Page 56 of Pretty Nightmare

And of course, before Nathan too.

I don’t want to admit I miss him, but I do. I loved that boy so hard. And thinking about what I did to him—it’s eating me up inside.

I’ve been trying to ignore his voice in my head, but he was such a big part of my life. Even after he moved away to college. And every time I picture his face I am filled with regrets. I’ll find myself wandering around the swamp when everyone is busy so they can’t take too much notice of me. I don’t go far. I don’t go into the river town, for instance. They won’t let me do that. I stay close. Mostly I sit somewhere in the woods, or maybe I’ll climb up into the little fake treehouse at the top of Maggie’s playset in the garden. Just anywhere I can see the dirt patch across the duck lake where Nathan’s cottage used to be and no one will take too much notice.

Because I’m dwelling.

And I like to pretend it’s still there.

I pretend to open the door and go inside. And then I pretend to walk up the stairs and plan the words I will say to Nathan to make him smile. I pretend we’re still carefree children, even though that might not have been real.

I question it. I question everything about memories these days. But I plan a day for us anyway. Like the ones I wrote about in the journal McKay found. Swamping, and fishing, and boating, and just generally traipsing around being children. I always plan a trip to the meadow where he used to make little flower crowns for me in the summer and twig crowns for me in the winter.

I pretend we’re ordering ice cream in the drug store up the river. And we sit in the cool air condition and lick our cones, smiling at each other.

If all that stuff in my journal was true, then I had a pretty great childhood. Even though I know that’s not true. Even if all that stuff I wrote is accurate, my childhood can’t ever be considered great.

I want to embrace all those entries as truth. I really do. Some days I just force myself to believe in them. But then other days I see how some of it doesn’t add up.

For instance, I noticed something about my writing where I talked about Nathan. He didn’t say much in that journal. It was mostly just me doing the talking. But that’s not how it was in real life. I would not call Nathan a quiet boy. He was definitely a conversation-starter.

Like when we first met on the river bank he talked a lot. I mostly just listened. And watched him. Everything about him felt right. I knew he was good from the first moment I saw him.

In this memory he was in the sunshine and that’s how I got his eye color all mixed up, I guess. They were already pale, but the sun turned the silver-blue into a muted gold. The river water was slapping against his knees because he was standing in it holding his fishing pole, his boat nearby on the sand.

And he was talking. He didn’t use my name at first, because it took me a little while to tell him that secret. I think he knew it, though. It took me a little while to realize that too, but looking back on it now, I’m pretty sure he already knew who I was.

Anyway. When I first came out of the trees, he was pulling the boat up the sand and I think I scared him. Because he stopped and stared at me, and then said, “Jesus Christ. Where the hell did you come from?”

Normally I would not show myself like that, but I had had a day, if you know what I mean. I was a little out of sorts. So I said, “The island.” Because that was the truth. I still felt a part of that place and the reality of Old Home hadn’t quite set in yet. There was a disconnect there. Between who I was in that moment and who I would become tomorrow.

Because tomorrow I wouldn’t be from the island anymore. I’d be from Old Home. And even though I was young, I think I knew this instinctively. So I said, “The island,” because that would be the last time it would be true. He would know me as the girl next door after that.

I don’t recall all his words that day, obviously. But there was a lot of talk about islands. And that’s how we decided that the land around Old Home was almost like an island—the river on two sides, because it curved around the property, and the duck lake.

But he started talking about things right away. Running in the woods. The jungle, he called it. I remember that. Because I knew about jungles, and the swamp didn’t really qualify. So I recall thinking about that a little more than I should’ve and missed parts of the conversation.

But anyway, my point is that Nathan was a talker.

He was charming too. Like McKay. Always grinnin’. Always ready with a smile. Always ready with ideas too. He was full of big ideas. I would not call myself an idea person. I’m not imaginative that way. I mostly try to keep myself rooted in reality. Whenever possible, that is.

Nathan though, he was always about what’s not possible. He liked to talk about fantasy things. Like… we had games and stuff. Very complicated games we’d play in the woods and on the river. His little fishing boat was a pirate ship and we’d be looking for treasure. Or sometimes it was a yacht and we’d be looking for food. He’d make me do the imagining because I was bad at it. He was always able to conjure up realistic descriptions of just about anything. Not just birds and moss on the trees, but clothes. He would imagine whole outfits for me. Pretty ones, too. Or weapons. He would make weapons out of sticks and stones and we would practice using them. He could spear a fish with a stick. He didn’t need a line to catch a fish. And he always had a slingshot in his pocket. This was before McKay really started teaching me things, so it was in those first few weeks.

Nathan and I, we just fell in to each other that way. Like we had been friends before in another lifetime.

But there is no denying that we grew apart as we got older. I could feel it happening. And part of that new distance was about Adam, of course. And McKay too, but mostly Adam.

I was Nathan’s at first. For a lot of years, even though I lived with the men, it was me and my boy.

I have been thinking back on that recently, wondering, When did it change? Was there a moment?

There was. It was after the first kiss. When that first kiss happened, we were tight. Still peas and carrots back then.

But it was definitely before we had sex in the tree house.

That was when we were seventeen, so four years between the kiss and the sex.

And boy, did a lot happen in those four years.