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They’re building a fort out of the brush-pile, and they’re laughing and running together, already oblivious that I’m gone, their faces flushed with play-time and fresh air.
That should be me.
I can’t help but feel the resentment swell in me, from my feet to my hands to my heart. I should be running and playing. Not confined here, not in this bed. My new step-cousin shouldn’t be playing with Finn in my place.
That should be me.
“Calla, my love,” my mother murmurs as she comes back into the room, a cup of apple juice and a handful of pills in her hand. They’re colorful like jewels, but they taste like dirt. “You have to listen to me. You have to rest, you have to recover. Do you trust me?”
I nod, because she’s my mother, and of course I trust her. What an odd question. I turn to her and obediently reach my hands out for the pills.
One by one, I swallow them and they stick in my throat so I gulp at the juice. My pretty mother watches me sympathetically, stroking my red hair away from my face.
“Everything will be worth it,” she assures me. “I promise you, Calla.”
But there’s something in her voice, something something something. Like she’s trying to convince herself, not me. It’s a fragile tone, an uncertainty.
But then she turns away and leaves me alone.
I turn onto my side and pull the covers up to my chin, staring out the window. A heavy fog descends upon me because of the pills, pulling my head under a current, a murky dark current, and I can’t fight the sleepiness. It’s here, it’s heavy, it blurs my vision.
But before I stop seeing and the darkness covers everything, I see Finn and Dare on the lawns. They’re playing and laughing and abruptly, Dare stops and tilts his head up, his dark dark eyes connecting with mine.
He stares at me, into me, through me.
My breath catches, because something feels off here, something feels odd.
Dare raises his hand and waves, and he runs off with my brother into the trees.
My brother.
Mine.
Resentment fills me again, because I’m in this bed and he’s outside with my brother, playing the games I should be playing, with my brother,
Mine
Mine
Mine.
I can’t stop the darkness though, and it arrives, covering up my resentment and my desire to play. It covers up everything, dulling it, deadening it. Sleep comes and I’m lost…in dreams, in nightmares, in reality.
Who can tell the difference?
Finn is there, and Dare is there and my brother reaches out his hand. Because I belong with Finn, not Dare. I should be playing, shrieking, laughing.
We run away, away from Dare, toward the cliffs, toward the sea.
When I
look over my shoulder, Dare is watching us go,
with the saddest look on his face that I’ve ever seen.
He doesn’t move to chase us, and I know that he’s resigned.
He knows what I know.
