Winnie hands me a pair of fuzzy socks from the drawer of my bedside table. “So what was it like? Kissing him?”
“I don’t know.”
She recoils, face scrunched up. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Your lips were all over him—what was it like?”
I laugh, joining her on the bed. “It was…” I sigh. “Electric.”
My roommate groans. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Crap, I’m going to have to monitor this situation.”
“There’s nothing to monitor, but be my guest. And get off my bed, I’m tired.”
Once Winnie finally goes back to her own room and I finally climb into bed, I lie atop the covers, twisting the new bangle on my wrist, the metal warmed by the heat of my skin.
In the dark, the pads of my fingers trace the etched sunflower, the beautiful words engraved in the metal.
“Everything happens for a reason,” I murmur, marveling at how the heat from my body now radiates from the bracelet.
Everything happens for a reason.
I know this.
I’ve been learning it the hard way my entire life, one disappointment after the other, starting with the death of my parents—both of them—when I was young. I’ve had time to recover and grow and move on with my life, but—
I never do.
Never.
What I’ve done is adjust. Bend. Amend.
Change.
Learn to live without the things I once had.
That’s what you do when you lose people you love.
They say that once someone dies, they’re always with you in spirit; it’s something I know to be true, because I feel my parents every second of every day. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It only hurts less.
Their memories remain, but I have to work so hard to retrieve them, fragmented as they are. They’re pieces I struggle to puzzle together, obscure and fleeting with every day and week and month and year that passes by.
I was so young when they died. So young.
They were so young when they died.
But I’m here.
I’m alive.
Lying in a bed, staring up at a ceiling I pay for with money I earn myself.
The death of my parents is what led to my stutter; I don’t remember ever not having it, but my cousin Wendy does. I stayed with her family for a while when I was in elementary school, until they couldn’t afford to keep me anymore. They just didn’t have the money.
Wendy, who was ten when I went to stay with them, said one day I talked like a normal kid, and the next…I didn’t.
It used to be worse; I couldn’t get through a sentence without getting my tongue tied on my words. I guess it was the trauma of being tucked in one night by your parents and having them disappear the next. When you’re four, you don’t understand the concept of death…I mean, maybe some kids do, but I didn’t.
I was sensitive, Wendy said. Retreated further into myself.
She was older, and kind. I slept on her bedroom floor; she and her sister—my cousin Beth—slept in the double bed. Together my aunt and uncle had four kids and couldn’t afford one more, especially with my youngest cousin, Ryan, wheelchair bound with mounting medical bills they couldn’t pay.
Eventually, I was able to start collecting a pension from the state, but that didn’t come until later…too many months later when I was already in the foster care system.
Then, as a final blow, my uncle was transferred out of state and I couldn’t see them anymore. I’ve never been able to save enough money to visit them, and lord knows they can’t afford to come see me.
I’m not a fool; I know I’m one of the lucky ones that went through the system and came out fighting for a better life. Quiet but strong, if you don’t count my stutter.
One last parting gift from my parents.
One last memento from the trauma surrounding their deaths.
From the cops showing up at my house the night of their accident. A fluke. A freak accident. On their way home from a play, their premature, untimely deaths involved one strung-out addict who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel, a speeding pick-up truck, and my parent’s compact car. I vaguely remember my babysitter Becky—a teenage neighbor girl—freaking out when the cops came to the house…the scramble to place me because our family was…well, it was small.
And had just grown smaller still.
A few years ago I started collecting the bracelets. They’re expensive, so I only have four, each one purchased with the money I make tutoring, working at the library, and babysitting kids like Summer, when I have enough spare cash to buy one, which isn’t often.
Everything happens for a reason.
That one single bracelet circling my wrist, resting on my stomach when I finally settle my arm there.
The other four remain on my dresser.
I finger it, rubbing the sunflower disk with my thumb, smiling in the dark despite myself. Smiling despite Zeke Daniels and his reluctance to get close to another living human being.
That’s fine.
I’ve been fighting for better my whole life.
One scared man-child isn’t going to stop me from finding it.
Zeke
Why did I give her that fucking bracelet?
Jeez, now she’s going to think I care and shit.
I give my pillow a thwack, pounding it into a flat, downy mass, and readjust it under my head. Staring at the damn ceiling above my big, half-empty bed, arms behind my head.
I’m so fucking tired.
But I swear, every damn time I close my eyes, I see the look on Violet’s face when she opened that box. Jesus, that face; those goddamn doe eyes—they gazed straight at me like I’d…like I’d healed an invisible wound I hadn’t even known was there.