Page 12

Don’t wear anything soft or pretty.

Don’t look at the women’s section when someone is watching.

Don’t cry, because crying never helps anything.

Each rule is another stitch, pulling me tighter, changing the shape of me until I’m supposed to resemble whatever kind of son Mom thinks she deserves.

It has never worked.

No matter how carefully I fold myself, something always sticks out.

A gesture, a word, the way I walk.

The way my voice rises when I’m excited.

The faint scent of the vanilla lotion I keep hidden with my sewing supplies.

There’s always something.

My phone vibrates beneath a pile of pattern paper, and I startle so badly that the needle pierces the pad of my finger. “Ouch.”

I drop the blouse and press my fingertip to my mouth before the blood can stain the fabric. The metallic taste spreads across my tongue as I dig for my phone with my free hand, half expecting to see Mom’s name glaring on the screen, even though she is supposed to be working until six.

Instead, it’s an email—another one from what’s quickly become my most favorite email address ever.

My heartbeat quickly settles, and my mouth pulls into a grin.

The first email came two months ago, followed by the scholarship notification three days later. I remember reading it in the stockroom at work, crouched behind cases of canned soup because it was the only place my manager wouldn’t see me checking my phone. I had covered my mouth with both hands to keep from making any noise, though a squeak escaped anyway, small, high, and embarrassingly happy.

I’d gotten in!

Not only into a school, but into the program I had spent years looking at online whenever Mom was out, and I could use the laptop without someone demanding to see my search history every ten minutes.

The scholarship doesn’t cover everything. It pays most of the tuition, but I’ll still need money to cover the remainder, and for supplies, transportation, and whatever housing I can find near campus.

I’ve been saving for two and a half years, beginning with the goal to eventually leave this place, which then became an actual, real possibility with the university’s emails, hiding cash everywhere I could think of because a bank account would have required mail, and mail in this house has never belonged solely to the person whose name is printed on the envelope.

I could only squirrel away a little at a time so as not to arouse any suspicion from Mom, but even with the majority of my paycheck going toward rent, utilities, and whatever alcohol Mom has decided to drown herself in, I managed to save $4,702.

Enough for a room deposit and several months of groceries if I’m careful. Enough to buy basic supplies and maybe even a secondhand sewing machine from the student board. Enough to get out and stay out long enough to find more work.

Sometimes when I feel real low, when the hopelessness of my life so far threatens to overwhelm me, I squeeze myself under my bed, pull up the shoebox full of cash from beneath another loose floorboard, and cradle it close to my chest.

A month ago, I started another hidden fund, carefully tucked inside the lining of my old stuffed rabbit in the back of my closet. This one felt like a reward for the success of the other one. It’s for when I leave here, when I can go to a store and finally pick out some clothes that really feel like me. So far, there are 182 dollars inside the raggedy little rabbit.

She used to be white, although years of being held against my chest have turned her fur gray and flattened the stuffing in her belly. Dad bought her for me when I was four, back when I refused to sleep unless someone called me Princess Kammie and tucked me in with a goodnight’s kiss.

I don’t remember much from when I was four, but I remember Dad’s voice. Not the words, exactly, more how it felt. Warm and deep, with laughter always hiding underneath, even when he was tired.

I remember the way he used to lift me onto his shoulders and pretend I was too heavy. And how his big hands carefully untangled a plastic tiara from my hair.

Sometimes I think I’ve invented those memories because I need them.

Mom says Dad had hated how I turned out.

She says he joined the military to get away from us, even though he had already been serving before I was born. She says he stopped coming home because he was too ashamed to have a son who cried over torn dresses and broken dolls.

She says lots of things.