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“You said you found something?” Ezra asked. “What is it?”
I stared at him.
He smiled.
“Nothing,” I said slowly. “It was… nothing. Just… a book I thought I lost.”
He nodded. “Funny how that works, isn’t it? We don’t even realize what we’ve lost until it’s right in front of us once again. It’s good to see you up and about. Come. Let’s get you fed.”
“Be right there,” I said.
He turned and went back to the kitchen.
I looked down at the crumpled note in my hand.
FOR WHEN YOU’RE READY.
gunmetal sky/never forget
My mother and I didn’t have many things. She said it was easier that way when you were always on the move. But she let me have books. A few of them, at least.
She said it was important. That I needed to learn.
She taught me how to read herself. There were nights when we’d be sleeping in the car, and she’d make sure to park near a streetlight so I could see.
She would make a nest in the back seat using old blankets and a flat pillow. I loved them because they smelled like her. She would always lie down first and pull me against her chest. Sometimes she would sing. Other times she would cry.
I didn’t like those other times.
But then she’d hand me a book and ask me to read to her. “It makes me feel happy,” she said. “You have a pretty voice.”
And so I’d read to her, stumbling over the words I didn’t know.
“Sound it out,” she’d say.
I would.
If I couldn’t figure it out, she never got angry.
“No, Robbie. It looks like a g and an h, but sometimes it makes a ffff sound.”
“A-and the wolf looked through the w-window. He saw the pig inside. ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll b… blow your house down.’”
She kissed the side of my head. “Yes. That. Yes.”
Sometimes I could smell her tears, even if I couldn’t hear them.
I walked into the compound under a gunmetal sky.
The wolves waved at me.
I waved back.
Children ran squealing around me. I thought it was weird that they were out and about, given it was a weekday. They should have been in school.
“Play with us,” they begged. “Chase us. Shift and chase us!”
They all laughed when I bared my teeth at them.
