Page 71 of The Story of You

“The real reason I was disobedient.”

“Can’t you just ask him to?” Why misbehave?

“Other than it fucking hurts? Think about it, Simon. That’s cheating the system. I need to feel like I earned the spanking in the first place.”

I didn’t ask Shane to spank me either. It was different for me though—Itriedto behave. When I fucked up, it was seldom me taunting Shane into punishing me.

Which made the time we went off drinking new.

He took my hand and pulled me to his room. That time, we had the bedroom to ourselves. I didn’t argue. Didn’t even complain. Shane always came across as sure of what he was doing. I trusted him from the beginning of our “spanking thing”. He’s never let me down. We’ve had … a few bugs to work out and hey, we were dumb teens, but overall, we were naturals.

Shane gripped my wrist in the tender way he always had. He brought me close, between his knees.

“I was scared, Simon,” he said. His voice carried thunder. It carried pain. “Anything coulda happened to you fools.”

“I’m sorry. Was dumb.”

“I’m gonna have my own talk with him. As for you, you know we agreed no more alcohol till you’re twenty-one. You were also supposed to tell me where you would be.”

Over Shane’s knees I went. He gave it to me good for that venture and I was hard pressed to follow along with any of Darius’s schemes or broken-hearted tantrums thereafter.

Dar and Asher were back on by the next week. All it took was a plate of pancakes and a sultry look from across the farm. Darius stormed over to him, took his hat, and then sunk it onto his own head before they disappeared behind the tall stacks of hay bales.

ChapterTwenty-Three

Silas ~ June 1986

Ididn’t go into Darius’s room anymore. No one did. It wasn’t a shrine either. Just a dusty tomb, forgotten. As Oliver slept one day, I went in to clean it. I stripped the bed. I folded the clothes strewn about and then I—on a whim—looked under the bed. I looked through the closets. I tried to find a loose piece of carpet—I don’t know, it was something I read in a book once.

The line in Darius’s letter about cake tugged at my brain every time I read it. It was a reminder. Had to be. He told me family meant the three of us. That cake symbolized the three of us. He put it there to prove he’d written it and to make me think. To remind me of his wish.

Unless I had gone crazy.

That I had gone crazy wasn’t a spare thought. I didn’t know. If I was or if I wasn’t, followed me around with everything I did. I double and triple questioned myself. But when I found Darius’s journal, the haze fell away.

That’s all it takes when a narcissistic shroud is over your eyes: evidence and the will to see it.

I read until Oliver woke up. I hid it in my bedroom until I could read it by lamplight, while Oliver slept near me. While I was busy with Oliver, Darius had been fighting his own battle. The last entry read:

Silas,

If I’m gone, look for me.Please. I’m not whatever Dad says. I dunno. I don’t even have proof. I just get the feeling he wants me gone. I have money. A bunch of it. I’ll get by with that for as long as I can…

The date was well before the night I’d found him missing. He’d been thinking these things and never told me.

I had his letter memorized by then. In the letter, he said he’s stolen money from Dad. That had to be a clue. I’d forgotten, but I knew Darius saved all his birthday and Christmas money … that’s the money he meant when he wrote about it in his journal. I even knew where he kept it. Fishing out the shoebox stuffed way to the back under this bed, my heart lifted. My body tingled. Would it be there? If it wasn’t, Darius had written that to tip me off.

I tore open the box. A one-dollar bill sat lonely on top of a pile of baseball cards. My eyes pricked with tears. He’d taken the money. It’s why he left the one bill so that I would know it hadn’t been stolen or moved. That one note was proof I wasn’t crazy, but it still didn’t prove he hadn’t run away.

What was I going to do though? Father had even Uncle Pax convinced that I was unwell. The threat of the same thing happening to Oliver hung over my head. I made promises to Oliver that he’d never lose me. No matter what, I’d never let Father take him from me like I had allowed with Darius.

I’d let him down. He looked up to me, but I’d missed everything important that happened to him.

With Father, I had to play the game. I thought that maybe if I did, he’d come around. Maybe he’d give up Darius’s location. If Darius was still alive—a place I didn’t want to go so I didn’t.

Oliver wandered over to where I was folding laundry. Did he even remember Darius? Darius was nearly erased. Oliver wouldn’t remember Mama; I couldn’t live with him forgetting Darry too. “Baba. Baba, up.”

“How am I supposed to fold laundry with you in my lap, huh?” I brought him into my lap. I would never turn him away. Especially when I could sense he needed comfort more so than other babes. I didn’t have another one to compare him to, but he was cuddlier and clingier than the babies at the park I took him to. It was a theory I ran with and a good excuse to never have to let him go without or “toughen up”. I would be tough for him. He would have no use for toughness.