Page 15

And that’s how we find ourselves embroiled in a cutthroat game of Chutes and Ladders, which Sarah has never played before, but catches on too quickly.

As her game piece gets launched down the slide for the third time in a round, my sisters screech with delight at her fate.

“This is not a fun game,” Sarah says, pushing her fingers through her hair. I reach up, grab her wrist, and try to unbury them. “Don’t tear your hair out,” I say.

She looks up, and suddenly I’m very aware that I’m holding onto her.

I let go, and I press my hand down to the top of my thigh, letting the heat from her touch bleed away.

We go straight into another round, and this time Sarah wins, and she puts her arms up, laughing in victory, while the girls swarm her.

Their instant comfort with her makes my chest ache, and I catch her eye again, then my mom and my dad’s. They both smile at me, and I look away. Because I don’t want them to get any untoward ideas about this. About us .

Though, I guess it doesn’t really matter what they think. She’s family. I can see it now .

She just is.

We finish about the time the girls need to head up for their bathtime, and Sarah thanks my parents profusely again for the meal.

“Of course,” Kaylee says. This time, she doesn’t touch Sarah. I noticed that she didn’t seem to react negatively when the girls grabbed onto her. Which I mentioned as soon as we are out of the house, walking back down the road.

“It was okay, the kids grabbing you like that?”

“Oh. Yeah. Kids are fine,” she says. There’s a brief pause. “I guess I didn’t know that until tonight. But they are.”

“You haven’t spent very much time around kids, have you?”

She shakes her head. “No. Which is maybe not a great thing since I want to be a social worker. But somehow in my head that feels like a different thing. Because I already know those kids. Those kids are me. What I don’t know are kids like your sisters.

Who just have a lovely house, and wonderful parents.

Who just have this beautiful, sweet life. It’s really… It’s really great.”

“Yeah, sometimes I envy them too,” I say.

She laughs. “No. That’s not it. You can’t be jealous of children.”

“Sure you can,” I say. “I feel it all the time. Every time I feel like I’m part of this family, but also not quite.” I growl, because I really didn’t intend to get into this. This is the kind of thing I never say out loud. It’s not fair. That’s the thing. “Don’t listen to me. It’s dumb.”

“Not dumb. It’s how you feel.”

“But I know my dad feels bad about it, and it’s not his fault.

Yeah, I didn’t spend the first fifteen years of my life with my family, but I have them now.

Sometimes… Sometimes I feel it. Sometimes I feel it in the way the girls just feel so safe and secure.

That a family dinner is normal for them. ”

“I kind of brought the room down with my comment.”

“You didn’t bring the room down. One thing about my parents is that they’re used to grappling with my past. It’s not like we ignore it.

But there are certain things that I just tend to keep inside myself, because I don’t think it’s fair to project onto other people.

Least of all my dad, who already feels bad enough about the way everything went down. ”

“You can still feel wounded without blaming him. You can still feel like it’s unfair without being mad at him. Hell, you can still love him and be mad at him.”

“I can’t be mad at him,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not fair. I already said that.”

“Remember the whole conversation we had earlier today about life not being fair. Cuts both ways. You know, I am kind of mean sometimes. Because I’m traumatized.

I’m going to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, and feel a whole lot of sharp, difficult feelings, and a lot of times the people around me aren’t responsible for it.

They didn’t ask for it. A lot of the time they didn’t earn it.

But that’s the same way my abuse is. Sometimes I’m what’s not fair about life.

I guess I’ve kind of accepted that in some ways. ”

I’ve never thought about it that way before, and I stop walking for a second, considering that. “Well. I think there’s something to be said for not wanting to make anyone else’s life needlessly difficult.”

“Sure.” She shrugs. “I’m not saying go out of your way to be a jerk about everything. I’m just saying, as much as we’ve had to flex to survive, other people can flex around us sometimes. You don’t have to suppress everything.”

“Is that one of your psychology classes talking?”

She laughs. “Maybe. Why didn’t you go to school, Dallas?”

“I didn’t like it. I just remember being in Eugene, doing classes, walking around campus, feeling like I was playing pretend.

Like none of it was real. Like I wasn’t real.

Definitely like I didn’t deserve to be there.

I think I mainly got in because of the essay I wrote about the first fifteen years of my life. ”

“You deserved to be there,” she says. “You’re smart.”

“Well, I didn’t feel like it. Also, I didn’t like sitting still. I’m happier doing this. Anyway, I’ve found all the financial success I could possibly need in the rodeo. Guess I didn’t need school.”

“Maybe not. But it’s okay if you wanted it.”

I think about that for a moment. “Maybe a version of me would have. One who grew up in that house. With my dad. I bet my sisters will go to school. Maybe they’ll even be veterinarians.

But they’ll have the luxury of having been raised in one place.

Of having always known they were secure.

Loved. Of having people praise the work that they do, make a big deal out of it.

I love my family so much. I’m glad that I’m home. Gold Valley is my home.”

“But you feel on the outside of it sometimes.”

My jaw aches. “Yeah. I do.”

We arrive back at the cabin, and I open the door for her. “Want to watch a movie?” I ask. I don’t want to go to bed just yet, and I’m not sure why. Things feel a bit uncertain. They feel unsettled. Maybe because all this stuff has been dredged up to the surface.

“Yes. I do.” Her eyes go bright, and I know what she’s going to say before she even says it. I’ve set myself up. “I think we should watch Lord of the Rings.”

I groan. She was obsessed with that movie when we were kids. If we were ever in a household where we got to have some modicum of control over what was on TV, she would put on Lord of the Rings.

She smiles, wicked. “Please, Samwise Gamgee. I need you to come on this journey with me.”

“How the fuck did I end up being Samwise?” I ask, moving into the kitchen and rooting around to see if I have a bag of microwave popcorn somewhere. I do. She’s already fiddling around with my TV, toying with the remote and pulling up the settings to see where the movie is available.

Luckily, I have the service it’s streaming on. Well, luckily for her. I am an unwilling participant in this trip to Mordor.

“Because I’m Frodo,” she says. “The One Ring is all my trauma, I need to cast it into the fire, but I don’t really want to. The longer you carry it, the more you start to think it protects you, even though it causes you pain.”

I grimace. “That is a little bit on the nose, and something you’ve undoubtedly thought about before.”

She laughs. “Yes. I wrote a paper on it, actually. In one of my classes. A lot of times we carry trauma around for longer than we need to and it does become a weapon, a shield. I recognize it. I haven’t figured out how to cast mine into the fire, though.”

I pop the bag into the microwave, and press the popcorn button, which I know you’re not supposed to do, but I don’t care, I’m lazy.

I lean against the cabinets and stare at her while she curls up on my couch.

“Go on,” I say. “I’m interested. ”

“I’m really angry, Dallas,” she says, suddenly very serious. “About all the things that happened to me. I’m angry they affect me, I’m afraid to let them not affect me. Because I…” She looks away. “I still don’t let anyone touch me.”

Her voice is soft, so soft that I almost can’t hear it. I’m not entirely sure I understand exactly what she’s saying.

“People you don’t know,” I press.

“No. Nobody. I don’t let anyone close. I…

I’m so angry, because it’s the ring. Around my neck, right?

But I put it on my finger too many times, I’ve used it to keep people at a distance.

I’ve used it to remind myself that the world isn’t safe and I can’t trust anybody.

Now I don’t know how to get rid of it. I’m just carrying it, and it’s a burden, and I’m basically Gollum.

” She’s referencing the character who loses all his humanity chasing after the ring, which transforms him into a vile disgusting creature.

There is nothing vile or disgusting about Sarah.

“You’re not like that,” I say. “Sarah, you’ve been through a lot. Don’t be so hard on yourself about what you haven’t been able to let go of on top of everything else.”

“But it’s killing me,” she says. “Literally. I’m lonely. I want to feel normal. I don’t want dinners like that to be an anomaly. I don’t want connecting to people to be something I don’t have experience with. I’m almost twenty-one, I would damn well like to go on a date.”

I grit my teeth and pull the popcorn bag out of the microwave just before it stops, because I can hear that the popping has slowed down, and I'm sure it would burn if I left it.

I shake the bag as I walk over to the couch. “Yeah. You’re young.”

“You say that like you’re an old, wizened man, and not twenty-four,” she says, reaching out and poking me between the ribs with her thumb and forefinger.

“Ouch!” I drop the bag of popcorn as I reflexively moved to cover myself. She steals it, opens it up, laughing like a little troll.

“I told you I was Gollum,” she says, tearing into the bag and stealing a handful.

“You suck,” I say, taking the remote and pushing play on the movie.

“I know,” she says.

I regret making a joke about that, because I fear on some level she thinks that’s true.

I’m not all that interested in this movie, and I’ve seen it too many times, which leaves my mind to wander over to her.

I look at her profile, watch as she watches the movie like she’s never seen it before, her eyes wide with fear when Frodo is nearly captured, smiling when the Fellowship of the Ring is formed.

“There’s just something about the story,” she says wistfully. “That if we all just try to do what’s right when it’s really hard, we could change the world. Defeat the bad guys. Make friends and boil potatoes.”

I swallow hard, and for the first time I really understand what she gets out of the story. Because for a little while, it’s possible to look at very real problems through this lens of fantasy. See a world where good does triumph over evil simply because it’s good, and it has to.

She wants a date.

That creates an uncomfortable shift in my chest.

She doesn’t let anyone touch her.

Except me.

She touched me herself, reached right out and jabbed me in the middle of the discussion, and she doesn’t seem afraid of me at all.

Maybe I could…

No. No. I pushed that thought to the side. It’s a complete betrayal of her. Of everything she is for me to think something like that, to even begin to think something like that.

She’s Sarah. I’m taking care of her. She trusts me.

She trusts me enough to tell me about all these things. To sit with me in a darkened room, sharing this space, sharing air, sharing her favorite movie.

I would never, ever do anything to compromise that. Never.

I love her. With everything I am. Every fiber of my being, and I always have. I haven’t always known what love was, and I still might not know exactly what that emotion looks like in every form in my life, but I believe in it. I value it.

Because every time I’ve ever been loved my life has changed for the better. Every time I’ve ever loved someone.

Even if sometimes it hurts a little bit.

The movie is long, and I’m surprised I don’t start dozing off.

But I know it’s because of her. I know it’s because I feel like I’m making up for lost time.

Precious moments and memories with this person who slipped through my fingers for so long.

Maybe it’s strange, but she and I have never had the option of being normal, so I don’t feel any shame about it.

I take joy where I can find it. Right now, it’s in this.

The simple pleasure of sitting there with her.

And if I feel like moving closer to her, I don’t need to do that.

I can just sit where I am. I can just watch her enjoy the movie.

I can get plenty out of her happiness.

Just being in the presence of it. Soaking it in .

She looks at me, narrows her eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Staring at you.”

“Why?”

“I need to make sure you’re real.”

Her shoulders jerk, a sharp breath sounding a little bit like a gasp. Then she looks away, sticks her hand into the popcorn bag, and starts watching the movie again.

“Did I say the wrong thing?” I ask.

“You just… You sound sentimental.”

“I am sentimental,” I say. “Pretty damn sentimental, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because life has given us plenty enough to be jaded about.”

She snorts. “True. But I’m never jaded when it comes to Lord of the Rings.”

“And I’m never jaded when it comes to you.”

“You have to stop saying things like that, Dodge,” she says.

“And why is that?”

“Because. You can’t make a wild animal into a house pet.”

Except she’s never really been a wild animal with me. But I don’t say that, because for some reason she needs to be protected by this narrative. But I’m too nice to mention it. Far too kind to ask her why she’s hiding behind the One Ring.

“Whatever.”

She throws a piece of popcorn at me. And I smile.

“Yeah. Whatever.”