humour because she really did challenge my sister, a new dog owner. But it was fitting that the dog, and the space shuttle disaster after which she was named, elicited the same despair in me. My fingertips left impressions on the clay’s malleable surface, yet to harden into a definitive form. I hadn’t thought about (or wouldn’t think about) either Challenger in years.

In classical myth, when the lovers of gods died, the gods would deify them, in a way—immortalising them into stars and constellations so that everyone could look up and see the same beauty in the celestial as the god did in the mortal. They called it catasterism: placed amongst the stars. I thought this statuette was the closest thing I had to that.

Sure, I’ll come, I had found myself saying, although I couldn’t help adding, but only for the dog.

L-9 hours and counting

You’re never going to let me go, are you?

I would have laughed, but she would not have seen the conflicted, strangled look on my face in the darkened kitchen. Haven’t I?

No. Her voice was like ice to the rush of blood in my ears. No, I would say coming back here signals the opposite of that, actually.

We were standing in a sort of face-off, me and her, stalemated by the counter between us. I would not have guessed that the propensity for a late-night drink ran in the family, but after this encounter I might.

My restless hand found its way to a small object in my pocket. The statuette. I completed it before I came to the house. I had forgotten about it—well, tried to. The twinge of guilt that accompanied this recollection gave me pause.

The trinket wasn’t much by any means, just a smaller version of what I had been sculpting when she called me. I’d given the little clay dog a circlet with inlaid stars, made from a hodgepodge collection of craft sequins and gems. Now it looked like she either had been promoted to royalty or was cartoonishly dizzy, but my questionable artistic choice was not why I was still holding onto it.

It held a piece of her, my sister, my best friend in childhood, my worst enemy in the height of teenage insecurity and competitive sibling comparison. I couldn’t even bear to look at it, only to feel its amateur ridges and finishing varnish with a clammy hand and wish it never existed. I didn’t want to let it go. It would have been easier living without it. It would be harder living without it. Would I see it again, would it be changed, would it be as if I never knew it?

The anguish of her departure was perhaps not in the farewell: it was sending her into the unknown, knowing she might not come back the same, or indeed at all.

Let me go. Please.

It was a hard thing, loving someone enough to let them go.

As I walked around the kitchen counter and held my sister in our first genuine hug in years, I said, not now. Not yet.

L-4 hours and counting

A much lighter tone than last night. Bright and early today. 

Yeah, yeah, I grinned back. 3 am on a weekend, and I didn’t even break a sweat hauling myself downstairs. I was improving—or, rather, I did what needed to be done to see my sister out. But I amazed myself nonetheless, with the things I did out of love. I still elbowed her away from the suitcase I carried to the car, though. Just to show I wasn’t too sentimental yet. I also worked up the courage to slip my little work of art and my feelings through the bag’s zipper; bubble-wrapped and sheltered to astronomical levels of care and hidden enough that she wouldn’t realise until she was well on her way. 

You didn’t have to come.

I just shrugged, hopping into the backseat of the car and patting the space next to me. You don’t have to leave, either.

We were both stubborn like that.

L-50 minutes and holding

I had been watching the clock on the wall tick down.

Time was at a standstill…

L-40 minutes and holding 

…and I was at the controls, waiting to press the button…

L-20 minutes and holding 

…to change the course of her journey and our lives forever.

L-10 minutes and holding

L-9 minutes and holding

L-8 minutes and holding

L-7 minutes and holding

L-6 minutes and holding

T-5 minutes and counting

I hadn’t slept since we said goodbye.

In a silly way I felt like if I fell asleep, I’d be leaving her alone, without the comfort of my thoughts to accompany her on her way… well, my thoughts, and the dog’s. Challenger was also sitting with me on the bed, in front of the window with the curtain drawn back, watching the sky and the stars for a blinking light.

When we got to the airport, my sister placed a very serious hand on my shoulder. I want you to know something. It’s really important.

Okay.

You can’t forget it.

… What is it?

Challenger is yours while I’m gone. If Mum feeds her, she’ll be like a balloon when I get back.

Now I had my own fragment of my sister with me. Not as impressive as a fashioned constellation, but Challenger would suffice for the present.

In the last few minutes, I thought about the plane’s take-off. I hoped it was smooth—even though a smooth take-off didn’t mean a flight without turbulence. You could never predict what would happen, only watch in horror as you realised it was always fated. Watching recordings of the Challenger shuttle launch felt like that, knowing it would break apart mid-flight. Seeing the awe on children’s faces all over the world, imagining it could be their teacher on that space shuttle, as it hurtled up, and up, up into the air, until it was a tiny speck amongst the clouds…

T+1 minute and counting

… and we saw a flickering red light amongst the stars through our window. It could have been the wing of any plane, but I like to believe we watched my sister’s plane that morning, just before the sun rose for the day. I wondered if Challenger had looked like that as it took off, tunnelling into a tiny fire in the atmosphere, becoming just another star in the sky.