Unravel (17 page)

“Where is all this energy coming from?” he asked.

“I’m just excited to see all the bright colors!” I smiled. “I think this is the best birthday present ever,” I confessed.

“How did your family celebrate your big day?”

“We had cake and presents.”

“That’s it?” Lachlan frowned. “No birthday party? No sleepovers? Don’t girls do all that crap?”

“Not all girls do that crap,” I said and changed the subject. “Can we light the fireworks now?”

“Man, you’re impatient,” he teased and handed me the match.

It took me three times to light the match. My fingers shook as I put the flame against the fuse. Seconds later there was a hissing sound and sparks. We sprinted away and turned in time to watch the sky light up.

For the next fifteen minutes we let off as many fireworks as we could. I stared in awe the whole time.

I wanted to light up more but Lachlan said no. “We better stop before we get in trouble.” He slid the matches back into his pocket. “Happy Birthday, kid,” he said, before he turned and walked away.

“Hey, come back!” I shouted.

“Kidddd,” he drew out. But he came back to me. “What?”

“You can’t leave.”

He looked down at his watch. “I got a date in fifteen minutes.”

A year ago Lachlan got his driver’s license. His parents had a shiny black car waiting for him in the driveway. He had the freedom to come and go as he pleased. I hated it.

And here he was, getting ready to leave again. Anger flared inside of me.

“With who?” I asked.

“With a senior.”

I crossed my arms. “With who?”

“Laura Kline. Do you know her? Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

I didn’t know Laura Kline, but I already knew I disliked her.

“Well, you can’t leave,” I said, matter of fact.

He frowned, but there was still that mischievous gleam in his eyes. “I’m waiting for the reason why. Why can’t I leave?”

“I have no one else to celebrate my birthday with!” I exclaimed. It came out like a whine.

“What about Lana?”

Lana was my best friend. Her dad worked with my dad. One day, a week after my tenth birthday, she came along with her dad. Instead of coming inside, she sat on the porch steps, staring at the ground. I sat next to her and happily introduced myself. She stared at me in a mixture of shock and curiosity. I talked her ear off and she sat and listened the whole time. By the end of the day, she slowly started to thaw. I saw her kind spirit and knew she would be my friend.

That was two years ago. We’ve been best friends ever since.

“She’s not here,” I said.

“Okay… don’t you have any other friends?”

“No.”

He frowned. “No one else?”

I looked away. “Just you.”

“You need more than just me, kid.”

“Or I could just have you and Lana. That’s way better than a lot of friends. It’s simple math, really.”

“How do you figure?”

“My grandma has always told me that she would rather have four quarters worth of friends than a hundred pennies worth of friends.”

“You’re still missing two other quarters.”

“Nah. You two are enough.”

Lachlan grinned. “Who can argue with that?”

He looked back down at his watch then at his car sitting in the driveway and let free a heavy sigh. “We have one more rocket left. Wanna light up the sky?”

My eyes widened and I nodded anxiously.

We kneeled back on the ground. I scratched at a mosquito bite on my leg as Lachlan prepared the last rocket. He lit a match. When it shot up into the sky, I craned my neck and watched the show. He stood next to me. Not once did he take his phone out and look at the time. We were both too caught up in the grand display. It wasn’t bigger or brighter than any of the other fireworks. But it felt like it.

“Happy Birthday,” Lachlan said. “Make a wish.”

I made a wish that every July 19 would be like this. With bright lights and smiles and laughter.

I wished for Lachlan to be by my side for the rest of my life.

Someone touches my shoulder.

I gasp and whirl around. Mary is standing beside me.

I’m back at Fairfax. Still outside. Snowflakes cling to my hair and my hands feel like icicles. Remnants of my memory are still there. If I close my eyes and really focus, I can hear the distant echo of fireworks and cheers from a small, twelve-year-old girl.

“Are you ready to go in?” Mary asks.

I stand on shaky legs. “How long have I been outside?”

“For about an hour. You looked deep in thought.”

She has no idea.

We walk inside the dining room. Everything’s cleaned up. There are only a few patients quietly eating. It’s like Amber’s outburst never happened.

I’m still in a daze as we walk back to my room. Fluorescent lights above us cast my skin in an unhealthy shade of yellow. I walk inside my room. The lights are already on. I stop short and look around.

I just came back from a memory so innocent and wonderful. My reality, living at Fairfax, is the complete opposite. I don’t want to be in here.

I go through my nightly routine: bathroom. Wash my face. Change clothes. And when I’m done, Mary’s in my room with medication in one hand and a small cup of water in the other. Except tonight I go through the routine feeling numb. My mind won’t pull away from Lachlan and twelve-year-old Naomi.

“Get some sleep,” Mary urges. She turns off the light and shuts the door.

Not even a second later I see Lana’s dad in the corner.

He’s seething with rage. He’s crouched down, ready to attack at any moment. My heart skips a beat but I don’t react. The medicine is doing its job. It’s making me not care. But Lachlan’s visit is more powerful than anything.

And he, Lana’s dad, knows that. His voice gets louder. On another night, it can terrify me… but not right now. Right now it drifts past me and all his vicious words start to fade until they become a distant echo. My skull feels like it’s sinking into the pillow. I’m drifting further, until I’m being pressed down into the mattress. It’s like I’m free falling, pushing past the floor and the frozen ground. I keep moving, watching years of my life pass in front of me.

I want one more memory. Maybe I’m greedy and asking for too much, but I want to see Lachlan again.

My body stops moving. I close my eyes, and I dream.

“Lachlan. Good to see you. Is it summer break already?”

“No,” I groaned and laid my palm against my forehead. “I sound like an idiot.”

I took a deep breath and tried again.

“Oh. Hey, Lachlan. How are you? I totally forgot you were coming home.”

I’d been practicing my reaction and what I would say to Lachlan for the past hour. I was laying down in the treehouse, staring up at the clear, dark sky. There was freedom here to say my words without embarrassing myself.

Lana told me to practice what I would say to Lachlan. Yesterday, she sat with me up in my room, telling me that she did this any time she’s nervous about meeting someone new. She swears by it. But the technique wasn’t working for me. I was no closer to controlling my shaky voice than I had been hours ago.

It was that time again. Summer. Where Lachlan would come home from college and everything in my life would slide back into place.

He left for college last year. I remember the night before he left, sitting up in that treehouse, knowing that things were going to change. Big time. He was going to outgrow me. Of course he was. What 18-year-old would want to keep talking to a 13-year-old girl?

I told him that I wanted to go with him. Lachlan just sighed and tugged on my braid and said: “You can’t, kid. You gotta stay here and get older, wiser and smarter.”

“I’m thirteen,” I said. “I’m already older, wiser, and smarter.”

He laughed. “Okay. Well, you have to graduate high school. Then you can go wherever you want.”

I ducked my head and stared down at my shoes. “I want to go wherever you are.”

“Don’t say that. If you could go anywhere… anywhere in the world, where would it be?”

I hadn’t thought that far. I dreamed up places but I never thought those dreams would come true. “I-I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?” He held his hands out in front of him. “Be adventurous, kid! When you get out there, you can do anything you want!”

Lachlan made it sound simple. Easy. Like it was one foot in front of the other.

“I will,” I promised. “You’re gonna tell me everything about college, right?”

His hands lowered. He smirked like what I said was funny. I wanted to ask him what was so funny. I wanted to lean forward and say, ‘Tell me what makes you laugh. I want to know the inside joke.’

But I didn’t.

“Not everything, but most,” he said.

“I’ll miss you,” I whispered.

Lachlan smiled at me before he stood up and walked away. “Miss you too, kid.”

I looked away.

“Cheer up. I’ll still see you in the summer. Okay?”

He was my happiness. And my happiness was leaving me to travel 2,100 miles away to find his own happiness. How could I be okay?

The next day he left, and I had to figure out what to do with this big gaping hole he left in my life. He would keep in contact with short, friendly e-mails. Each time I saw a new message from him, my heart would hammer wildly in my chest and I would click on the message, not expecting much. Lachlan was my source for living and those messages kept me going.

I would read the messages enough times that I had the words memorized. I would read them to Lana and she would sit on my bed, smiling but shaking her head at me as if I’d lost my mind. Her visits to my house were becoming more and more frequent. We started to forge a bond that was unbreakable. We became close enough that we would fight like sisters and seconds later move to a different subject like nothing had happened.

And that’s how I survived the first year of his absence.

But now it was August. He was home. I didn’t know how long he’d stay, but all that mattered was that he was
here
.

Finally.

I took a deep breath and tried to focus on my words. “I’ll be really busy this summer, Lachlan. I won’t be able to see you that much.”

“No, no, no,” I said and rubbed my hands down my face. “That’s all wrong. He’ll know I’m lying.”

The wood creaked loudly and seconds later I heard, “Are you talking to someone?”

I scrambled to a sitting position and watched Lachlan climb into the treehouse. My embarrassment disappeared and was replaced by happiness at the sight of him. He had grown so much he had to duck to avoid the branches as he walked over to me.

Every year I noticed more things about him. At ten, I thought he was cute. I would write his name on pages. Over and over. Sometimes our names would be in hearts. Sometimes it was just his name alone. At eleven, I wanted to kiss him. Didn’t know why. I just had this urge to press my lips against his head. At twelve it was his hair. It always looked so messy and I wanted to touch it to see if it was soft or not. Thirteen, I memorized the way he smiled. And now, at fourteen, I noticed everything about him. Shoulders. Arms. Hands.

Everything.

I shook away my thoughts. “I was just… talking to myself.”

“That sounds healthy.”

My cheeks turned beet red.

“I leave for school and you go crazy on me?” Lachlan teased.

“Ha, ha.”

He sat across from me and sighed. “Can’t believe you still come up here.”

I patted the wooden boards beneath me. “I told you I’d use it.”

“Yeah. You weren’t lying.”

We sat in companionable silence. He was looking at the sky and I was looking at him. His head started to turn and I looked away before he caught me.

“How has your summer been?” he asked.

I shrugged and reminded myself to answer casually. “It’s been good.”

“Hanging out with Lana?”

“Yep.”

“Am I ever going to meet her?”

“Sure.” I leaned back against the railing, making myself comfortable. “Whenever she gets the courage to come over here with me.”

“And that will be?” His question hung in the air.

“Never,” I said bluntly.

“She’s that shy?”

“She’s that shy,” I confirmed.