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31
ORIGIN STORY
My lungs burn in my chest as my mother’s arms tighten around me. Bright colors kaleidoscope behind my closed eyes, reds and greens exploding across my vision. Some ancient part of my brain, a primitive survival instinct, kicks in. My body wrenches around in her grasp. She’s stronger than she looks—but so am I. I thrash back and forth, gasping for breath, my arms and legs writhing in all directions. And then all at once I break free and stagger away from her.
I fall to the ground, too dizzy and breathless to move.
She steps toward me. I open my mouth to scream for help, to scream at her to stay away from me, but my lungs are flat inside of me. Her face is hidden in the shadows of her hair. She walks over like some kind of monster, in a halting shuffle, and kneels down next to me.
The moon blazes out from behind a cloud, and suddenly I can see her face as clearly as if it were day. She’s crying.
“Sutton, I know you’re upset, but you have to breathe, sweetheart. Take a deep breath. You’re hyperventilating.” She reaches for my hand. I search her face for the grotesque sneer, the anger that I thought I had seen just a few seconds earlier, but I can’t. With a jolt, I wonder: Was that just the face of a woman trying not to cry?
I take a deep, shuddering breath, and when I exhale, the world seems clearer.
“What do … you want from me?” I pant.
Becky shakes her head back and forth, her lip quivering. “I just wanted to meet you, Sutton. That’s all. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just grabbed you like that. But … I’ve wanted to hold you for almost eighteen years now.”
Wanted to … hold me? That was a hug? My mind reels. A humiliating realization dawns on me—she didn’t crush me at all. I had just panicked when she put her arms around me.
Some prankster queen I am. I almost just asphyxiated myself in fear.
I take three or four more gigantic breaths. She doesn’t touch me again, but she sits down beside me, watching me with concern. Her eyes are still wet, but her tears have stopped running.
“Here we are, sitting in the dirt again,” she says. I don’t say anything. She bites her lip. “I’m sorry, Sutton. I always do this. I always find a way to mess things up.”
She looks so forlorn sitting there that I almost feel sorry for her. But I’m not ready to feel sorry for her yet, to forgive her. She did mess things up, starting when she left me behind with my grandparents, and ending with us screaming at each other in the mountains.
Becky’s eyes fall to the locket I always wear. I grip it in my hand self-consciously, half to hide it from her, half to reassure myself that it’s still there.
“You’re still wearing my locket,” she says softly.
My hackles go up again. Her locket? This is my trademark, the centerpiece of my style. My parents gave it to me when I was little, and now everyone knows that I’m never seen without it. The little silver sphere is cold in my fingers. I don’t want to believe that something of hers has been hanging around my neck all this time.
“Mom and Dad gave this to me,” I say, as snidely as I can. “If it was yours, it’s not anymore.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean—I mean, I left it for you, Sutton. I left it so you would have a piece of me. Something to remember me by.”
We’re silent for a long moment. An owl calls out overhead, on the hunt. I pick at a sticker embedded in my jean shorts from my long tumble through the woods. Finally, I speak.
“I wear it every day,” I whisper. The silver starts to get warmer in my grip.
Becky plucks a rubber band from her wrist and pulls her hair back in a low ponytail. With her hair tamed she looks calmer. She takes a deep breath.
“Maybe now you can see, a little, why I had to leave you. I’m no good with people, Sutton. I get … agitated. Easily confused. Short-tempered.”
“What made you like that?” I blurt. Her forehead crumples into a sad frown. She shrugs.
“It’s just how I am. Mom and Dad … your grandparents, I mean … they did their best for me. But some people are just damaged on the inside, no matter what their lives look like. Sometimes I get better for a little while. I think I can take care of myself, maybe even of you … but it never lasts.” She exhales loudly. “Leaving you with my parents was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. You have to understand that. I didn’t want to do it—I kept trying to convince myself that I could look after you. After you and your sister both.”
I frown. “Laurel’s yours, too?” That doesn’t make any sense. Laurel is only six months younger than me. It’d be impossible.
“No, no.” She stands up and slaps the dead leaves and branches off her bottom. She stretches, then looks out over the city lights, her back to me. “Have you ever wondered what the ‘E’ in your locket stands for?”
I shrug, even though she’s not looking at me. I push myself up with my raw, tender palms. My legs are one big scrape, and there’s an ache in my lower rib cage that I know is going to be a serious bruise. My shirt is pretty much ruined, torn and covered in dirt. I sigh, moving next to her on the ledge to look down over the subdivision.
When I was little, I used to have this recurring dream that my reflection would step out of the mirror and we would play together. When I explained the dreams to Laurel, she said they sounded scary, but they never were. My reflection and I would run across a playground hand in hand while the sun rolled up into the sky. I knew, the way you know in dreams, that we were two parts of a whole, that we were each incomplete without the other. I would wake up from those dreams feeling complete in a way I never did during my waking life. I never told anyone, but I used to pretend that the E in my locket stood for my reflection.
