Awakening Foster Kelly

by Cara Rosalie Olsen

  A small bird flew through my line of sight; I watched as it settled itself onto a thick, leafless branch, chirping incessantly and flapping its wings with ostentatious disdain.

  “I wonder,” Dominic said musingly, “what he meant by, ‘when she gives herself permission.’ Do you have any guesses?”

  The sodden creature looked to have survived the earlier rainstorm, but only just barely. A fine spray launched off its shiny dark feathers as it gave repeated shudders. I followed the reparations closely, watching as the bird burrowed its tiny beak beneath each wing, grooming and plucking.

  “You won’t answer me, will you?” The urgency, gentle as it was, exaggerated his voice. “Just like you wouldn’t answer me earlier about your friend Jake, or explain why you’re keeping secrets from your parents. It’s why you were suddenly vague about the concerts, why you didn’t want me listening to your song. This is what you do, isn’t it.” He didn’t sound pleased or critical, only certain. “You mislead people, and evade subjects that make you uncomfortable, and if necessary give as little information as possible. Whatever it takes to keep everyone out.”

  The little bird disappeared, taking cover further inside the tree, leaving me with only a naked branch to stare at.

  “I assumed it was just me.” I could feel his eyes, boring into the side of my cheek. “If it was just me, it would have made sense . . . I would never expect you to trust me. But then”—from my peripheral, I saw him shake his head—“I can understand keeping secrets from overprotective or abusive parents, but not from parents like the ones you described . . . and then your friend calls and I watched you lie to her too.” My heart, already beating at an inhuman speed, increased, making it impossible to breathe without opening my mouth. He continued to work it out aloud piece by piece. “I figured it was just me you wanted to keep out. Foster,” he sighed. “I had no idea it was . . . everyone.”

  I had to dig my nails into my knees to keep from throwing my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to hear it. A pressure, like a jagged whisper, felt as if it was being dragged back and forth across my neck. I didn’t want to hear any more.

  Make it stop.

  I sensed him leaning toward me, heard the feathery sound lips make just before they open. “Wh—”

  “I’d-like-to-take-you-home-now.” I could hardly breathe, but managed to string together a few strangled words. “Please—just tell me where you live.”

  “No.”

  I turned my head and stared at him.

  “Not yet.” He swallowed. “We can go once you’ve answered me.”

  Mischievous and shrewd for sure, and likely very good at getting something once his mind was set; probably impossible to say no to.

  All right—if I couldn’t say no, then I would just start driving; at some point he would see I was unwilling to have this conversation and surrender with the directions. I twisted around for my seatbelt, and in that time Dominic had removed my keys from the ignition and settled back into the seat.

  A sharp, searing heat exploded at my temples at the same moment my heart seemed to stop beating and launch into my throat. “Wh—why did you do that?” I gasped.

  Dominic’s eyes were like reflective pools, showing me the image of a very frightened girl.

  He smiled sadly. “We’ll go once you’ve given me an answer.”

  I watched his hand close around my keys; it felt as though he were choking me. “What answer? Answer to what? What do you want?”

  He shook his head once. “I want one truth.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I stared at Dominic. “What? This—this isn’t a game.” I began to tremble.

  “I know that,” he said somberly. “I’m not playing with you.”

  Then why? Why was he doing this? My head was swimming; my skin felt like a thousand degrees. If I didn’t get some air soon, I was going to black out.

  “Wait!” he blurted. “Don’t do that.”

  I had no idea what he referring to, and went stone stiff. Then I saw my bony fingers, curled like white sticks around the door handle. The metal glinted, catching the light—the color of silvery freedom.

  “Here,” he said urgently, lowering his voice. “Please.” I turned, finding his arm extended and my keys in his cupped hand. “I shouldn’t have taken them from you. It wasn’t—I’m sorry.”

  I reached for them, but stopped midway. He must have seen the worry in my face. He gave a quick, encouraging head bob. I snatched them before he changed his mind.

  He sighed and his hand remained open like that. I don’t know why, but I wanted him to close it

  “Foster, I am sorry,” he said. “It was wrong of me to take your keys. You don’t have to tell me anything. I’ve done nothing to earn your trust. If anything, I’ve proved that I am most untrustworthy.”

  I was still trembling. I turned my head very slowly. “Why did you do that?”

  Dominic’s eyes flicked up at me, haunted and with a sadness that physically hurt to look at. His thoughts looked turbulent. “I don’t know you,” he said brusquely, “but I want to—and for reasons I can neither explain nor justify, it infuriates me when you lie or tell me less than the whole truth—especially when it’s right there in your face where I can see it. I know”—he stopped, swallowed laboriously—“I know I have no right to feel that way, though.” I might have believed he meant this, if not for the premeditated way in which he spoke each word, with careful precision. “I hope you will believe me—that I am sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to force you.”

  I recommenced staring out the window, still holding the keys tightly to my stomach. This day . . . this conversation . . . they were unimaginable. Never had I thought a complete stranger would be the one to figure me out. But one had; in no more than a day, Dominic had looked into my face and seen the lies and truth like red and black lettering.

  Below the tree, blocking a portion of the trunk, was a sandstone wall; it was either unfinished or in the process of being reconstructed, as huge chunks were missing, leaving a gruesome amorphous hole in the center. In my quest to feel, I decided this would do perfectly. It was exactly as if each and every one of my walls had been blown asunder. Where there had once been a strong impenetrable barricade, shielded by yet another enclosure of iron fenced gates, there were now only gaping holes, debris, and the carnage of a world built from omissions and annihilated by the precision of well-aimed truth. A lifetime it had taken me to build, and just one single day to tear it apart.

  I saw myself. There I stood among the wreckage of the destructive aftermath. The sky was a blazing orange, the ground a dull, powdery copper. There were no trees, no water, nothing save for piles of rock and ash, a wasteland stretching for miles. The remnants of my protective fortress lay in shambles all around me. Not even a mangled structure of what had once been, remained. I was alone, surrounded by the shattered lies. Then I saw myself running in circles, tripping over rocks, falling into shallow potholes, moving as fast as my uncoordinated feet and the uneven terrain would allow. I needed to rebuild. The fragments and shards wouldn’t be handled. They burned like embers, and then disintegrated when I tried to pick one up. Somehow I knew the same would happen to me if I didn’t hurry. While I did everything I could to put things back where they belonged, each time my fingers touched another piece of the wreckage, it grew unbearably hot, incinerated, and then vanished into the windless firmament.

  A sudden burst of feeling started at the base of my spine; it worked its way upward, gripping hard, coiling possessively and lingering on each vertebrae before moving on to the next one. It didn’t hurt—not exactly. The sensation was odd, one I had never before experienced. Whatever this was, it was coming—with incredible force and gaining momentum. Then I knew: it was the scream.

  I scream at him. “Which one?”

  He flinched, as though I had slapped him.

  “Which one?” I repeated.

  “Foster . . . I don’t—I don’t know what you mean.”

&nb
sp; “Yes, you do. And I’ll give it to you. Which truth do you want?”

  “No. You don’t—”

  “Yes. I do,” I said succinctly. I quickly swiped at my cheeks, then wiped my tear-stained fingertips on my jeans. I blinked until I could see him again.“Ask me,” I demanded. “Ask me the question you were going ask, before I said I wanted to take you home.”

  He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “No. I never should have—”

  “Ask me.”

  “No.”

  “Ask me.”

  “I won’t. You aren’t thinking right.”

  “Ask me,” demanded a voice I had never heard before, “or get out of my car.”

  His mouth parted. This was the only physical indication I had touched him with my words. Still, he refused me.

  I began to cry then, to let it take me, but I wanted him to ask me. My teeth had begun to chatter and my whole body trembled.

  “Please,” I begged.

  Dominic was conflicted. I could tell he no longer felt sure he was doing the right thing by not giving me what I wanted; his eyes were wary and imploring.

  “Ask me,” I whispered.

  “Why won’t you let anyone care about you?”

  A sob so deep I felt it reach down and plunge into my stomach, exploded from my lips. “Because I’m afraid!” I screamed. “I’m afraid of—of—of everything. I’m afraid of what I want. I’m afraid that it won’t want me back. I’m afraid of taking chances, and then regretting them for the rest of my life. I’m afraid that loving is synonymous with losing. Losing not only myself, but losing people I never should have had in the first place. Jake and Emily—that never should have happened. But I had no idea their friendship would come to mean so much to me, and now I’m terrified I’ll disappear again once they forget about me.”

  I stopped—only because I hadn’t taken a breath, and my words were beginning to slur, getting thinner and thinner with lack of oxygen. I opened my eyes, not realizing I had closed them, and then tumbled into rapid speech. “I don’t deserve them, I know that. What I’ve done is inexcusable. I’ve lied to everyone I love—I told myself they were half-truths, but really they were just lies. They deserve better than me, they deserve to know the truth, I know—but I’m afraid the truth will be the last thing I ever say to them. And I . . . imagining my life without—the thought of losing—but if they ever found out I . . . no—no, I can’t. I could never do that. To hurt my friends and family needlessly would be just as bad as lying to them. I know it’s not right, but I think it’s best to keep things the way they are. No one gets hurt this way. And when—if . . . if someone decides they don’t want me, it will be okay.”

  I nodded, the first effects of emotional exhaustion beginning to anchor me. “It will be okay,” I repeated in a slow, quiet voice, still staring out the window, “because they never actually knew me. It will be someone else they don’t want.”

  I felt the beginnings of more tears, but made no move to catch these. I stayed focused on the tree beyond, until a light pressure on my cheek moved me. He didn’t meet my eyes, but fixed his attention on the thumb swiping gently, back and forth, rubbing the moisture until it had absorbed. Only then, when every last tear was collected, did he raise his eyes.

  The stranger and I stared at one another. Forever.

  And then I began to fall slowly. Fall from what, I didn’t know, but I could feel its weight pulling me forward. It peeled me away from myself, as if I were a sticker coming apart from that which kept me adhered, and leaving behind the remnants of my former self. The stranger had said he didn’t know me, but whether he’d meant to or not, he had lied. These eyes—they knew me. I don’t know how they did, but I had never been more certain of anything. And it was in my knowing—knowing he could see what was real and what was not—that made me want to fall the other way, backward. I couldn’t go back, though. Not after this.

  He moved his thumb once more, one gentle caress across my cheek. And when I pressed my cheek into his palm, I knew I wasn’t falling away, but falling in. I was falling into him.

  Dominic pulled his hand away.

  The connection severed, I was waylaid by a mounting embarrassment for all I had told him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice barely a croak.

  “I’m only sorry it took so long.” He picked up a water bottle and handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, tipping my head back and guzzling till there was no more. Rubbing my tongue along the roof of my mouth, I lifted the emptied plastic bottle so I could stare into it. “Tastes like Scotch tape,” I offered blandly, then blinked.

  “Don’t worry,” he said around a laugh, “it’ll wear off soon.”

  I turned, setting the bottle between us in the cup holder. “What will?”

  “The shock,” he answered without ceremony.

  “Shock? Is that what this is?” I suppose that made sense. “I feel . . . unoccupied. It’s very strange.”

  “After everything you’ve been through today, I think it would be strange if you didn’t feel strange. Can I ask you one more thing before you’ve had too much time to regret everything you told me?”

  Too late. “Sure.”

  “When was it that you first started thinking you didn’t matter to people?”

  I thought about this for only a few seconds, surprised at how telling the whole truth expedited the answering process. “Always.”

  “Always?” I couldn’t see him, but there was a note of disbelief in his voice. “Even as a kid?”

  “Well . . . I can’t remember a time I felt differently,” I said reflectively, trying to recall my earliest memories. “Kindergarten was the start of it, I think, but maybe a couple years later, eight or nine was when I realized there was something different about me—something that made the other kids not want to be around me.”

  “That couldn’t have been easy to digest as a kid.”

  “It was confusing at first,” I admitted, “but after a few years I stopped noticing and came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. Being liked or cared for isn’t what’s important.”

  Dominic leaned forward into the moonlight’s luster, his entire face removed from the shadows. “Not important? I know you don’t really believe that.” He examined me. For once I didn’t have any lies for him to find. “Foster, it’s the only thing that’s important.”

  “Not the only thing,” I demurred. “It matters what kind of person you are.”

  “It does,” he agreed vehemently, “and the result of that is usually evident, depending on whether or not you have people who care for you and vice-versa. I would think you would know that better than anyone.” I stared at him, uncomprehending. He lifted his brows and flicked his eyes toward the backseat, then back to me with a loaded look. “Your kids, Foster. Those kids—they may grow up to be good people, healthy people, capable of changing lives, all because there were people like you who cared about them—but mostly because they matter to you.” Whatever he saw in my face made him smile. “You’re wrong, though,” he said quietly, and I thought I detected arrogance in his tone of voice. “You matter, Foster. You’re kind, compassionate—you have a warmth and passion about you that comes alive when you’re singing or surrounded by your kids. You think first of everyone else and never about what you want—or even what might be best for you. You’re thoughtful and creative, finding ways to make the complicated easy. You’re humble to the point of self-deprecation. You’re insightful and extremely perceptive—though not at all when you’re commenting about yourself. You’re foolishly forgiving. You don’t have a single mean bone in your body, which is just as well, because you would probably just break it.”

  The smile widened.

  “If you don’t matter, then all that intelligence hasn’t done you very much good. Let me say this to you, and if you wouldn’t mind, please try and hear me.” He took a deep breath. “You matter. You matter to your parents, to your friends, Jake and Emily, you matter to Mr. B
alfy, you matter to—you matter,” he said, with a conclusive nod of the head.

  The things he had just said were the nicest things anyone had ever said to me.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say you believe me,” he replied. “But only when you mean it.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “That seems only fair, doesn’t it?” he said. “What would you like to know?”

  There were many questions. They ranged from mundane all the way to a physical yearning to know who this boy was, and what I was to him. But tonight I could think of only one question I needed answering.

  “What was your Grandpa’s secret . . . to winning all those years?”

  “Is that really what you want to know?”

  If I pushed him—the way he had pushed me—it wouldn’t set him free: it would consume him. I would have to go slow and be very patient.

  “Yes,” I replied, leaving it at that.

  Dominic was busy at work, picking the word apart. “But it’s not all you want to know, is it?”

  I shook my head. “But those can wait for another time.”

  “Why? I’ll tell you if you ask me.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I would rather you tell me when you’re ready.”

  “It could be a while,” he said, then pursed his lips. “Are you sure?”

  This was it—my last chance. “I’m sure. Just the one answer for now.”

  Dominic smirked, biting into his lip to control the smile. “Well it is a good one.”

  ~

  We drove back down Hope Street, following the lighted road.

  “When I tell it to you, you’re going to be amazed. My grandpa wasn’t a fancy man. He was simple and honest, and that was his trick.”

  It was quiet for a moment, and I became antsy. “So . . . what was it?” I asked, unable to hide my thirst for the answer.

  “I just told you.”

  “You did not!” I protested.

  I could hear him smiling. “Yes, I did. I told you he was honest. His trick was to never lie.”