by LP Tvorik
The hands carried me back into a room specially designed for stupid little kids having stupid mental breakdowns. The floor was a colorful patchwork rubber mat. Every toy in the room was soft and harmless. The chairs were of the beanbag variety. Inset on one wall was a smudged two-way mirror so that detachedly concerned adults could stand and watch and pity without the risk of contact.
Whoever was holding me dragged me into that room. I kicked and howled and clawed and bit. I called my sweet and kindly case worker a bitch. I elbowed the man holding me in the balls and slammed my forehead into his nose. When a third person entered the equation, stroking my face with calming hands to accompany her soothing words, I sank my teeth into her finger and bit until I tasted blood.
Eventually, they wrestled me to the floor and held me there until I stopped fighting and the furious stream of curses and threats faded to hiccupping sobs. Gradually, the hands moved away and I curled up on my side, pressing my face to the sticky rubber mat and clutching my stomach. My mouth watered as nausea rose in my throat and I made no effort to hold it back.
Bile, chicken nuggets, and orange drink surged up from my stomach as I heaved. The case workers were pissed at me. I could feel it. Even Miss Meg was mad, and somewhere deep down that made me sad because Miss Meg always seemed to have patience and there was something comforting in that. Even if it was her job, at least she was there. That day, though, she sighed and mumbled something about the janitor. Then her hand patted my back, but it was mechanical and grudging.
“Honestly, Nathan. You needed to be strong for Jake. What were you thinking?” she asked. Too mired in guilt and loss to speak, I shifted away from the malodorous puddle by my head and curled up tighter around the pain in my chest. I couldn’t breathe past the constricting sensation that strangled my heart and twisted my stomach into knots.
On July 13th 1996, a miracle happened. A smart, sweet little boy found a happy, loving home. Two kind, generous men found a way to spread and multiply their love and compassion in an ugly, hateful world. It was a beautiful day. That afternoon, a thunderstorm rolled through, leaving the streets crisp and clean and the air ten degrees cooler and smelling of damp earth and wet pavement. There was a music festival in the city center, and the streets were raucous and colorful with celebration.
On July 13th 1996, fate smiled at the world. A drop of good splashed into the bucket and, for all intents and purposes, it was a wonderful day.
Except for me.
I had scarier days than July 13th 1996. I had harder days, longer days, lonelier days, and days that cast an obsidian shadow over the pain of losing my brother. But that was still the worst day of my life, because it was the last day I lived without her. My angel. My savior. My highest high. My haven. My everything good in the universe. From that point on, no matter how wretched the world was, at least I knew I shared it with her.
Chapter two
alex
I was twelve when I met the boy. Just twelve. Twelve on the dot.
It was my birthday, although it didn’t really feel like one. You know when things just feel wrong? You can’t put your finger on what it is, but you have this terrible, uneasy feeling in your stomach that won’t let you sit still?
I had that feeling a lot back in those days. I suppose it might have been because we’d just moved to a new town. Daddy was a preacher, and the church plucked our family up out of our pleasant little southern hamlet and dropped us right into the belly of the big city midwest. It’s a good thing they moved us in the summer. If we’d gone straight into the winter I’m pretty sure Momma and I would’ve died right then and there.
Even in the summer, though, things weren’t good. I didn’t have any friends, for one. That was a first for me, and I spent many long hours trying to goad Tommy into playing with me because I couldn’t stand the silence. I suppose that was one positive. I’d been growing apart from my older brother before the move. When we were kids, we were thick as thieves, always playing outside and getting into trouble. When I got older, though, that changed. I suppose the best way to say it is that, when I was five and he was seven, Tommy and I were perfectly in sync. Then I kept maturing and Tommy didn’t. Tommy never would.
That summer, though, we found each other again. Momma didn’t seem to care much if we went outside, and she trusted me to look after Tommy. We explored the little patch of woods behind our house which, to us, seemed like a vast and magical land full of dangers and hidden beauties.
There was a creek cutting through the woods in which we splashed during the heat of the day, and a magic spot in that creek that we decided made the world stand still. It wasn’t much. Just a spot where the flowing water had cut a particularly deep furrow through the earth. On one side, it had carved a cave beneath the roots of a massive oak. On the other, the ground sloped up into a natural clearing. In the center of the creek, framed by the cave and the clearing, was a sandy island. In the center of the island was a boulder.
Just wide enough for me and Tommy to sit side by side, that boulder was our magical thinking spot. We’d sit there in silence and as long as our butts were planted on the granite nothing was bad. Momma wasn’t sad, Daddy wasn’t gone all the time, and we had friends again. The world was bright and hopeful, so long as we didn’t leave the spot.
July 13th 1996 was my twelfth birthday. Like I said, it didn’t really feel like one. If we were back home, there’d have been a party. Momma would have baked a big cake, Daddy would have filmed everything with his bulky old tape recorder. My friends would have come over and sang and beat the candy stuffing out of a colorful piñata.
There wasn’t a party for my twelfth birthday. There was a cake, but Momma served it up on the plastic tray it came in, there weren’t any candles, and my name was spelled wrong in the icing. There were a few presents— a bike from Daddy and a necklace from Momma. Cards from both sets of grandparents with crisp, twenty-dollar bills enclosed. Tommy called it a good haul, which made everyone laugh a little, so he called it a good haul four more times and before he could get the words out a fifth Daddy told him to be quit.
Tommy cried and Momma’s face went dark and none of us ate much cake.
Tommy didn’t give me his present until later that night. He came and knocked on my door after Momma tucked me in.
“Come in,” I whispered and the door creaked open and Tommy’s boyish face peeked into the moonlit room.
“Happy Birthday, Aly!” he said, tiptoeing noisily across the carpet. “I brought your present.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly, sitting up in bed. “What is it?”
Tommy made a noise of exasperation and sat on the bed beside me. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand,” he said, practically vibrating with excitement.
I obeyed, wondering what he’d come up with. The year before he’d given me a dead spider because he thought it would be funny. I hoped this year was better.
Something small, cold, and hard dropped into my hand and I opened my eyes, staring at my open palm.
“A rock?” I asked, looking up at my brother quizzically. He grinned, floppy hair falling into his eyes with his emphatic nod.
“From the spot!” he said.
Objectively, it was a pretty crappy gift. There were about a million and one rocks strewn about on our little island in the creek and, even as far as those rocks were concerned, this one was unremarkable. It was plain old gray with darker gray spots. Ridged on one side and smooth on the other. Just a rock.
It was the best present anyone had ever given me, though, because I knew how Tommy’s mind worked. He knew the peace we found in the spot. Even if things at home didn’t bother him like they bothered me, he still felt it. He knew how much I needed it. This was his way of bringing that peace home. Of giving me a way to walk around with a little bit of it in my pocket.
“Thanks, Tommy,” I said, leaning forward and wrapping him in a hug. I w
anted to cry, but I knew if I did he’d think I was sad. “We’ll have to get you one just like it.”
He nodded sagely and stood. “We’ll pick it out tomorrow,” he said. “Night, Aly!”
He left the room as he’d entered it — noisily and thinking he was the picture of stealth.
I lay for a long time, watching the moon play over the speckled surface of my ceiling. The summer air was still so the tree branches outside my window were motionless, casting stark shadows on the wall. We’d been in the new house for over a month, but it still didn’t feel like home. The bed was wrong no matter which wall I pushed it against, and the shadows cast by my furniture felt foreign and dangerous.
I palmed the rock and tried not to cry as loneliness gripped me. I wanted so badly to go home, but home was too far away. What wasn’t too far, though? I squeezed the rock and smiled at the ceiling.
The spot.
I was normally a good girl, so sneaking out was a bit out of character. Call it my first foray into teenage rebellion. Call it the nexus linking what had been to what would come next. Call it the terminus of Aly and the inception of Alex. At the time, though, I probably just would’ve called it scary.
I waited until my parents stopped moving around and the house went quiet. Then I crawled out of bed and crept to my closet, shedding my jammies and pulling on shorts, sneakers, and a t-shirt. I tucked my hair into a ballcap and grabbed my adventuring backpack, full of rope and snacks and other odds and ends that I never actually ended up needing but which always felt good to have.
I slid my window open one hair-raising, butthole-clenching centimeter at a time. Then I popped my screen out, which was way easier than it should have been. If my parents knew they’d have had a conniption fit. Momma was always overprotective, I guess because of what happened to Tommy. She’d have died on the spot if she’d seen me crawling out the window and balancing on the ledge, reaching for the branches of the sycamore outside my window.
Back then, I wasn’t afraid of heights. I hadn’t learned to fear them, yet. That’s the thing about fear. It doesn’t come naturally. We aren’t born afraid. We learn what hurts us through experience, and those are the things we fear. When I was twelve, heights didn’t scare me at all. I hadn’t learned, yet, that they could hurt me.
That lesson was coming.
With the wiry strength of an active child, I slipped my right hand and foot around the branch and pushed off the window sill with my left, transferring my weight onto the limb. It bounced and shifted but didn’t break, and I shimmied confidently down to the stronger branches below. I dangled for a moment from the lowest branch, my toes scant inches off the ground. Then I dropped.
Freedom.
Normally I liked to walk in the woods, savoring the quiet sounds and the peaceful motion of the trees and the little animals that called them home. That night, I sprinted— headlong through the moonlit forest, backpack bouncing against my butt, shoes slapping the earth. Sweat beaded on my face and slid down my neck. My legs burned and my lungs ached. It felt so good, just to be free.
I slowed, though, as I approached my spot. Something felt wrong. The air was different— restless and tense. The sounds of the woods weren’t quite right, either. The symphony was there, as always. Frogs croaking, leaves rustling, water trickling over rock. Harvest mice scrambling over the carpet of dead leaves on the forest floor. The sounds came together like music— my favorite song. But that night, some new sound joined it and it ruined the melody. Like a wrong note from the back of the orchestra. Quiet in itself, but amplified in its wrongness so that as I drew closer it was all I could hear.
Crying.
I slowed as I approached, peering at my moonlit haven from the privacy of the darkened woods. A boy was in my spot. On my rock. I didn’t know at the time that he wasn’t just a boy. He was the boy. My boy. I didn’t see my future like I should have. I just saw an intruder.
I crouched in my hiding spot and watched him. He was sprawled on his back, his legs dangling over the edge of the rock. I liked to lay like that and watch the sky, but the boy had his hands over his face, digging the heels into his eyes. His body shook as he cried, but all I could hear was the occasional gasping breath. I knew all about crying quietly. I cried quietly all the time at home, but when I was alone I cried loud and reckless. Not the boy. He cried quietly, even in solitude.
He looked ragged. Not like me, in my shorts-just-for-adventures and my stained t-shirt that Momma insisted I throw away with the shorts but I kept because I liked the rainbow logo on the sleeve. I was dirt-stained and torn. The boy was frayed and worn. His jeans were three inches too short, with gaping holes in the knees. His t-shirt was two sizes too big. His arms, protruding from the massive sleeves of his shirt, were skinny. Too skinny.
He made me sad. I’d been sad a lot, before, but always sad for me. I was sad when we moved because I missed my friends. Sad when Momma got quiet because I missed her. Sad when Daddy was stressed because he didn’t have time to read to me anymore.
The boy didn’t make me sad for me, though. Just for him. I guess that’s why I didn’t turn tail and run. Nobody ought to be sad and alone.
“You’re in my spot,” I declared boldly, standing up from my hiding place.
The boy flew off the rock with a yelp, crouching in the sand with his fists held up like he was about to fight. His eyes were on fire, but I wasn’t scared. Nothing about him scared me. I stepped out from the shadows.
“This is my spot,” I said, pointing at the rock he had just vacated. “But you can use it if you want. It’s a good spot. Especially if you’re sad.”
The boy hesitated, backing up a step. I took another step forward.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I just came here to think. I’ll leave. I didn’t know it was your spot.”
“I told you, you can use it if you want. It’s a good spot.”
He frowned. “Yeah,” he took another step back, but lowered his fists. “Yeah, it is.”
“Do you come here a lot?”
“Yeah… I mean… sometimes. I didn’t…” he shook his head. “I didn’t know it was yours.”
It was strange that it wasn’t strange at all. Neither one of us questioned whether a creek in the woods with the moon overhead was a reasonable place for a twelve-year-old to go in order to contemplate life and cry as the need arose. Neither one of us questioned the other’s presence. He didn’t question my assertion that the spot was mine. I didn’t question how he’d come by it in the first place. We both understood, I think. We understand each other, because whatever impulse drove me to my spot also drove him. Neither of us needed it explained.
“We can share it,” I said, ignoring his nervous gaze as I toed my shoes off and, holding them in my hands, picked my way across the rocky creek bed. He’d moved as far to the edge of the tiny island as he could and stood there, hands clenched in fists at his sides, as I placed my shoes and backpack carefully by the rock and boosted myself up onto it.
“We don’t have to share it,” he said. “I’ll find a new spot.”
“That’s silly,” I declared, patting the rock. “There’s room for both of us and I don’t have any friends.”
For some reason, that made him curious. “You don’t have any friends?”
“No, I just moved here and school hasn’t started.”
He nodded in somber understanding and dropped to a seated position on the sand. I was inexplicably disappointed that he hadn’t joined me on the rock. I was also inexplicably delighted that he wasn’t turning away.
“I move a lot,” he said with a shrug, grabbing a stick and drawing in the sand with it. “Do you?”
“No, this is my first time.”
“It gets easier,” he told me, looking up. His eyes locked on mine. Moonlight sparkled in them and I felt a strange warmth seep into my bones.
It felt like going home. “The first couple days will suck, but you’ll make friends fast, I bet. You seem nice.”
“I’m nervous,” I blurted. The words surprised me. I hadn’t voiced them before. Momma needed me to be strong, and I knew Daddy wouldn’t have time for my silly problems. As much as my honesty surprised me, though, it didn’t seem to faze the boy.
“That’s okay,” he said, wrapping an arm around his belly as he drew in the sand with the other. I watched in silence as he doodled. He drew a circle and erased it. Drew a square and erased it. He looked up into the sky, squinting at the stars. Looked back at the sand and drew a star. Erased it. Drew a car. He stared at that one for a while, head cocked to the side. “It’s normal to be nervous,” he said thoughtfully, adding windows to the car. “I get nervous.”
For some reason, that surprised me. “You do?”
“Yeah. I’ve had a bunch of new schools so I guess you’d think I was brave by now. I’m not, though. I don’t think scared is something you can just choose not to be. You’ll always be afraid. You just gotta find a way to be smarter than the fear.”
“Smarter?”
“Yeah,” he looked up and grinned at me. “That’s what I…” He trailed off, staring at the sketched car in the sand. In a swift movement, he tossed the stick aside and smoothed a hand over the drawing. “My brother Jakey is scared of the dark,” he said, sitting back on his hands and staring up at the sky. “He thought there were monsters everywhere. Under the bed, in the closet, outside the window, out in the… out in the hallway.” He shook his head. “He keeps… he kept me up with his whining, so I tell…” he shook his head hard, as if to dislodge something. “I told him, every night, he’s gotta smile while he’s going to sleep.”