I smiled warmly, instantly feeling close to this kid. “Thanks, friend.”
With a wink and a high five, Rishawn bounced away to gather driftwood with Dodger. I looked across the lake where Mikayla stood and recognized a stature I had once seen in myself. It was the posture of a broken heart, wondering why the world had abandoned her. It was clear then, that despite the differences in our stories and temperaments; we were both still orphans looking to the universe for answers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A couple days into our new tribe and all of us were feeling just as awkward together as we did the moment we met. All of us except Rishawn, of course. “Hey you guys, I was thinking we should build a shelter against that tree over there!”
Mikayla scoffed. “What for? We have tents already.”
“Yeah, but we could, like, build a big fort for all of us to sit in, too. We can use all those logs and branches or whatever. Come on, ‘Kay, it’d be fun!”
Mikayla rolled her eyes and seethed in disgust. “You got some pretty stupid ideas sometimes, Rishawn.”
Rishawn puffed his chest and balled his hands into a fist. “No I don’t! You just have a stupid attitude about everything!”
I stood up, feeling nervous about interjecting myself into an argument between strangers. I couldn’t stand watching people fight and was usually scared of any kind of yelling in general, but I thought if I could at least distract them with something else then maybe it would break the tension.
Mikayla must have sensed my intention to get involved though, because she immediately blocked any effort I was about to make. “And what the hell are you trying to do? You think you know so much about the mountains because it was you and crazy-dude’s idea to come up here in the first place?”
I didn’t know whether to be defensive or diplomatic. “No, I…I didn’t say anything. I was just-”
“Darn right, you didn’t say anything,” she hissed, clearly marking her territory.
“Mikayla, dang! Why you always makin’ enemies everywhere we go?! That’s why we keep getting kicked out of places,” Rishawn yelled, almost near tears.
The anger between them radiated like a volcano. I was certain that if they kept yelling, the entire mountain would go up in flames. Luckily, Dodger stumbled up carrying a pile of firewood. “Hey guys, I heard people yelling. Everything okay?”
The look on Rishawn’s face had switched to one I didn’t recognize. It was almost as if he wasn’t completely there. “I am tired of being told what to do by you, Mikayla!”
Mikayla stood up and postured toward her cousin, outranking him in size and volume. “Then stop acting like a baby and I won’t have to treat you like one!”
Rishawn’s eyes clouded over and whatever was left of him completely disappeared. His fists tightened so hard that his knuckles turned yellow. I knew he was about to hit someone, but I couldn’t figure out who.
Dodger was still holding the firewood, too distracted by his own project to recognize the crisis that was about to erupt. Instead of walking toward Rishawn to comfort him the way I wanted to, my feet froze, as they always did when a threat of violence loomed. All I could offer was my voice. “Rishawn?”
“Oh, here you go now, too mad to come at me,” jeered Mikayla, also missing her cousin’s cues.
“Rishawn?” I said again, wondering why he wouldn’t at least make eye contact with someone.
SMACK!
With the speed and intensity of a car crash, Rishawn had hit himself in the face. “AHHH!”
SMACK! Went another fist to his nose, drawing a reflective stream of red from his nostril. Dodger dropped the firewood and bolted toward Rishawn. “Buddy, no!”
Before Rishawn could get another hit in, Dodger tackled him to the ground and bear-hugged his body. “Safe hands, Rishawn, safe hands. Everything’s okay…”
Dodger rocked him as Mikayla stood stunned. Something about the entire scene felt familiar, as if these three had played it out before. Dodger continued to comfort his friend. “You’re okay, buddy. You’re okay.”
Rishawn shook his head and seemed to return to consciousness. He began crying and grabbed onto Dodger’s shirt. His cries sounded primal and disconnected, as if they were coming from some deeper part of him. Blood and tears soaked into Dodger’s shirt.
I felt my own body wanting to cry and disconnect, knowing that Rishawn probably went to the same place I did when I was scared. It was a place far from here, floating and muffled.
Mikayla knelt down and placed a remorseful hand on her cousin’s shoulder. She bowed her head in silence, knowing she had created this moment. Dodger continued to calm down the lost boy in his arms, reminding him that he was in a safe place.
All I could think of was how badly I wanted to be near Theory right then. I knew she would know what to do. I tried desperately to focus on the sensations of my surroundings the way she had taught me to so that I wouldn’t float off the way Rishawn just had.
I could feel that the air was cool. I could see that the trees were green. I could feel that ground was soft. I could smell that the breeze was stained with pine and lake water. I could hear that the birds sang in the distance. I could feel my heart racing and my palms sweating. I could tell that I was still here.
“I’m sorry, Dodge,” a young voice said, snapping me out of my own grounding exercise.
“It’s okay, bud,” said Dodge, cradling Rishawn in his arms still. “I’m glad you’re still with us. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Mikayla stayed silent, but kept her hand against her cousin’s shoulder. Eventually Rishawn sat up on his own and wiped his eyes free of tears. As he opened his eyes and came to, he noticed a streak of blood sitting on his forearm. An expression of sadness and disappointment plagued his face. “Oh man, I did it again.”
“It’s okay,” Dodger said immediately. “You got really upset and we didn’t catch it before it came.”
Mikayla used the moment as an in. “Sorry, Rishawn.”
Rishawn looked at his older cousin and scowled. “Why’d you push me so hard?”
Although a flash of guilt whipped across her face, it was clear Mikayla wasn’t going to give in so easily. “The same reason you did!”
“Hey, everybody chill out,” Dodger motioned protectively. “I know we’re all frustrated and still settling in and getting to know each other, but the rule is we don’t talk to each other the way they used to talk to us. All of that anger and crap makes people feel bad about themselves and that’s what we just ran away from. We have to do better than that, remember? We have to be better than them,” encouraged Dodger.
I looked at Dodger, noticing how soft his eyes had turned. His words held authority and kindness. His hair had fallen into his face a bit and I suddenly wished he had been holding me, too. I started to wonder how much more there was to his plan that I didn’t know about.
Rishawn and Mikayla sat quietly next to each other, forcing themselves into a truce under the weight of Dodger’s grace. Dodger stood up and wiped the dirt from his pants. The stain of Rishawn’s blood decorated the shoulder of his shirt. How many times had Dodger watched Rishawn hit himself like that? How did he know how to calm him down so fast? Did my face change right before I floated off, too? Had Dodger ever seen me float off?
“How are you?” Dodger asked me suddenly, probably wondering why I had been so hands-off during the entire argument.
I felt guilty for not helping, and ashamed for not knowing what to do now. “Yeah, sorry.”
Dodger stood near me, locking his eyes into me. “Hey, there’s nothing to be sorry for. Don’t apologize when you don’t need to.”
He rested a hand on my arm and sent warmth rolling through my entire body. I wanted to melt into him and forget the world existed. Instead, I pretended to be as strong as he was. “Okay, thanks.”
I watched him lean over and casually start to pick up firewood again. The sun sparkled over the lake and the atmosphere around us calmed again. I too
k a deep breath and let the moment go. “Hey, Dodge?”
“Yeah?”
“That stuff you said, about us treating each other better than the adults did…”
“Yeah, what about it?” he asked, shoving wood into a triangular stack.
“Well, I think that’s a great rule to have.”
Even though his back was turned toward me, I could hear the smile in his voice. “Ah, thanks. Yeah, figured that should be the very least we can do.”
“Yeah,” I said awkwardly. “I think so too.”
“Good,” he punctuated, now immersed in his project again.
I ran my fingers through my bangs and repositioned myself to be closer to him. “Well, I was wondering if we should make more rules. Or, not really rules, but ideas, I guess. Like, ideas to make it easier to live with each other.”
Dodger dropped a branch and stood up to meet me. He smiled, squinting happily in the sun. “Like, more reminders of why we’re different than them?”
I smiled back, glad he understood what I was trying to say better than I did. “Yeah, like that.”
“Okay, yeah. I like it,” he said confidently.
“I do, too,” said a voice from behind us. I turned around to see Mikayla staring up at us. “Anything has to be better than where we came from.”
As intimidating as she was, I was learning that Mikayla had brief windows of cooperation and kindness that surfaced when the mood was right. Rishawn wiped his nose a final time and perked up. “Yeah, I like that, too! Let’s write them down on something!”
Before anyone could argue, Rishawn was up and running into the trees. We all shrugged at one another and laughed, never quite knowing what to expect from him. Moments later, he returned with a stack of leaves. “Here, we can write down the rules on these and hang them from the tree so we see them all the time and don’t forget them.”
I laughed, appreciating his resourcefulness. “Awesome, good thinking, Rishawn.”
He smiled proudly and passed a leaf out to everyone. Mikayla lifted hers up to the sun, spinning it between her fingers. She was silent for a moment, making me wonder if she’d rip it in half. Instead, she put the leaf back down and stated. “Maybe one should be that we don’t take our anger out on other people.”
Everyone stood still, trying not to display their shock over her insight. Dodger was adept enough to move the moment forward. “I think that’s great. I’ll grab some ash from our fire and clay from the lake to make paint.”
“Nice,” quipped Rishawn. “And then we can build our fort!”
Mikayla shot Rishawn a look, sending the threat of a new argument up into the air like an alarm. Rishawn pointed to her leaf. “Remember the rule?!”
She sighed, releasing her irritation. “Yeah, fine. We’ll build a shelter after.”
Rishawn leapt into the air and stood in a victory stance. “Oh yeah! We gonna have a shelter, oh yeah!”
Dodger shook his head and laughed before scooting off to make paint. I laid out the leaves, choosing the largest ones that could hold the most words. Everyone rustled around for a bit before finally coming back together around the camp fire.
We talked about the things we didn’t like about the adults in our lives and how we would raise ourselves differently. We talked about the ones that had damaged us, deciding that we would never be physical with one another to express hard feelings. We talked about how hurtful it was when some adults judged us, using words like “crazy” or “a behavior problem” or “a lost cause,” simply because they didn’t know our stories or the pain that lived inside of us. We talked about how people were usually too scared to ask us how we felt because they probably didn’t know what to do with our feelings, and how if we needed to say something, it was better to just be honest than try and hide it any longer.
We talked for hours, our words weaving into one another’s long after the sun had gone down. We shared things that made us sad, angry, scared, and lonely. We listened carefully when another person spoke, relaxing into one another’s perspectives. We asked permission to give feedback to each other before offering our opinion. We told ourselves that we were capable of handling whatever the future held for us, especially if we continued to stick together. We, in the midst of our candor and resilience, eventually figured out how to talk to each other in a way that made sense for us.
Somehow, in the middle of nowhere, four kids who had grown up without a shred of love or protection in their lives, figured out how to decorate an entire tree full of leaves with messages of mutual compassion and patience. These weren’t things that were taught to us by anyone, but somehow we still had the instinct to make it happen.
We knew full well that night that we didn’t have much to call our own, but we had each other for now. And we may not have had much to look forward to, but we had those leaves to fall asleep under, for whatever they were worth.
CHAPTER Twenty-Two
It was a couple hours after the moon had appeared that I sat up in my sleeping bag, unable to fall asleep. I listened to the snores of everyone else around me humming through the walls of their tents. The silver shadow of the nighttime sky reflected off the lake and should have been relaxing to look at, but for some reason, my heart couldn’t stop pounding. I was thinking about Theory, wondering about whether or not she was okay. I didn’t know why I was worried, but being away from her this long made me nervous.
I wondered what she had been doing all week without me there, or if she had thought about me half as much as I had been thinking about her. I wondered if Sage or Cadence had gotten stuck in another painting, or if the banana slug had returned to the library window. Suddenly, a pinch of heartache tugged at my chest and I finally accepted that I was missing home.
I looked around at the tents with their doors zipped shut. No one would be awake for at least another several hours. I scanned the horizon of our camp, visualizing the hike back to the tree house. Could I make it there safely in the dark? Would Theory even be awake when I got there? I thought about my warm, leather chair and how long it had been since I talked to someone who knew me so well.
I could see Theory smiling across from me in her own chair, making jokes and encouraging me to open up. I heard her laugh and felt a sense of calm imagining the library around us. It was all enough for me to grab my pack and shuffle out of camp quietly toward the woods.
As I hiked in the dark, I stayed vigilant on the unsteady footpath directly in front of me. The trees seemed bigger at night, as if they bulked up on purpose to scare people like me; the ones who chose to wander through the wilderness in the middle of the night just because they missed sitting in a chair they used to talk in.
What the heck was I thinking? Why had I walked all the way out here by myself? It didn’t matter now. It was too late, I had already been hiking for half an hour, at least. I really hoped Theory would be awake when I got there.
I tightened the grip on my backpack straps, feeling safer with something to hold onto as I walked. I thought of Dodger sleeping soundly in his tent next to Rishawn, wondering if they ever shared the same dreams. It made me think of Nova and how she would have the wildest dreams when we were kids. She would wake up and start rambling on and on about colorful worlds and adventures that my imagination could never touch. Sometimes, though, she would have nightmares just as vivid.
As the cool nighttime air began to bite through my hoodie, a sparkle of fireflies alit in the distance. I smiled so big that my cheeks hurt, knowing full well they were always the first thing to welcome me home. I picked up my pace, feeling my feet shuffle over pads of fallen pine needles.
The closer I got to Theory’s, the further away my mind drifted from the friends back at camp. It wasn’t until I saw the flicker of a light in the library that my whole system relaxed fully and I felt like I was home. I jogged the rest of the way and heaved myself up the tree so fast that it became second nature.
When I landed on the porch, a wave of familiarity hit. I knew I was in my element
again. As I approached the door, I could see it was already propped open. Wondering if Theory had left it open on purpose, I cautiously pushed my way into the foyer. “Hello? Theory?”
“Welcome home, kiddo,” said a voice from the library.
Excitement popped inside my chest and I dropped my backpack so that I could free up my arms to hug her.
“Hi, Theory,” I said, doing my best to hide my gross enthusiasm about seeing her again. There she was, standing near the fireplace, smiling. She looked just as serene and wise as she did the last time I saw her, which had felt like an eternity up until now.
We hugged for what felt like forever, until she finally pulled away first. “How are you, Sam? It’s been a whole week since I’ve seen you!”
I spoke through my smile, secretly wishing I could have held onto her for longer. “I know, it feels like way longer than that! I’m good.”
“Wonderful,” she said, still beaming with hospitality. “Do you have time to have a seat?”
I looked at my chair, wanting desperately to dash toward it and cannonball into it, but made the conscious decision to respectfully walk toward it instead.
“Yeah, of course,” I said casually.
Theory followed closely behind me, settling into her seat across from me. We both relaxed into our positions, quietly smiling at one another from across the room. Our faces seemed to say all of the things our words couldn’t, including. “I missed you.”
I felt bashful all of a sudden, not knowing where to start. I wanted to tell her about Mikayla and Rishawn, the canoe we fixed up, and how we had painted rules to live by onto a bunch of leaves. I wanted to tell her about how we had been building fires to cook with, how much brighter the stars seemed from on top of the mountain, and how we built a shelter to hang out in. I wanted to tell her anything and everything, but instead, all I could do was sit and stare at her in silence. I was so grateful to be with her again that nothing else seemed to matter as much anymore.
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