Page 44 of The Story of You

We’d work hard all day but at night, we got to do pretty much what we wanted. Terry, Lars, and Sandy didn’t care to keep too strict of tabs on us. So long as we were up and ready to work by dawn, they were happy. Darius and I would take food down to the river. We’d climb trees and watch the stars. We’d dream about what we’d do when we got out of here.

It wasn’t a bad place.

Lars was good fun unless he drank too much, then you steered clear. Sandy was kind. She made us cinnamon buns on Sundays. But she worked in town and was gone most of the day through the week.

Terry was the go-to guy. He was in charge. He managed us well and patiently taught us what we needed to know. He wasn’t great at emotional support for us or himself.

Lars and Terry were a thing. Sandy was Terry’s younger sister. Technically we were Lars and Terry’s foster kids. Sandy was there to help Terry when she could.

Living there was just living. It’s not that the adults didn’t care about us. On some level, they did, but it wasn’t the same as a parent loving you—nothing like the love I knew—and so I carried a constant pit in my stomach. A hole. I ached and longed for something.

That hug when you scraped your knee. That pat on the back when you did well at school. That interest in your life only a parent gets, often annoying, letting you know they give so much of a fuck, they’re going to nose their way into your business whether you like it or not.

Even the rules, they were for keeping track of us and making sure we were sound enough to work the next day. They existed to keep us in line enough the house didn’t descend into madness. Unlike many of the rules my parents made which were because they were scared I’d get hurt or that they’d lose me or to teach me a valuable life lesson.

You could feel the difference.

* * *

Simon ~ October 1985

I’d been there a month. I was used to things. Used to Darius—or so I thought, but as usual, he came up with a way to surprise me.

“I’m going to get with Asher,” Darius announced one day out of the blue. He was a lot more vulgar, of course.

“Shhhhh. Darius. Eww. Why would you want to touch someone else … down there? That’s gross.”

“No, it’s not. Grown-ups do it all the time.”

I didn’t know anything about what kinds of sex things grownups did. Apparently, Darius did. “Silas had a magazine under his bed. I used to sneak up and read it when he was busy with Oliver.”

“We’re not grown-ups.”

“You should do it too. I’ve seen the way you look at Shane.”

I flushed hot. “I don’t look at him any kind of way!”

“You do.”

He was right though. I did. I watched Shane in a different way than I watched Darius. With Darius, it was more of a “what are you going to do next”? fascination. With Shane it was so I could learn him.

He didn’t talk to anyone. He kept to himself, or he hung out with Asher and Billy. The teens. He never smiled. He was always pensive.

I felt like he held the secrets to the universe. I loved following the curve of his round head as he brushed out the horses. The way he was in control when he operated some of the heavy machinery—I could watch him drive a tractor for hours.

And when he’d sit alone on the picnic bench near the massive willow tree in the yard eating a sandwich, he’d leave his long black hair down and it would fly every which way. I wanted to catch the flyaway strands in my fingers.

Twelve-year-old me thought it was weird to do the grown-up things Darius was suggesting. “Fine, I do like him, but I’m not doing that. Fuck you, Darius.” I never said the word fuck until I met Darius and then I said it all the time so I could be half as cool as him.

“Just a hand job then. I’m sure he’ll like that just at much.”

I should have told him “fuck you” again, instead I asked him, “What’s a hand job?”

“Haven’t you ever masturbated before?”

“No. Ew!”

I was a sheltered boy with less controversial topics. I didn’t even know what sex was. I knew it was how Mom and Dad made me. I thought it consisted of two adults wriggling on top of each other naked—a school friend informed me that was how it’s done when I was ten.