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My eyes pop back open, and I stare up at the ceiling, wondering what she needs this time. Does she miss her mom already? The butterfly toy didn’t work very well, but—
Wait!
A new idea sweeps through me, pulling me back out of bed and guiding me toward the nursery with a toy dangling from my grip.
June’s cries are squeaky and small when I enter the room as quietly as possible. I don’t want to scare her. I edge closer to the crib and peek through the grates, watching her writhe atop a sheet made of white and gray stripes. She’s a curious little thing, all bright-red cheeks and wriggling limbs. Her shrieks turn loud and screechy, like one of Mr. Canary’s speckled roosters I got to meet on our last school field trip. She makes my head pound and my ears ring.
I toss the new toy over the crib rail, and my elephant stuffed animal drops beside her on the mattress. Baby June flails her hands around until a tiny fist locates the toy and clamps the long elephant’s nose, squeezing tight.
And then…she goes quiet.
Her cries cease. Her movements become less jerky and mad. The shrieks have turned to coos, and I stare in wonder through the crib slats as June turns her head to look at me.
Our eyes lock, making my insides feel fuzzy. I lower myself to my knees, my own hand curling around one of the rails, while the other reaches in between the slats to touch her. I rub her tummy like I would a puppy, then trace a finger down her twitchy arm. She’s warm and soft. She smells like bubble baths.
“I don’t have a name for him yet,” I murmur, pressing my forehead against the rails. “You can name him if you want.”
The elephant thrashes lightly in her grip.
Her eyes are still pinned on me, wide and inquisitive and dark blue, looking almost black in the shadowy room. June coos, then makes a noise that sounds like “aggie.” It’s cute. It makes me giggle as my hand makes its way to hers.
“Okay, then. We’ll call him Aggie.”
Tiny fingers clamp around my pinkie, stealing my next breath. She clings so tightly—as if she needs me for something, as if I’m important, and that causes my belly to flutter. My chest tickles, too. I like the feeling: being needed, wanted.
Claimed.
I feel claimed.
And after losing everything I love, it feels really good to belong to someone.
Ah, yes. The moment it all began.
The moment six-year-old me peered into June’s crib as she held my finger in her tiny fist, while clutching a toy elephant in the other. I still remember the feeling that came over me, clear as day.
It felt like I would never be lost again.
Of course, I was only a kid at the time, so I didn’t fully understand the magnitude of such a feeling—how could I? Our story was impossible to predict.
But…I knew something.
I knew that Baby June had claimed me in that moment, and she never stopped.
She claimed me like the sunrise claims the morning sky with lightness and blush, promise and wonder.
She claimed me like a cyclone funneling through a quiet town, taking no prisoners.
She claimed my good and my bad, my light and my dark. She took my broken, ugly bits and molded them into something worthy of display. She turned my agony into art.
June claimed me in a way that could ultimately be defined by a single word:
Inevitable.
3
FIRST BREAK
BRANT, AGE 6
