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Rolling the cord between my fingers, I tell her, “You can’t leave me.”
She sucks in a breath.
“You can’t leave me,” I say again, my voice doing that breaky thing like I might cry. I don’t wanna though. Mr. Gavin’s watching me, and he’s a big tough man. I bet he doesn’t cry.
“Kid, I’m not going anywhere. I’d never leave you, not if I could help it.”
A frown pulls at my face.
“They’re calling for more snow and ice tonight and tomorrow, so you probably won’t have school. As soon as they discharge me, you guys can come pick me up, okay? We’ll get something to eat. Have ice cream. We’ll watch a movie tomorrow night, your pick, just you and me.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
My jaw works side to side.
“Can you put Mrs. Linda on the phone?”
“Okay. Bye Mom.”
“Bye, Mase. Love you.”
“Love you too.” Turning, I hold out the phone to Mrs. Linda who’s drying her hands on a rag. “She wants to talk to you.”
Nodding, she takes the phone from me, running her hands through my hair as I duck out from under her and the cord.
Mr. Gavin tips his chin. “Come on kid, I wanna show you something.”
Feeling a little better now, I perk up at the thought of a surprise.
He leads me down the narrow hallway to the back of the house, and opens the door to the room I stay in. On the bed, there’s a small acoustic guitar. Kid-sized.
I grin and look up at him.
“Come on. Let’s see what you got.”
Running over to the bed, I pick up the instrument and plop down. Unlike Mr. Gavin’s, I can actually reach around it and put my fingers on the fret board. I strum and move my fingers around, loud, awful twanging ringing out in the room.
I cringe and look up just as he returns with his guitar.
Chuckling, he says, “We all gotta start somewhere.”
AGE 17, APRIL
It’s Saturday night, and Mom’s pulling an extra shift at the hospital.
So rather than hanging out with my friends, I’ve got babysitting duty.
Squirt—Phoebe—is nine now—turning ten in June.
She’ll be returning to Shiloh Elementary School in the fall, after spending her first four years going to St. Marsh’s Catholic School in Ashville, the town just south of us. A precaution Mom took when Phoebe officially took her name and started living as the girl she was always meant to be.
Mom wanted to wait until we could be certain that enough time has passed that teachers and parents and kids from town wouldn’t look at her and remember the little boy who spent that first year with us, tagging along to the diner, and holding my hand wherever I went.
Since everyone we introduced Phoebe to originally knew her as Squirt—something even Mom was fully on board with, seeing as the name originally given to Phoebe was the same as our deadbeat dad—it wasn’t all too hard to convince everyone eventually that she’d always been a girl. That she was just a tomboy when she was little, especially after that disastrous haircut incident where everything came to light. A tomboy who just so happened to love dolls and the color pink and wear barrettes in her pixie-short hair.
It helped that Linda and Gavin and the Montgomerys were so insistent on backing the story, helping us basically gaslight anyone and everyone who may have questioned it. In particular, Waylon’s dad, Chief McAllister, who’s a grade-A prick if there ever was one.
