By Your Side

by Kasie West

  I wished I didn’t care what people thought about me. “Why don’t you care?”

  “What?”

  “What people think about you?”

  “Because I have no say in what other people do . . . or think.”

  “I guess it’s hard for me to accept I don’t have a little say over that. I mean, the things I do can change people’s opinions.”

  “If my mom taught me one thing it’s that you can’t control anyone but yourself.”

  The mention of his mom brought me out of my own issues. I thought about those books sitting on the cart on the other end of the library. If he’d really given up thinking he could help her, he wouldn’t have been reading those books. If he was reading those books. They might’ve been someone else’s. Dax’s mom wasn’t the only drug addict in Utah. “If you’re in foster care with the weed-basement parents, where is your mom? Getting help for her addiction so you can live with her again?”

  He let out a breathy laugh. “She’d have to want to get better before she got help.”

  “Can she work?”

  “She holds odd jobs off and on.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  He shrugged, his shoulder brushing mine, we were so close. “It’s been a while.”

  “I’m sorry. That sucks.”

  “Could be worse.”

  “Could be better.”

  “It always could.”

  “Wow. So much positivity.”

  “Yes, you know my reputation, the poster child for optimism. It must be an only child thing.”

  I smiled. “I’m sorry,” I said again, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  “It’s life.”

  But it wasn’t. Well, it wasn’t everyone’s life. I wished it weren’t his.

  I rolled onto my side, facing him. I knew I was close but I hadn’t anticipated that the movement would close the rest of the distance between us. I pretended like it was purposeful and put my hand on his chest. “I’m still cold,” I said, hoping he’d accept my closeness if it were me suffering and not the other way around. He did give up food for me, after all (or so I suspected). I was glad he couldn’t see my face because he’d be able to read the truth.

  He rubbed my upper arm without a word, as if that action alone would warm me.

  I rested my cheek on his shoulder, wondering what had gotten into me. How had he made me so relaxed? How could I say whatever I was thinking to him? Do whatever I was feeling? Maybe because he was the only one around, I thought with a small smile.

  He adjusted his position so his arm was under my head, his hand now resting on my back. My heart picked up speed. Dax didn’t have any reaction to my nearness. His breathing was normal, and so was his heartbeat—I could tell, because with my ear against his chest now, it was loud.

  “Do you know Jeff?” I asked.

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Yet?” he said, using the same word I had earlier.

  “Right. Do you know him?”

  “I thought we already established that I didn’t know anyone.”

  “I thought maybe he’d been in one of your classes before.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Just wondering.”

  “Just reminding yourself you have a boyfriend?” He paused, then laughed. “Or were you reminding me? You’re the one who came over here.”

  My cheeks flooded with heat. “No. I wasn’t . . . no. I just wondered what you thought of him.”

  “Of Jeff? Why do you care what I think of him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t. Never mind.”

  It was quiet for several minutes and I thought maybe he was on his way to sleep when he said, “Jeff seems nice. He was in my English class last year. He was never a tool to me.”

  That thought made me smile. “He is nice.” I closed my eyes. After a few moments of silence, Dax’s breathing became a steady rhythm, lifting my head slightly with every intake. I could feel myself drifting when he adjusted his left arm and his wrist came into view. 7 14 14. “What does your tattoo stand for?” I whispered. If he was already asleep, if he didn’t hear me, I’d let it go. And I thought he hadn’t heard me.

  Then he said, “Independence day.”

  I was surprised he answered at all. I wondered if he was half asleep, his guard not fully engaged. “I think you’re a few days off on that.”

  “My independence day. The day I let go of caring, of worrying, of everything. The day I first tasted freedom.”

  He made it sound like a good day, but what he described made me sad. It sounded like it was the day he realized he was alone in the world. How could that be a good day? I knew he didn’t want my pity, though, so I didn’t offer it. “Did something happen on that day to make you realize that?”

  “Yes,” was all he said.

  “Freedom, huh? So when you’re eighteen and graduated you want to leave here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere. Knowing I can leave when I want, that nothing is holding me here, is the only thing that keeps me sane. It’s why a group home would kill me.”

  Silence hung around us. His shivering had finally stopped. I thought about moving away now that he was warmer, but I couldn’t. “I won’t tell anyone you were here.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  I smiled. He did know those words.

  CHAPTER 16

  The weight of Dax’s arm draped across my waist held me in place the next morning. I didn’t want to move and wake him up. I was on my right side, facing away from him. He was behind me, his breath warm on the back of my neck. I tried to control the goose bumps that were forming up and down my arms.

  It was the first morning I’d woken up before him. It was our last full day here. In about twenty-four hours, someone would unlock those doors and we’d be free.

  Dax stirred next to me and I closed my eyes again so it didn’t seem like I’d been lying there awake this whole time, enjoying his arm around me. At first, his hold around my waist tightened and he took a deep breath, then, as if he realized what he was doing, he cursed quietly and backed away. The cold air bit into my skin, a wake-up call to more than just one of my senses. I could not in any way become attached to the guy who’d just told me the night before he didn’t form attachments. He had a tattoo on his arm branding him a loner. What made me think I would be any different to him than anyone else? I wasn’t. We were just trying to make the best of a weird situation we’d been thrown into together. This was all temporary. When we were out, everything would be back to normal.

  I stretched and sat up. My stomach let out a long growl. I put my hand over it and laughed.

  He smiled, something he’d been doing more readily than he had before, dug out the last protein bar from his bag, and threw it to me.

  “What’s the first thing you’re going to eat when we leave tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Donuts.”

  “Plural?”

  “At least five.”

  “I’ve been missing salt, not sweets. So maybe a burger and fries.”

  “That sounds good too.”

  “Everything sounds good,” I said, taking half the protein bar and handing back the rest. “Well, except this.”

  He ate the remaining half in one bite. “It’s definitely not donuts,” he said through his mouthful.

  “Ooh, a burger, fries, and a shake. That would satisfy both cravings.”

  He nodded.

  “There’s that burger place two blocks from here. We should walk straight there when the librarians unlock the door.”

  He wadded the paper from the bar into a ball and rolled it between his palms.

  “We can pack up all our things—well, your things—wait behind that pillar down by the parking garage and as soon as they pass by, sneak out.”

  He tilted his head at me.

  “What?”

  �
��You’re going to sneak out of here when people show up?”

  “What else am I going to do? Sit here and wait for them to find me? Then I’d have to explain everything. They’d call my parents. I’d have to wait for them to show up and explain everything again. That would take forever. I’m starving.”

  He laughed. A sound I still wasn’t used to. “Food is definitely top priority.”

  “Higher than the top,” I said. “Oh! Have you ever had cronuts?”

  “Cronuts? No.”

  “It’s a croissant and donut combined. They are the best things in the world. I’m going to buy you a cronut when we get out of here. Oh no . . .”

  “What?”

  “We don’t have any money. How are we going to buy anything without money?” I thought for a moment. “I have money at my house. It’s only, like, five minutes from here. We’ll hitchhike to my house, get money, and go eat.”

  “Hitchhike?”

  “Or we can borrow the phone at the gas station and have Lisa pick us up. That’s what we’ll do. Or we can beg for money. Like hold up a sign on the street corner. That’s a good idea too.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” he said.

  I stood and stretched again. “We’ll figure something out. We will be eating food at the earliest possible time tomorrow.” And then I’d see what price I was going to have to pay for this weekend. I crossed my fingers that my parents just figured we were snowed in and I had no way to get ahold of them. If for even a second they were worried, I’d have a lot of explaining to do, and I wanted to do that explaining on a full stomach.

  These thoughts took my mood down several notches. “I’m going to get a drink.” I waited for him to say something about how he didn’t need to know my every move, but he didn’t. Maybe he was used to having another person around at this point.

  I took a long drink of water, then went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. My hair was a mess, my face was completely makeup-free now, and sure enough, I had a zit forming on my chin. But it didn’t matter to me at all. I was relaxed around Dax. He’d become a friend. As much as he didn’t want one, he now had one in me. His tough guy act wouldn’t work on me anymore.

  I went back to the main room to see it empty. Where had he gone? I may have been in the habit of giving him my play-by-play, but he obviously wasn’t yet. Maybe he was in the bathroom.

  His book lay abandoned on the chair—Hamlet. I picked it up and flipped it open to the page he’d left off on and read a few lines. I’d never read Hamlet before. When I went to shut it, I saw what he’d been using for a bookmark. An envelope—addressed, stamped, and ready to be sent. But it was obvious it had been ready for a while, its edges bent, a fold down the middle. I read who it was supposed to go to—Susanna Miller. His mom? An aunt, maybe? Who was Dax afraid to reach out to?

  I shut the book and placed it back on the chair, then went to the checkout desk. Why didn’t the librarians have a secret food stash somewhere? I started going through the drawers behind the counter when I found a big bag of the little toys they must’ve used to refill Mother Goose’s basket. I lifted the sealed bag and tried to see it from all angles; maybe there was candy in there. I tucked the entire thing under my arm and went upstairs.

  In the break room I turned on a movie, opened the plastic bag, and began looking through it.

  Dax arrived half an hour later, and I was laid out on the couch with his sleeping bag spread over me. He held up his Frisbee in the launcher and shot. It hit the side of my head because I was too lazy to free my arms and stop it.

  “Ouch,” I said with a laugh.

  “Sorry, I was aiming for your shoulder.”

  “So your aim’s not perfect after all.”

  He stood by the arm of the couch closest to my feet and waited for me to scoot over.

  “But I’m comfortable,” I joked, and just as I was about to sit up to give him room, he picked up my feet and sat on the cushion beneath them, letting my legs fall onto his lap.

  Despite my earlier declaration to myself that we were going to be friends, I was surprised by the gesture. I hadn’t thought he was quite caught up with my future plans yet. Maybe he was.

  “What’s all that?” he asked, pointing to the layer of individually wrapped toys spread across the coffee table.

  “Not candy. That’s what it is. Don’t librarians know that kids like candy?”

  He smiled.

  I reached over to the table and picked up one of the items that was not candy. It was a black bracelet made of thread. “Give me your wrist.”

  “What?”

  I held up my hand and eventually he placed his in my palm. Then I tied the bracelet onto his wrist. “There. Now you have a memento of our time in the library.”

  “You expect me to wear this?”

  “Yes. Forever.”

  His eyes scanned the table until they stopped on something that he plucked from the pile. A bracelet like the one he wore but hot pink. He held out his hand.

  “Pink? No way. Find me a black one too.”

  He didn’t move, his hand waiting there. I growled but relented. He tied a careful knot, then turned his attention to the movie.

  I turned my attention back to the movie too—Pirates of the Caribbean—a smile on my face.

  “Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom?” I asked.

  “Johnny,” he replied, without asking me to clarify my statement.

  “Yeah, me too.” Johnny always plays eccentric roles, different roles, ones that help me feel like no matter what my issues, there’s a place for everyone in the world. Dax’s hand moved from the back of the couch to rest on top of my ankle. And in this moment, I felt like this was my place.

  CHAPTER 17

  When the movie was over, I sat up and stretched. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  As I reached the door, Dax asked, “Where are you going?”

  I turned to see a smirk on his face. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Not at all.”

  I laughed and left without telling him, even though I was sure he actually was curious. I went to the kitchen and grabbed the little corner of cake from the fridge, then brought it back to the break room.

  I cleared away some of the toys, set the cake on the coffee table, and sat down next to him, pulling half of the sleeping bag back over our legs. The cake sat under a plastic dome that I hoped had kept it fresh for however long it had been there. Dax had found a new station on the television and I focused on it.

  “What are we watching now?”

  “Some documentary on Martin Luther King, Jr.”

  “Oh right. It’s Martin Luther King Day. I almost forgot.”

  “Which is why the library is closed.”

  “Right. We’re going to miss part of school tomorrow,” I said.

  “Tragic.”

  I missed my fair share of school days to anxiety, but this one felt different. “You miss a lot of school. Why?”

  “I always have a reason,” he said.

  “That was vague and cryptic. You like those kind of answers, don’t you?”

  He bumped his knee into mine under the sleeping bag and I wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or an accident. He probably thought that was a good answer to my question.

  He nodded his head toward the cake. “Did you bring that in for torture or were you planning on eating it?”

  “Did you want cake, Dax?”

  “Yes.”

  I laughed, sat forward, and attempted to pry off the cover. It was nearly impossible. Dax didn’t move to help and I sensed him silently mocking me.

  “I’m eating this whole piece when I get the lid off.”

  “But then you’ll get a guilt headache.”

  I finally freed the cake, got a finger full of frosting, and smeared it across his cheek.

  He tried to give me a serious look but it dissolved into a smile. “Really?” He left the frosting there as I broke the cake in half and ate my portion. It was so sweet it made my chee
ks hurt. He ate his half as well, frosting still on his face.

  “Are you going to wipe that off?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  A stack of napkins sat on the table and I handed him one.

  “But then it won’t bother you anymore.”

  “You think you know me so well now, huh? Well, you don’t. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

  He turned his attention to the television, acting like he didn’t even feel the frosting there.

  I sighed and wiped it off myself. I met his stare while I did, my hand on his face, our bodies close, and my heart seemed to stop.

  I sat back, threw the napkin onto the coffee table, and positioned myself under the sleeping bag before I did something stupid. “Well, you’re nearly impossible to get to know, but you know that already. You do it on purpose,” I said.

  “I do very little on purpose.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  His hand, which was resting on the cushion between us under the sleeping bag, brushed against mine. I had a strange urge to grab hold of it, but I fought it. His leg bumped mine again, but this time stayed, pressed against me, the pressure of it making my brain go soft.

  “But, with very little help from you, I think I know you pretty well now too,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  The volume of the television went up even though neither of us had touched the remote. The news had come on and it was louder than the previous program had been. “Leading the news today, we have an update on the story we brought to you last night out of Utah County. One missing, presumed dead, one injured after the car he was driving crashed in American Fork Canyon Friday night, plunging into the river. Jeff Matson was on his way home from a party with friends. It’s unclear whether alcohol was involved in the accident.” I gasped as my picture came up on the screen. “Autumn Collins, a senior at Timpanogos High School, hasn’t been found. Her belongings were pulled from Matson’s car after he was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. The river has been searched over the last several days. Authorities are worried, given the state she’d have been in after the crash and the low temperatures, that she didn’t survive the accident. Search parties have been scouring the woods bordering the river, but the search was called off last night as another snowstorm pummeled the area. Matson remains in critical condition at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake.”