Page 36 of Emmett
Ro scoots to the side, giving me room to sit between them, and I do while Dad fast-forwards through a chunk of the video as if he’s watched it a hundred times and has the timeline memorized, starting at toddlerhood and working ourway through my childhood, watching birthday parties, family get-togethers; any moments Dad just thought needed to be captured for posterity’s sake.
As my twelfth birthday party comes onto the screen, I look at the kid being celebrated: head shaved almost to the scalp and fingernails colored black with a Sharpie I stole from my dad’s office.
Rowan keeps her eyes glued to the screen, and Dad and I exchange a look with each other as realization comes to him, and I confirm it without having to say anything:this is when it started. If memory serves me right, I fell into the pool the week before that party; then I jumped in the week after that, and the week after that. There were a few chunks of time I was going in every day, choosing the terror over words:I’m really sad, I’m scared, I’m hurting, I feel so alone.
I want my mom.
That kid knew who he was, but not where he belonged or where he came from.
Never that.
My life continues to move in fast forward on the camcorder, from getting braces, to the embarrassing cracks in my voice as puberty morphed it into the baritone sound that it has today, to the single lacrosse game that I played before deciding that lacrosse just wasn’t my thing.
Through all of those changes - the clothes, the houses, Dad’s one serious girlfriend coming and going – Uncle Davis and my dad were always around. My grandparents, too, at least until they died.
“That’swhy I kept this,” Dad says quietly after a too-long silence between us. “Because of all of the good parts. I didn’t want you to watch it because I didn’t want you to see the hard parts.”
“I still don’t know anything about Anna, though. Or why she left me,” I tell him.
“I wish I could give you that answer, bud.” He offers a gentle pat to my leg. “But nothing that she did or didn’t do made you who you are.Youdid that. Your mom contributed genetics and a middle name, and that’s it.”
“You picked my first name?”
He nods. “We couldn’t agree on a first and middle for you, so we finally decided to pick one each and call it fair.” Tapping his finger against the camcorder, he tells me, “The day we started filming this, actually. Emmett, I was proud of you through every clip on this tape, and I’m proud of you now. Nothing will ever change that.”
Even if I tell you that the man you hate gave me a hand job in the mens’ room?
Even if I tell you that Ilikedit?
Would you be proud of me then?
I stuff the thoughts down and give his arm a firm, grateful squeeze. He’s doing the best he can, just like he always has.
I make a promise to him in my head that I won’t scare him like that again. I can give him that, if nothing else.
SIXTEEN
Emmett
I wake in a cold sweat, clutching my chest as I gasp for air. My eyes flit around the room, unable to recognize where I am, and I toss away the bedding draped over my body as I hurtle toward the door and down the hallway.
The door is cracked when I reach Dad and Ro’s room, and all that I can see when I try to peek through the crack is darkness. Nausea rolls through my gut when my hand makes contact with the door, but I push it open to let some of the light from the hall stream inside. The two of them are tucked comfortably in their bed in a deep sleep, completely fine.
It was just a dream.
Closing the door quietly as I leave, I rest my back against the wall and press the heels of my palms into my eyes. This happens almost every night now: sleep for a couple of hours, have a nightmare, wake up, try and fail to fall back asleep. The nightmares are usually small, someone leaving me or lying to me, and more often than not, the person in the dream is faceless. I just know that in the dream, I love that person and when I wake up, there’s a sense of hurt that takes me a while to shake.
I’ve never dreamt about my dad dying before.
I know that I won’t be able to go back to sleep, so I go back to my room to grab my headphones and a pair of pants before heading down to the kitchen for a bottle of water.
Without any goal in mind, without any idea of where I’m going, as soon as I step out of the front door, I just start running. I run past the large security gate and down the quiet road that leads away from the house, pushing my legs as hard as they’ll let me.
I stop six miles or so from Dad’s house, resting against a tree while I sip on my water. Streaks of pink and orange slip through the tops of the buildings and the few other trees scattered throughout the area to tell me that morning is coming, and I stay to watch the sun rise before I start the trek back home.
This doesn’t happen to me. The last time that I had a nightmare, I was probably nine years old, and that was only because Davis let me watchNightmare On Elm Streetright before I went to bed. I never should have met Anna. Ever since I met her, they won’t stop, and I feel like I’m going fucking crazy.
The house is full of life when I walk back through the front door, following the sound of my family through to the kitchen, where breakfast is being made. Macie bounces on the tips of her toes, peeking past Rowan to watch her work. Dad sips on his coffee at the island, bouncing Sarah on his knee while he chats with the girls. His phone sits in front of him, almost guaranteed to have the morning news waiting for him, but he pays it no mind; his focus is on his family.