“I made your favorite,” she said finally, smiling at the sloppy mess on her plate.
My favorite when I was in kindergarten, I thought, nodding anyway. Did all parents view their children this way, as if trapped in time? Could I return home covered in scars, a warrior, a junkie, and still be seen as the snowy-headed toddler who hated Brussels sprouts and wanted a squirrel for a pet?
“Thanks, Mom,” I said.
I couldn’t help but feel the tiniest hint of pleasure as I bit into my bun. The Sloppy Joe was Mom’s personal recipe, with one small adjustment: the ground beef had been switched with vegan soy crumbles, to suit Lora’s dietary restrictions. Only my father was unaware of the switch.
“My pleasure, sweetie.” She glanced to the right, to the roll of wallpaper propped up against the wall.
Now? I thought, my eyes widening.
Mom nodded.
“Looks like you’re redecorating,” I squeaked. Smooth. That didn’t sound rehearsed at all. I cleared my throat. “Dad?”
His eyes narrowed. I guessed it was difficult to focus on something that didn’t feature a scrolling eight-hundred number. “You didn’t fill him in?” he said to Mom, scowling.
Apparently, he couldn’t see me at all.
Mom swallowed audibly. “We started talking about it. But—”
Dad threw his napkin onto the table. Unfortunately for him, it was a napkin, so it didn’t make too much of an impact. “Damn it, Amelia. Every time, I have to—” He stopped when he glanced at Lora.
I shouldn’t have brought her here.
Still, I felt grateful for her presence. She exuded a calmness that fell over everything. It muffled the anger, the unease. The pain.
“The matter is settled,” Dad said in a softer tone, like he was a kindly grandpa and we’d all asked to hear about life in the Olden Days.
Spare me.
Mom kept looking at me, like, Now’s your cue. But she hadn’t briefed me on my lines, and she’d be sorry for it. I couldn’t stand this ambiguity anymore.
My heart couldn’t.
“Actually, I think it’s time,” I said, resisting the urge to push my hand against my chest. My heart felt like it was going to burst through my skin. I couldn’t believe how badly it was hurting. “It’s not like you couldn’t put the room back if you had to, and in the meantime, it’ll clear up space for you—”
“Put the room back?” Dad said. “How could we put the room back?”
“I’m not saying you would.” I glanced at Mom, my eyes saying, Help me. Help me! “I’m just saying, redecorating doesn’t have to be permanent. It could just be—”
“We’re not redecorating for fun. Jesus, Amelia.” Dad shook his head. “We’re selling the house.”
My fork clattered to my plate. Really, I wanted to stab it into my chest. That would calm this throbbing pain, right? “What?”
Finally, Dad looked me in the eye. “We can’t afford it. We can’t justify keeping a house this size, now that—”
“We wanted to wait until you turned eighteen,” Mom broke in. “But we just can’t. As it is, your father won’t be able to retire until … ” She trailed off.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t process it. They were selling the house. My house. My home. So what if I hadn’t been living within its walls? I’d always believed I could come back if I wanted to.
In that moment, I realized the story I’d been telling myself about a happy family reunion was just that. A story.
A lie.
“Isn’t there any other way?” I asked. Beneath the table, Lora’s hand slid over mine. It should’ve made me feel safe, but it just made me angry. Why had I brought her here? How could I have been that stupid?
Dad’s eyes shifted from me to Lora. I could tell he’d seen the movement of her arm by the way he frowned. I could tell, too, that he hated me for bringing her here.
For bringing both of us.
“Are you going to take me with you?” I managed. I could hardly form proper sentences, but what did it matter? I was going to lose everything.
“Of course you’ll be coming with us.” Mom said it firmly, like maybe she was trying to convince herself. “You’re seventeen,” she added.
Oh, so that’s why. You have a legal obligation to keep me. But I’ll only be seventeen for a few more months.
I couldn’t focus on her face. I kept watching Dad, studying his reaction to what I was saying. He was ignoring me, still staring at Lora. That told me all I needed to know.
He wanted to leave me behind.
Why wouldn’t he?
It might’ve made sense to keep the house when Aaron and I were living in it. But now, with just the two of them … They were all that remained of our family.
I was nothing.
“Where will you go?” I asked. It made no sense to say “we.” Why prolong the inevitable?
“Not far,” Mom said, because Dad was busy looking at Lora. His focus on her was getting creepy. “We just want something smaller. More practical. Don’t worry about the details.”
“Why would he worry?” Dad said. “When does he ever worry about anything?”
That was about all I could take.
“I get it.” I stood up, pushing my chair against the wall. Lora made no move to follow. She seemed mesmerized, watching my father watch her. “Sell the house. I’ll take care of myself. Everyone will be perfectly happy.” I shoved the chair out of my way. “No one will worry about anyone else.”
“Taylor,” Mom said. Not Of course we worry about you. Not I care about you enough to keep you. Just my name. Just Taylor.
“Let him go, Amelia,” said Dad.
“He’s our son.”
“He’s made absolutely no effort to be a part of this family!”
I closed my eyes. How could he hurt me like this? No matter what I did, it was wrong.
Finally, Lora stood. At least she worried about me.
But she’s leaving too.
“It appears,” she said in a soft, low voice, “that dysfunction comes in many shapes and sizes. It was foolish to think myself unique.”
Both my parents were staring at her now. She stared back, unafraid. “Since you have shared such insight with me, I will return the favor in kind,” she said, leaning in. My dad actually jerked away. It was beautiful. “Love is a living entity. If you forsake it, it will leave you.”
She turned away.
But Dad grabbed her arm. He looked possessed. “I know you,” he said. “How do I know you?”
I stepped forward, prepared to knock him out if I had to. But Lora pulled herself out of his grip with no trouble at all. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
–––––
I spread out a blanket beneath Unity’s fattest oak and gestured for Lora to join me. She did, sitting beside me and gazing up at the sky. Fifteen minutes ago, I’d ushered her out of my parents’ house, creating the façade that I was walking her home. After the weirdness at dinner, I wasn’t taking any chances with my parents figuring out our little scheme. But once we’d reached the end of the street, I’d known I wouldn’t be ready to go back there for a while.
Maybe ever.
I sat in silence, fraying the cuticles on my hand. I didn’t want to talk about my family. I didn’t really want to talk about anything, but I felt something needed to be said.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, turning away.
“Don’t be.” Lora touched my back. “If you met my family, you wouldn’t feel so strange.” Her breath was warm on my neck. “What you see as imperfection draws me to you. People grow languorous from their joy. They derive strength from their pain.”
It was a weird thing to say. I didn’t think my pain gave way to anything but more pain. Lying down on my back, I guided her along so that she lay next t
o me. The sky framed her face, and I was suddenly filled with the clarity that whatever she was, she was not an angel. She hadn’t come to save me. Maybe she’d come to destroy me.
Still, I wanted her.
“Tell me what you want.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Now all I could do was wait and hope that something besides her breath filled the air.
She appeared to consider the request. “Sometimes the hardest thing is finding the right question to ask.”
“I thought that was a pretty good one.”
She liked that. Laughing, she draped her upper body across my chest. Her thigh pressed into my leg. I could feel its heat, could feel how close it was to sliding over me, and I wanted to pull her on top of me. My anger at my parents hadn’t subsided, and it made me feel brave, but beneath that was the overwhelming fear that she could crush me if she rejected me tonight.
I waited.
Above our heads, leaves twirled and waved. I watched them move in the air, marveling at the passage of time since Lora had arrived. The days used to pass slowly. Now I could barely keep track of the weeks as they flew by. Prom was only a week away. Then finals and graduation.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen after that.
Lora’s lips were close now, pulling my attention away from the trees. All of her was close, and I tried to convince myself that it meant she liked me. She wouldn’t be lying here, so close, if she didn’t. Would she? She wouldn’t keep crawling toward me, the way I literally fell toward her, unless she felt something too. If I could just kiss her—God, if she would only kiss me—I could finally be sure.
“Dangerous game, beautiful boy,” she said when I touched her hair.
“I’m not afraid.”
Our lips inched closer, as if pulled by invisible strands in the air. I struggled with my conflicting thoughts. What if she was waiting for me to make a move? What if she already knew it would never happen? Would I waste away in misery, never knowing the taste of her lips?
“Come here,” I said, my hand on her face.
She kissed my palm. “You’re angry,” she said, moving her mouth over my fingers. It felt so good, I thought I might die right then. “You’re in pain,” she murmured. “And you seek to replace that pain with other things. But it is not what you need from me now.”
“How would you know?” I was devastated by the weight of her words.
“Because I know you, Taylor Alder. Haven’t you figured that out?”
I sighed, not knowing how to feel. “You don’t,” I said. “I haven’t let you.”
“Then let me.”
Unpleasant warmth spread through my chest. “I want to.” I swallowed, pushing back the confession that was trying to spill out of me. “But I think you’ll hate me.”
“If you think I could hate you, then I’m the one who has kept myself hidden.”
I sat very still, feeling brave and fearful and reckless.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Whatever you do, do not say it.
“I killed my brother.”
I couldn’t read her face, and it terrified me.
Finally, she said, “Tell me.”
“I got my first set of paints when I was eleven,” I said, feeling my mind separate from my body. I needed it this way. When I spoke, it was as if a stranger inhabited my body while the real me sat off to the side, listening. “By the time I was in high school, they were calling me a prodigy. I could look at anything and paint it perfectly. But I could never do it in my head. All these local artists were looking at my stuff and raving, but instead of enjoying it, I kept beating myself up because I couldn’t draw from memory.” I turned onto my side, away from her.
Lora brushed my arm with her fingertips. I couldn’t believe she would still touch me after what I’d said. But it gave me courage, in the midst of feeling utterly disgusted with myself.
“I got obsessed with it. I’d stare at something for hours and then try to draw it from memory, but it never worked. Then my dad started in on me about it. He loves giving me shit.”
“Why?”
He hates me.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe he thinks it’ll make me try harder. But it just made me think I wasn’t good enough.”
More like useless.
“Aaron was so good about the whole thing. Most kids would’ve been jealous, but he wanted to help me. He got it into his head that we just had to create the right image, something exciting enough for my mind to remember.” I laughed, closing my eyes. “He’d tear the kitchen apart, using ketchup and oatmeal to make himself look like a monster. He’d burrow into the flowerbeds. One time he got caught in the attic crawl space, even though I told him I wouldn’t be able to see up there. But there was one place I wouldn’t let him go.”
I waited, in case she wanted to stop me. Go back in time. Forget.
But she didn’t.
“You know that pine tree in our yard?” I said. “In the winter, when everything else is bare, that tree stays perfectly green. Aaron used to say if he could just get to the top, right after it snowed, he’d be able to create the perfect image. But—”
“You wouldn’t let him?”
“It was too dangerous. Then, there was this day.” I covered my face with my arm. “This awful, stupid day two years ago, when this asshole at school snuck that stuff into my food, you know, that shit that makes you throw up? Just to mess with me.”
“Brad?”
“Actually his older brother, Buddy. I basically puked all over my clothes and completely freaked out. Our washing machine had been broken all week, and Mom was afraid to call someone to fix it because Dad was always stressed about money. I came home from school and I was so pissed. The first thing I heard was Aaron crying, which meant Mom had been crying. Which meant Dad had threatened to leave again. And I just … I messed up.”
“You let Aaron climb the tree?”
“I thought it would make him happy. But the second he ran out of the house, I went after him, yelling that I was kidding.” I dropped my head into my hands. “It wasn’t enough.”
“He made it to the top before you reached him?”
“No.” Part of me wished he had. Part of me wished I hadn’t seen the whole thing. “He’d made it halfway up when I came out the front door. He actually turned and smiled at me; he was so happy. And I was screaming like a crazy person, demanding he come down.”
“But he didn’t?”
“No.”
“And he fell?”
I waited a beat before answering. “He was almost to the top when the branch snapped. He fell to the ground like a rock. It happened so fast, there was no way I could’ve caught him.” I blinked, horrified at the thought of crying in front of Lora. “I just stood there, staring at him. He looked like he was sleeping. I kept telling myself, maybe he is sleeping.”
Tears spilled over, pain stinging me in my deepest places. I felt like I’d been split open, my insides pouring out onto the ground. Now she could see me. Now she knew. Now she could hurt me, break me, hate me. Now I needed her even more.
“I still visit him every Sunday,” I said, curling in on myself. “I’ve gone early, while you’re sleeping. And every time, it reminds me I shouldn’t be staying with them.”
“Why?”
“Seeing me just reminds them of what happened. It’s the reason I moved into the garage, you know? To give them a break. But it wasn’t enough.”
“Taylor.”
“If I’d left, maybe they could’ve moved on. They wouldn’t have stayed in a house they didn’t need. They wouldn’t be in debt.”
“Taylor.”
“He’s right to blame me. He knew how much it would cost to have kids. It’s why he never wanted us in the first place.”
“Taylor, you’re seventeen years old!”
“So?”
“So, they are the adults. They are the ones who made those decisions.”
“It’s not like that in my family. They need me—”
“They need you to be a teenager. They need you to have a childhood. It is their job to take care of you, like it was their job to take care of him.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“It should. It can. They were supposed to take care of you,” she said again, and it felt wonderful, just the idea of it. But it hurt, too, because they hadn’t taken care of me. Not in the way I’d needed.
“They don’t want to,” I said.
“Then let me. It’s not your job to take care of the house, Taylor. It was not your job to raise Aaron.”
“But—”
“I’m not saying it was their fault, what happened. But I am saying it wasn’t yours. Taylor, look at me.”
I turned to face her, though it scared me. The look she gave me was not pity. Somewhere in there, she recognized my pain as if she’d experienced it herself. Maybe our shared pain could bond us. I had a vision, strange and startling, of the two of us wrapped together in seaweed. But as I moved toward her, aching to be that close, to let her sew up the parts of me that I’d opened for her, she slipped from my grasp like a mermaid.
“Trust that I will be whatever it is you need of me,” she said, “so long as it doesn’t compromise my being. But I cannot deny the feeling that what you need now is a friend.”
“I have friends,” I said, trying to turn again.
She took my hands in hers, holding them against her heart. “Not like this.”
–––––
That night the story was my obsession. I needed Lora to confide in me the way I’d confided in her. If I could just learn a little more about the place she’d left behind, I might find a way to change her mind about leaving me. Or maybe I could change her mind about going back alone.
She was sitting on the bed, her back against the wall, and my head was in her lap. She hadn’t even asked me to join her. I’d just crawled there, unashamed. Something had shifted between us, but I wasn’t ready to put it into words. I didn’t want to scare it away.
“The princess followed in her mother’s footsteps,” she murmured, stroking my hair, “gathering the desperate creatures of Faerie like cracked and broken shells. The symmetry of their rebellions was not lost on her, and she wondered if, in the beginning, Virayla had believed her efforts to be just as noble. Would the princess someday look back at the movement she’d inspired and feel horrified at the monstrosity it had become? Was there a way to avoid corruption, or was every noble revolution destined to mutate into bloody, senseless warfare? Doubts plagued her mind but she plodded on, pushing them aside as she searched for allies.”
The Last Changeling Page 13