by S. R. Grey
I eye him curiously, this guy who keeps more secrets than I, apparently. “Hmm, sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this, Flynn.”
“I have,” he murmurs.
His expression, so serious, makes him look far wiser than a seventeen-year-old guy. But then again Flynn is well-acquainted with sorrow. He knows life is not all sunshine and rainbows.
Softly, he says, “You should always have a plan, Jaynie. You never know when things may go to hell. You need to be ready to roll if that happens.”
He’s right, of course, like someone else I know. “You sound like Mandy,” I say with a small smile.
Flynn levels me with a curious stare as his hair falls over one eye. “Oh, yeah? What’d she say?”
“She told me not to get too settled, especially here at Mrs. Lowry’s house. She said I should always have an out.”
He nods approvingly. “She’s right.”
“Does she know about this place?” I nod to the river. “Is this her out, too?”
Flynn chuckles. “Yeah, Mandy knows about this place, but she’s not going anywhere. She’s playing it cool till July. She’s got less than three months now, and she’s not about to jeopardize anything.”
Flynn knows about her plans to foster and eventually adopt the twins, and I assume that’s what he means by her not jeopardizing anything.
Back to his plan, I ask, “So, what would we do if we jumped? Swim to the next town? What did you say it was called? Lawrence? How far away is that? Like, miles and miles?”
When I look over Flynn is staring at me like he can’t believe I may actually be onboard with his idea. But I am. Quite solidly, in fact. If I’d had an escape plan at my last home I wouldn’t have ended up a victim.
One thing for sure, that will never happen again.
Flynn watches my face changing, surely expressing all the emotions conjured by the memories that still haunt me. And I know then that he knows. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened to me.
Quietly, he says, “Swimming wouldn’t be hard. Like I said, we’d have the current helping us. And Lawrence isn’t that far away.”
“Well, then.” I turn to him, rubbing my palms on the hem of my tee and down the sides of my long shorts. “We should make a pact.”
Flynn steps closer. “Okay, it’s a deal. If things ever get too bad, this”—his eyes move to the cliff’s edge—“is our way out.”
“Deal.”
Flynn extends his hand, same as he did the first day we met. He wants to seal our pact with a handshake, and I do, too. But when I make an attempt, I end up jerking my hand back.
“Come on,” Flynn urges. “You can do this, Jaynie. It’s no different than before.”
But it is. Him brushing hair from my face, and me barely touching his cheek with my fingertips, those were fleeting encounters. A handshake requires grasping, squeezing, prolonged contact. “I don’t know, Flynn.”
“You can do it,” he encourages.
Tentatively, I extend my hand to meet his. And…I do it. We seal our pact with a quick shake.
“See, not so bad,” he teases when I quickly slide my hand from his.
“Not bad at all,” I agree, rubbing my hand. “I think I’m getting used to us touching each other.”
We both turn red at the unintended innuendo in my remark. When I start stammering, trying to explain, Flynn smoothly diffuses the tension.
“Hey, come on.” He motions for me to follow. “Let me show you the best spot up here.”
I follow him to the thick clumping of tall pines, the same trees I bolted past to rush to the cliff’s edge. “So, this is your favorite place up here, yeah?”
“It sure is,” he says as he holds up a branch. We slip under and into the circle of pines.
Sunlight is filtering through the tops of the trees, creating a crisscross pattern of light and dark on a thick bed of pine needles covering the ground.
“Are they soft?” I ask, gesturing to the needles.
“Very,” Flynn replies. “Here, follow me.”
I trail behind him to the middle of the circle. Flynn flops down on the ground, smack dab on an especially thick mound of pine needles. I suppose to prove his point that they are indeed soft.
“Comfy?” I ask.
“Quite.” He raises a brow. “You should come down here and join me. See for yourself.”
I dig one sneakered toe into a nearby mound of needles. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
“Guess I’ll have to amuse myself while you decide.” Flynn starts moving his hands and legs in scissor-like fashion.
I ask him around a laugh, “What in the hell are you doing?”
Without stopping, he glances up at me. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No,” I shake my head. “Can’t say that it is.”
He snorts, “I’m making a snow angel, silly. Only this is more of a pine-needle angel.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I tell him, but the whole thing is rather amusing.
“Hey,” he retorts, slowing his movements to an almost halt. “Sometimes, dear Jaynie, you have to work with what you’re given in this life.”
“Is that kind of like making the best of things?”
“It’s exactly like that,” he assures me.
We share a look.
Sitting up, Flynn pats the spot next to him, and says softly, “Come on. Sit next to me.”
I acquiesce and plop down beside him.
The first thing out of my mouth is, “Ooh, the needles are soft.”
“I told you,” he says smugly. “And when summer comes the softest, greenest grass you’ve ever seen grows in here. Comes right up between the needles.”
“Seriously?” I stare up at the high treetops, blotting out so much of the sun. “How does that work? Grass growing without enough light?”
“Life finds a way,” Flynn says quietly.
With one knee bent, he lies back on the needles. I follow suit. We stare up at the sky. The high boughs of deep green create a pattern in the air once you’ve stared at them long enough. The robin-egg blue sky appears segmented, like puzzle pieces. This place is beautiful and tranquil, and I fully understand why Flynn comes here to escape.
Flynn shifts a little and our bodies seem closer than ever. Close enough that I can feel his warmth. I like it, but there’s nothing I can do with it. Not with how I am. Closing my eyes, I imagine a different world, a different time and place, one where Flynn and I are just a normal boy and girl, lying on a bed of pine needles, under a springtime sky.
My heart quickens. Not with fear, but with possibility. I want a normal life so badly I can taste it. My hand twitches next to Flynn’s arm. It would be so easy to reach down and take hold of his hand. But then what…?
In this different world, Flynn might lean over my body, block out everything but him. Would he lower his lips to mine? Would he kiss me?
“Oh,” I gasp out at the thought, my eyes fluttering open.
Flynn glances over at me, concerned. “Something wrong, Jaynie?”
I can’t look at him.
Shaking my head, I say, “No, no, nothing is wrong at all. I was just thinking how cool this place is.”
“It is pretty cool,” he agrees, grinning as he closes his eyes. He probably suspects I was thinking of him in some romantic way.
I look over at him, this beautiful almost-a-man boy. He looks as if he’s falling asleep. He really is stunning, but there’s so much more to him than his looks. He’s a good person with a kind and caring heart. He deserves peace. And he obviously finds it here. This is the most relaxed I’ve ever seen Flynn. Here, he can be young and without care. He can rest at ease.
Silence descends, apart from the rushing water and the occasional bird song. I soon nod off, as well.
When I wake up, I sit up with a start. I have no idea how long I was out. The sun’s shifted in the sky, but it’s not anywhere near dark.
We’re still good, but I know our time
here will come to a close soon enough.
I glance down at Flynn. He is awake now, too.
Sitting up next to me, he stretches and yawns. “Should we head back?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Are you okay with staying a while longer?”
Truth is, I’m not ready to return to the real world. Up here in this secret place, it’s just me and Flynn. Anything feels possible.
“Sure,” he says. “It’s still early. No Lowry women are returning from a shopping trip this soon.”
I chuckle. And then, after a long beat of silence, I ask, “Do you ever think about why things are the way they are? Do you wonder why we were given these lives?”
“All the time,” Flynn says, sighing.
“Like, for me,” I continue, wanting—no, needing—to share something to seal this closeness I feel with Flynn. “I wonder how things would have turned out differently if even just one variable was changed. Like, if my mom had never left…or if I’d known my dad.”
“You never met your father?” Curiosity turns Flynn’s eyes to a deeper shade of gray.
“No, I never met him,” I reply dryly.
“Does your mom know who he is?”
I shrug. “She says so, but who really knows?”
Flynn blows out a breath. “That’s kind of fucked-up.”
“Sure is.”
We both fall silent, until I say, “So, what variable would you change?”
Flynn bursts out laughing. “You want the short list…or the long, extended version?”
I shake my head. “No, no long list. Pick one thing.”
Flopping down on his back, he covers his eyes with one arm and says, “I wish my little brother had lived.”
The little brother Mandy told me about. “Galen?” I ask.
Flynn moves his arm and looks over at me, surprised. “Mandy told you what happened?”
I shake my head. “No. She only said you had a brother, and that he died.”
Flynn’s arm goes back over his eyes. “Yep, that’s the long and the short of it.” He sounds bitter.
Sighing heavily, I debate how much further I should dig. There’s an unwritten rule in the foster world that you don’t go prying into other people’s business. If someone wants to tell you something, they will. But here, out in the forest, with only the trees listening in, things feels different.
Still, it’s with caution that I say, “Can I ask what happened to Galen?”
“My father killed him,” Flynn whispers. “Gave me this that night, too.” He lifts his arm and points to the crescent-shaped scar under his right eye. “It’s a constant reminder.”
“Oh, my God, Flynn, I am so sorry.”
Now I know why his dad is in prison. I should have never asked.
But he continues speaking, his arm going back over his eyes, his voice strained. “Yeah, sometimes I can’t believe it myself. But it’s true. Galen was beaten to death by my drunk and flipped-out Dad. Nice story, huh?”
I never expected this horrible tale, and I hastily say, “We don’t have to talk about this, Flynn.”
“No, I want to.”
Lowering his arm from his face, his eyes, wet with unshed tears, implore me to let him talk.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I’m here.”
“Jaynie,” he says, voice cracking. “It was so…fucking…bad. I never talk to anyone about this, and I only told Mandy the bare minimum. But for, like, the first fucking time, I want to talk about it. With you. I feel like if I tell you this shit in my head you’ll understand me better.”
I nod solemnly. “You can tell me anything, Flynn. And I want to know you better.”
“Maybe it’s the forest,” he says, glancing at the pines.
“Yeah, maybe it is.” I offer an understanding smile to the boy whose heart clearly still hurts from the loss he’s endured.
We both know it’s not the forest—no matter how special and magical this place may be—that has led us to this subject. It is us, Flynn and I together, that make sharing secrets feel right.
Flynn blinks, and a single tear escapes, a fugitive of sorrow trailing down his cheek. And then he tells me how he lost his mom in a car accident a year before losing Galen. He talks about how bad it became at home, how his father started drinking, and how, eventually, he ended up hitting him and Galen.
“He was never like that before,” Flynn says, sitting up. “Although I remember one time overhearing my mom talking to her friend. She was in the kitchen having coffee with this lady. I guess this lady’s husband was a bad drinker, and a worse drunk. She was thinking of leaving him.” Flynn clears his throat. “Christ, I wish I had a cigarette right now.”
I know he quit, but under these circumstances, I tell him, “If I had one to give you, I would.”
He smiles at me, and I smile back.
“Thanks, Jaynie. But it’s probably better you don’t have any. I haven’t smoked for weeks, and I think I really kicked it this time.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“Yeah, it is.” He scrubs his hands down his face. “Anyway, so Mom started telling this lady how back when she and my dad were first married, Dad used to drink heavily. I guess he hit her a few times when he was drunk. When she got pregnant with me she told him if he didn’t get help, she’d leave his ass.”
“He got help?”
“Yeah, apparently he did. Up until the day when I overheard my mom, I always wondered why Dad didn’t allow alcohol in the house. This one time a friend of his from work came over. It was around the holidays, and this guy had a fifth of whiskey with him. He’d obviously been drinking already; the bottle was half-empty. Anyway, he held that thing up and said he and my dad were going to drink to the New Year. He kept going on and on about how it was high time my dad loosened up and got his drink on. Those were his exact words.”
“What a douche,” I remark.
“Yeah, he was a tool. But Dad set him straight.” Flynn shakes his head. “He yanked that bottle out of his buddy’s hands. The guy was protesting the whole time, but my dad ignored him. Went straight to the sink and dumped the whiskey down the drain.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, and then he kicked the guy out of the house and told him to never come back. He said if he ever offered him alcohol again, he’d lay his ass out. It was harsh, but I knew why after I overheard my mom’s story. I knew then she was the one keeping him sober.” Flynn pauses for a minute, reflects, and then continues. “After Mom died, Dad started drinking again.” He sighs. “And, well, things got worse than ever.”
Tentatively, I brush my hand over his. I wish I could give him a hug, or hold him close in a comforting way, but the barely-there brush is the best I can do…for now. “I’m sorry, Flynn,” I say.
He looks down to where my hand brushed over his. “It’s not your fault, Jaynie.”
I know then that he means something other than what we’re talking about. He means my issues are not my fault.
My eyes meet his—steely gray, cloudy, wet. Like the sky after a storm.
In a whisper, I say, “I wasn’t always fucked-up like this.”
“Hey, hey,”—his brow creases—“don’t say that. You’re fine.”
I let out a yeah-right cough. And then I nod my chin to where my hand rests near his, to where I can’t do more than offer a light brush for comfort. “More like pathetic, you mean.”
“The touching thing?” he says. I nod, and he adds, “That doesn’t make you fucked-up. You just need time to work through, uh, whatever it is that happened.”
He looks away, and I cringe. This is not his fault, it’s mine. I’m tired of feeling this self-inflicted shame. Flynn has shared with me; it’s time to share with him.
There’s no easy way to phrase what happened to me, so I end up blurting out, “I was raped at my last foster home.”
There’s a long silence…and then Flynn blows out a breath. “Yeah, I figured as much.”
His eyes remain averted, bu
t I need him to look at me, now more than ever. I need him to show me he doesn’t see me any differently now that he knows for sure.
Look at me, Flynn, I want to scream.
Instead, when he doesn’t, I rise to my knees. “I was also sodomized.” My voice is as loud as a gunshot piercing the forest.
“Jesus, Jaynie.”
Flynn sure is looking at me now, wide-eyed, and with no clue of how to handle what appears to be an impending meltdown of the girl next to him.
“He never even kissed me,” I go on.
It’s like I can’t stop now that I started. I have to get this out. “I was that disgusting to him. He’d lift my nightgown, Flynn. Just enough to get what he wanted. He treated me like a whore.”
I gasp for breath, spitting out words like I’m spitting out my rapist. Maybe I am. “No, worse than a whore,” I grind out. “At least whores get paid to fuck and take it up the ass.”
“Jaynie—”
Cutting him off, I throw my head back and shout up at the pines surrounding us, “What’s the going rate for fucking a virgin, anyway? What’s the cost of stealing away someone’s innocence, their first time?”
I twist to face Flynn, and say quietly, “He never gave me a choice, Flynn. I was forced to do those disgusting things.”
Flynn tries to console me with words. “It’s not your fault, Jaynie. You were a victim.”
I am lost in myself now, though, and not fully hearing him. Swallowing gasps of air that can’t come quickly enough, I cry and rock back and forth. I dig my fingers so deeply into the pine needles that the dirt beneath grinds up under my nails.
Flynn starts to reach for me, but then he remembers. I sob harder.
If Flynn had any sense at all, he’d run from the freak that has just lost her shit.
But no, he stays and lets me cry it out.
His hand remains close, in case I need it. Solid, that’s what this guy is. Flynn is a guy who’ll stay by your side, no matter what.
“Jaynie, what happened to you, it never—”
I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “I can’t talk about it anymore, okay?”
He nods as I get a hold of myself. “Okay, Jaynie.”