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I was wearing some sweatpants of Alex’s and one of his T-shirts. Gloria went down to the shelter and brought some girl clothes back. She also brought home some clothes from her work. She promised she didn’t tell anyone my situation, just that she needed some girl’s clothes. I picked anything that didn’t have white or pink on it.??
Especially the socks. I didn’t want white or pink socks.??
Gloria was a sweet woman. She opened her home to me without a second thought. The Harpers were just overall kindpeople. I had never met a family so welcoming. Especially someone my own age.??
I was used to the sneers from the other kids. I would show up to school wearing the same thing several times a week. I would bring an extra shirt to school and try washing it with hand soap in the sinks at school. The apartments didn’t have a laundry room on site and Mom wouldn’t take my clothes to the laundromat. Some girls walked in on me trying to wash blood out of my underwear one day. They teased me about bleeding through and getting my period. I couldn’t tell them that I hadn’t gotten my period yet.
I heard whispers about it for the rest of the week.
I was slicing potatoes while Alex was grating cheese. We were making some kind of cheesy potato casserole. I popped a piece of cubed potato in my mouth, the crunch sounding like an apple.
“Stop eating raw potatoes,” Alex chastised me again. I duck my head down a little lower, embarrassed.
I couldn’t help it. It was weird having food in the house. Food available. Being allowed to eat. Cooking things rather than just eating everything raw. I was used to hiding food under my bed and saving it before it rotted, trying to make it last long enough that I could steal my next meal. Mom would make me sit at the counter and eat in front of me. I thought once you have starved, the empty, cramping feeling you get in your stomach never goes away.
“Here.” Alex nudged me, holding out a small triangle of cheese.
I took it, popping it into my mouth, humming my delight.
It was Friday night. Alex’s mom had taken a double shift at the diner and left us cooking instructions. I didn’t know how to cook. When I’d told his mom, she said it was time for both of us to learn. Every day for the last few days we’d had instructions onhow to cook whatever meal she had the ingredients for. After dinner, we would divide the chores up and get them done, and afterwards we would finish our homework and read for an hour every night.
There was this strange peace in the routine of the Harper home. Wake up, wash up, eat breakfast, go to school, eat the brown-bagged lunch with Alex, finish school, walk home with Alex, who would talk about his class or whatever funny thing had happened that day. Alex talked a lot. I think he did it to distract me. I liked Alex. I liked to listen to him talk about anything and everything. I think he was lonely, with his mom working all the time. Spending every evening by himself.
I always wanted to be alone. If I was alone thentheyweren’t hurting me.??
He wasn’t touching me.?
“Better than the potato, right?”
I nodded at him, my cheeks reddening. I felt the shame start to creep in, the embarrassment of doing things wrong, not understanding.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” He placed a hand on my head, and I did my best not to flinch away. Alex had said this to me so many times over the last two weeks. Alex was affectionate in every way. I would crawl into his bed, and he would move my hair from my face or throw another blanket on me when he thought I was cold. He would grab my hand and pull me through the halls of school, bump his shoulder against me while we were walking together. He reached for me like he had been reaching for me his whole life.?
I had a lot of nightmares. Every night, I would toss and turn and wake up in a cold sweat. The first night was the worst.??
Alex clasped his hand over my mouth because I had started screaming in my sleep.??
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I could hear his voice break. “Wren it's me, you have to stop screaming or they will hear you.” Once I finally calmed down, Alex would be therewith an ice pack wrapped in a towel. He would hold it at the back of my neck, and I would let him. He would whisper apologies to me all night. Then say sorry again in the morning.
I wasn’t alone anymore. Even at school. Since the night at the slide, Alex could find me anywhere. Someone who I had never noticed before, I now had a radar for. Sometimes he’d catch me in the hall. Now, he knew my schedule, where I sat in each class, and sometimes I would find little ziplock bags of pretzels or nuts in my desk. It was like he knew I was in a constant state of starvation. Or at least my stomach sounded like it was.
I looked like I had been starving.??
I had been starving.?
I was all sharp edges, no longer having that layer of baby fat. One day it had just vanished. I’d watched my body change the last two years. I grew taller, thinner. My face looked hollow, with dark circles around my eyes. I bruised easily, and the bruises lasted for months.
I felt like I was disappearing.??
We combined the ingredients into a pan, wrapped the top in foil, and it went into the oven. Alex twisted the timer and set it on the counter. Letting it click away.
“These places are so small, there’s not a lot of room to store things,” Alex said, staring at the oven. “Where does your mom keep all the pots and pans?”
I looked at him, confused. “Same place you guys keep yours.” I pointed at the oven. “In the oven. Obviously when she’s not using it. . .” I shook my head. “But she mostly just uses the microwave. Not the oven.”We had lived off of boxed mac and cheese and ramen most of the time. Sometimes, dinner would just be a box of rice I would make.
“Well, that’s done. Wanna watch a movie?” It was freezing outside. We could hear the wind howling through the alcove of the apartment. When Mom got bad, Alex would take me outside. We’d walk along the train track that ran behind the playgroundbeyond the trees just so he could get me out of the house long enough to not have to listen to her anymore.
“Sure.” Alex disappeared down the hall, and a few minutes later, he came back with some VHS tapes.
