Sam's Theory

by Sarah Mendivel

  We hiked for about twenty minutes, twisting through the new, creamy blooms of bear grass and red earth. The air smelled like flowers and pushed through the neck of my shirt just enough to cool down the heat of our climb.

  While I minded my footing during another incline, I felt the atmosphere grow quiet behind me. Feeling weird about its silence, I turned around to see Rishawn standing still and starring into the trees.

  “What is it, bud?” I called out to him.

  He turned toward me, his face looking awkward. “Mm, nuthin’.”

  It was the same “nothing” that Dodger had said on the night we reunited. I watched Rishawn stumbled back toward me, his mood seeming off. I looked past him at the trees, wondering what spooked him. “Did you hear something?”

  He kept walking past me. “Yeah, but it wuz prolly just a chipmunk or sumthin’. I got a weird feeling, but it’s gone now so we a’ight.”

  “Hm,” I said, not trusting whatever had unsettled my friend.

  “Come on, Sam! We got a mountain to climb,” he yelled. Just as quickly as he had been thrown off, he had hopped back onto the trail and was willing to let it go. I followed suit, admiring his resiliency.

  As we summited the ridge, the clouds opened up above us to brighten the last of our steps. Reaching the top first, I knew Rishawn would be in awe of what awaited him.

  “Woo, this is a crazy climb, Sam! I think I lost fifty pounds climbing up here,” huffed my young friend, using his entire frame to balance the last of his energy.

  I shook my head at his sarcasm. “Rishawn, you only weigh fifty pounds.”

  “That means you should feel lucky that I’m still here,” he quipped.

  Laughing and admiring his unyielding optimism, I threw one more cheer his way. “You’re almost there, bud. I promise. It’s just a few more steps.”

  “A’ight,” he said on a huge exhale.

  Reaching my hand out for his, I pulled him the rest of the way up so that he could use whatever breath was left for the view. With two more hefty pushes, he managed to reach the ledge.

  “Oh, wow. Sam, this is like seven-birthdays-big,” yelled Rishawn, planting his feet at the top of our mountain.

  Diving miles into the earth below us was a sun swept canyon of bear grass and wildflower fields. The base of the canyon seemed a lifetime away, using its steep inclines to boast of its true enormity. Castle-sized basalt walls rose to meet us, ensuring us that this world we had claimed was kept secret from the rest of the universe. A faint stretch of sapphire sky whispered past the mountain range opposite of us. The whole landscape smelled of freedom.

  “How did you find this place?” asked Rishawn, still overwhelmed by the beauty and magnitude of the nature before him.

  Still holding his hand, I intentionally remained vague. “On one of my walks around camp.”

  Rishawn didn’t answer. Instead, he let go of my hand, removed his pack, and stood on the edge of the cliff, spellbound. We stood in silence together, allowing ourselves to be humbled by the vastness of the wilderness before us.

  Finally, Rishawn lowered his head and wiped a tear from his face.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, placing my hand on his shoulder.

  “Yeah, I just…” he trailed off, regaining his composure before finishing his sentence. “I’ve never seen anything so big before. It makes me feel like I can do anything.”

  “You can, friend. You just needed space to do it in,” I reassured him.

  Rishawn paused for a moment and then shook his head disappointedly. “I wish my mom wasn’t sick with that drug stuff. She would have liked to have seen this.”

  I bowed my head, unsure of what to say. I missed my mom, too, even if She never really felt like one. The constant yearning for family seemed to plague all of us.

  “I’m glad you’re here with me,” I said eventually.

  “Me too,” said Rishawn.

  “You know, I was out here for a long time by myself. And in all that time, space, and adventure, guess what I realized?”

  “What’s that?” asked my little friend.

  “Life. It’s just better when you share it with people.”

  Rishawn looked up at me, catching the sun on his face and smiling largely. “Yeah. I think so, too.” After a few more minutes of taking the scenery in, he continued. “You know, I don’t want to be mad anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I see how mad Mikayla is and I get it. Both of our moms are all kinds of messed up. Mikayla’s mom, though, used to call her lots of names and hit her sometimes. She was really mean to her. I think that’s why she has to be a tough guy now, to make sure no one else pushes her around like that again. I don’t know, maybe her mom hit her too hard one time and broke her heart,” Rishawn said remorsefully.

  He scratched his head and continued. “My mom was always just sleeping and never made me food or anything. I don’t know if she really cared about me, but I think she wanted to. It’s probably hard for just a mom to take care of so many kids, right?”

  I didn’t answer, but instead kept listening. Rishawn didn’t seem to mind. “But I like it here with you and Dodger. It kinda feels like we’re a family. I want to be this kind of happy all of the time. Like, the happy we have right now, you know?”

  I smiled empathetically, understanding what he meant. “Yeah, I know. Me, too.”

  Images of past conversations with Theory surfaced within me. I remembered the holograms we worked on and the intensity of the emotions that accompanied them. Some were scary, some were angry, and some were deeply depressing. No matter how big the feelings were though, I recalled the relief that came after letting so many of them go at once.

  “Hey bud, I think I have an idea for how to get rid of your anger,” I suggested.

  Rishawn tilted his head toward me. “Oh yeah? Is it jumping off this mountain and trying to fly like Peter Pan?”

  “Hahaha, uh, maybe a little less dangerous than that.”

  “Fine, what is it?”

  “Yelling,” I said, with finality.

  “Yelling?! I do that all the time,” Rishawn argued, twisting his face to make sure I knew he thought I was nuts.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed. This is a different kind of yelling, though. This kind of yelling has to come from a deep, deep part of you. The part of you that holds everything that hurts.”

  Rishawn grew quiet and looked out into the distance. “I got a place like that in me. It kinda looks like all of this,” he said, pointing to the ravine miles beneath us.

  “Exactly. So, is there someone specifically who you think put it all there?”

  “My hurt? I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, the way I often did when Theory caught me off guard with a deep question. “I guess mostly my mom and dad. My dad because he left us, and my mom because she couldn’t handle it.”

  “Okay, so, let’s start there. Let’s pretend they’re standing on that other mountain over there. You gotta yell at them to hear you. Tell them whatever it is you’ve been wanting them to listen to,” I said, mostly wondering if this trick would do any good.

  Rishawn lifted his hand over his eyebrows to contemplate the distance. “Yeah, okay. I can do that.”

  Surprised by his willingness, I stepped back to give him room. “Okay, great. So, maybe just start by talking to them normally. When you’re ready to get louder, then just go for it.”

  Rishawn twisted side-to-side in place, mildly bashful about starting on his own. He shuffled his feet a bit, the way Dodger did before confessing his feelings. “Well, okay. Hi, mom and dad. You guys aren’t really here right now. Hmph, like every other time, I guess.”

  Rishawn glanced at me for approval. I gave him the thumbs up and he turned back toward the canyon. “So, anyway, you guys left me again. Well, Dad you did. That was a stupid thing to do, mostly because now you can’t see how funny I am. I’m really popular at school because I make the other kids laugh. Of course, the teachers don’t usual
ly like my jokes because I make them when they’re trying to talk. But they’re still funny, so.

  “And Mom, I guess you been missing out on me, too. You’re always using that stuff that makes you sleep and act weird. You don’t ever ask how I’m doing in school, so it makes me not wanna try hard when I’m there. You let the cops take me and Mikayla away, even though she needed you, too.”

  Rishawn bowed his head and placed his hands on his hips. He was doing great. “You know guys,” he said, raising his voice. “that was really messed up! Everything you did was just really messed up! You up and left me and Mikayla by ourselves, and now we’re out here in the dang forest living like wild people. What the hell did you think would happen to us?! Did you ever even think about that?!”

  Rishawn straightened his posture and balled his fists. “You’re gone now! But that’s fine. We don’t need you! I don’t need you, ‘cause I got friends now!”

  As his anger arrived, so did the tears. “You’re just gone and I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again! You made it so we’re alone and I don’t know how to take care of myself.”

  Rishawn’s voice began to crack as he cried. “I don’t know how to love myself, because you were supposed to do that for me. I never get enough attention or hugs either, because you were the one who was supposed to give them to me. But it’s too late now! So I’ll figure out how to do it all by myself!”

  Rishawn continued to assert his anger toward the mountains, spilling his heart over the side of the cliff like a waterfall. “You’re gone and I’m not gonna be mad anymore! I wanna be happy and I wanna have a family! Sam said she’s gonna love me instead now! So screw you guys!”

  As his pain surged deeper into the ravine of nowhere, my heart also began to weep for my own abandonment. Rishawn’s words were the most honest and raw I had ever heard from a kid. He was right: at what point were we ever supposed to learn how to take care of ourselves? When would life step up to fill the gaping holes that not having a family left behind? Where do kids who are perpetually lonely learn what real love feels like? Was it possible to teach one another all of these things? I know we wanted to, badly. But could we really make up for everything we had all been through?

  Allowing Theory’s lessons to penetrate, I thought of the common traits the group shared with one another. There was the strength we all used to protect one another. There was the pain of not having parents that bonded us, creating a closeness that probably wouldn’t have otherwise existed if we hadn’t gone through hell beforehand. There was the hope that something better was waiting for us, and that together we would find it. Theory was right: despite all of our differences, we were all the same.

  We were all orphans, still capable of and willing to love.

  The idea that we continued to let people in, even at a slug’s pace, said a lot. It meant that our hearts, although broken and bruised, were still breathing. Maybe we didn’t want to admit this openly to each other, but we tried to show it in other ways.

  I saw, now, that sometimes love doesn’t always show up in the usual ways. Sometimes it’s as simple as sticking around during an argument, even if you’re furious. Or sometimes it’s listening to the other person talk, even if you don’t agree with their opinion at all. There were more ways to love someone than through hugs and hanging drawings on the fridge. It was about compromise and making things even between two people. Love had to be even to be healthy.

  We all wanted to feel needed and worthy of someone’s attention, and we were doing the very best we could with what we had. And that made me feel very proud of us.

  “You know what?” I said out loud, breaking the rhythm of release. “Maybe we should switch it up and become strong like the mountains, like you said you wanted to be.”

  Rishawn sniffled a bit and then nodded his head softly. “Okay, yeah.”

  “And I’m thinking we should probably stand like superheroes while we do this.”

  Rishawn laughed. “What?! You crazy Sam, but okay.”

  We stood on the ledge of the mountain bluff with our fists on our hips and our legs spread the width of our shoulders. Rishawn inhaled a heap of air through his nose and puffed his chest out. “How’s this?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s perfect, friend. All right, now we’re gonna yell ‘I can, I will’ really loud, so that we remember we can do anything together. Sound okay?”

  “Okay!” yelled Rishawn, preemptively battling his imaginary enemies.

  “One, twoooo,” I counted down. “Three!”

  Together, Rishawn and I summoned, from the bottom of our wearied spirits, a yell that would awaken the entire mountain before us. “I CAN! I WILL!”

  “Again!” I encouraged.

  Rishawn sucked in a new balloon of air and burst into his affirmation so loud that his eyes squinted shut as he screamed. “I CAAAAN! I WIIIIILL!”

  We bellowed our mantra three more times, pausing momentarily to listen to our echoes ricochet off the cliffs and trees miles in front of us. We both collapsed our hero stances and laughed together.

  After a celebratory high five, we were suddenly greeted by a midnight black and coral blue butterfly that fluttered down from the sky and hovered over Rishawn. He unfolded his hand and offered it a seat. “Wow, where did this guy come from?”

  I knelt down and looked at the butterfly closely. It looked very similar to the butterfly I had seen in Theory’s library several weeks ago. It was another Ulysses.

  The butterfly perched confidently on Rishawn’s palm, lightly fanning its enormous wings. I studied Rishawn’s expression, seeing a fresher kid in front of me. It seemed as if our yelling had helped. It made me wonder just how far we could go.

  “Hey Rishawn,” I asked curiously. “Do you wanna try a few more yells? Just to see how loud we can be?”

  Rishawn’s eyes glistened with excitement. “Yes!” He shook his hand to set the butterfly free and sprung back into his superhero stance.

  I smiled, trying not to laugh, and assumed the same position. “Ready?”

  Rishawn smiled, giving me the go.

  We inhaled in unison and cracked the lock on our souls’ cage to set our hearts free. “I CAN! I WIIIIIILL!”

  Before we could take a breath to yell again, a second butterfly descended from the heavens.

  “Rishawn,” I said, making direct eye contact with him. “We’re going to keep yelling until it’s all out of us. I want to see what happens.”

  He looked confused, but the thrill of getting to yell again quickly sparked a nod of agreement.

  “Ready? Go!” I shouted.

  “I CAN! I WILL! I CAN! I WILL! I CAAAAAN! I WIIIIIILL!”

  Each yell brought a new butterfly. The louder we yelled, the thicker the kaleidoscope of winged magicians grew.

  I stopped yelling and watched Rishawn continue to scream away his pain. He arched his back and let his rage fly into a swarm of butterflies. The louder he got, the stronger the gang of Ulysses butterflies became.

  My heart raced and I knelt down, overwhelmed by the mass of butterflies that surrounded us. Rishawn yelled a final time and then collapsed into my arms. He looked exhausted and was breathing heavily. I rocked him quietly as the butterflies took turns kissing him.

  Eventually he opened his eyes and brushed away a curious visitor. Looking up at me with eyes as soft as the grass we sat in, he whispered. “It’s gone, Sam.”

  “What’s gone, friend?”

  “The dark stuff,” he whispered. “You took it away.”

  My heart melted and I squeezed him tighter. “No little sprout, you did it. You were brave enough to let it go.”

  Rishawn pointed up at the butterflies. “Look, there it all is.”

  I looked up at the flickering horizon, feeling tears collect in my eyes. His pain had left his body finally and sat floating away into the space far above us.

  I sat holding my young friend for several more minutes until the last butterfly dissipated into the atmosphere. We watc
hed a tangerine afternoon stain the clouds while I wondered how much of what Rishawn said was true.

  Was I really capable of helping him heal? If so, could I help heal other kids, too? Was Theory onto something? Was I really meant to help others as my greater purpose?

  The heat came quickly and summoned us back to camp. I watched Rishawn relax into a worry-free seat next to the group fire.

  “Y’all took long enough,” poked Mikayla.

  “Yeah, we had some stuff to do,” said Rishawn, looking at me with shifty eyes.

  “Mm hm,” said his cousin, parking next to him and laying her elbow on his head lovingly. They awkwardly cuddled while debating over the plans for the next hike.

  Humbled by the day, I sat alone and watched the clouds. A bird streaked across a velvety baby blue hue of sky, then flickered back into the horizon. A staggering sense of purpose began to fill my soul and suddenly I knew, very clearly, what I was meant for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A week later and we had all grown tired of watching Rishawn trying to catch fish by himself. We had decided as a group that we needed to make fishing poles and nets. Dodger flipped through a survivalist book he had stolen from the rez’s library and read the instructions out loud as we sat in a circle twisting gummy twigs and ferns together.

  Once we had a hefty collection of fishing tools, the boys decided to take it up a notch. Dodger’s face broke into a competitive smile. “Hey guys, wanna have a contest?”

  Rishawn jumped up instantly. “Oh, yeah! What kind?”

  “Well, we each have two nets and two fishing lines now. I say we break into teams and see who can catch the most fish.”

  Mikayla, predictably, rolled her eyes in opposition. “Oh, great. That’s fine, but I’m not on Rishawn’s team. I see how you’ve been trying to catch fish on your own for the last week, lookin’ like a seal and flappin’ your arms every which way. No thank you!”

  We all laughed as Rishawn shrugged his shoulders. “Well, at least I was tryin’!”

  “All right then, Mikayla you’re with Sam. Boys versus girls,” decided Dodge.