Page 56 of Room to Breathe

“You should sleep.”

His eyes landed on my sweatshirt.

“Oh.” I sat up. “Do you want to use it?”

“No, I mean, yes, but can we both use it?”

“It’s not that big.”

“Back to back?” he asked.

“I guess we can try.” I stretched out the sweatshirt as much as possible while still trying to keep it wadded up in order to provide padding. I nodded for him to lie down first. He did. I followed, facing the other way. Our bodies touched from our heads down to our butts. Both of us had our knees bent, and my bare feet pressed against the bottom of his sneakers.

“I don’t need your socks, but you should take your shoes off,” I said.

“Would that help?” he asked.

“For yourself,” I said. “For comfort.”

“Right.” He toed out of them.

“I mean, if you’re worried about germs, I had my foot in the toilet. It can’t get more disgusting than that.”

He let out a low laugh. “I’m not worried about germs.”

We lay in silence for several minutes. From this angle I could see a spiderweb under the bottom lip of the cupboard below the sink. I hoped the spider that built it had abandoned it at some point. A memory rushed into my mind. I was eight or nine. I saw a spider on the floor in my bedroom and let out a bloodcurdling scream while flinging myself onto my bed. My dad rushed into my room.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, out of breath and red-faced.

“There’s a spider.” I waved my arm around, pointing at the floor.

He followed my finger to where the spider sat frozen by the Barbie doll I’d just been playing with. “A wolf spider,” Dad saidjoyfully. “These are the good ones. They keep the bad bugs away. You should let him hang out in your room.”

“No, Dad. I don’t like spiders. Please smash it.”

“You want me to smash a good one?” he asked, pretending to be offended.

“Please, Dad.”

“I’ll get a cup and take him outside.”

“Hurry!” I’d called after him.

Beau took a deep breath that I could feel along my back, bringing me out of the memory. My throat felt tight.

“Do you think people can change?” I asked. “Like fundamentally change who they are?” Was my dad the guy who rescued the “good” spiders or the guy who committed fraud? If that’s what he’d done. Wouldn’t they have figured out by now if he hadn’t? In my brain those two people couldn’t coexist in the same body. And that meant he had changed.

“I don’t know,” Beau said thoughtfully. “Maybe. But I think people are who they are at their core. Maybe they put on a mask sometimes, but who they are will always be there. I think. I don’t know,” he said again, as if he didn’t have confidence in what he’d just said. Rare for Beau. “What about you? Do you think people can change?”

“Yes,” I said. I was different now, wasn’t I? Or maybe deep down I’d always been this angry, bitter girl. She’d been just waiting to come out.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. Was he thinking about how different I was?

I could feel his heart beating against the center of my back.

“This is really uncomfortable, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.