Page 23 of Creeping Beautiful

When Adam found out he said I was “a stupid little witch” for giving my real name out to a stranger and didn’t I know any better? And what the fuck did they teach me anyway? Before he bought me in the auction? And then he said, “I should’ve let that snake eat you.”

And I replied, and I remember this clearly, “That snake was not gonna eat me, Mr. Boucher. I was about to carve it up and roast it for dinner myself before you came along and ruined my plans.”

And then McKay laughed and told me to go take a bath because I smelled like old mud on a hot day.

Which was just fine with me because the mud kept the mosquitoes away. But McKay offered up bubbles that smelled like bubble gum, and up until that very moment I had never had a bubble bath, so I got clean for him.

But the minute I saw Nate in that boat I knew we’d be best friends. And we were. We got into all kinds of trouble after that. I liked him because he was not afraid of the lake and the river and almost everyone else was.

Adam told me that. When he realized I had ripped a hole in my window screen and shimmied on down the side of the house towards my life in the woods that first afternoon, he spent two whole days yelling at me from the front porch.

He waved his fist and screamed threats at me. And McKay just sat in a rocking chair and drank bottles of beer and watched him.

McKay’s feathers are hard to ruffle.

Adam’s threats were many. He yelled out that there were gators in the water and leeches that would suck my blood. He told me there were cottonmouths too. I didn’t know what a cottonmouth was, but Nate told me they were snakes.

I’m not afraid of snakes.

I will walk through a garden so thick with snakes I’d be tripping over them and it would not bother me one bit. I will stare down the mouth of any damn snake and tell them what’s what.

But Nate did say they would kill me if I let them get too close. So from then on, when the cottonmouths came slithering by on the top of the water, I would give them space and they would stay clear of me too, and we had this kind of understanding.

The gators were another story altogether. Gators were not as smart as snakes. I know this from experience. I would not call them brave, but they were not the type to give one their space. So I had to stay clear of them without getting any reciprocal consideration.

I never did see a leech on my skin trying to suck my blood after swimming in the water. So I don’t really have an opinion on leeches.

I had a good life on Old Home Island. I really did. I don’t think I completely understood that until recently.

At first, I liked Donovan the best. Donovan is only five years older than me. He’s some kind of genius. When we met, when I was ten and he was fifteen, he was already done with college and getting ready to start medical school to become some kind of psychiatric doctor.

He was not going to be a typical therapist, he told me. I’m not really sure what a typical therapist is because I have never talked to anyone about what’s inside my head, just Donovan. But he was a Company kid, like me. And if there’s one thing I know about being a Company kid, it’s that our lives are never typical.

But Donovan was patient. And he talked in a low, calm voice. And he liked to ask me questions and something about him made me want to answer.

If Adam asked me a question back then, I would never answer. I didn’t like to answer Adam’s questions. And if McKay asked me a question I would sometimes answer. If it was a question about something I was interested in.

But it didn’t matter what kind of question Donovan asked me. I always wanted to talk to him. And he was a good listener too. He taped most of our conversations. And when he wasn’t taping them, he was writing notes. Donovan said he did that so he would remember everything I ever told him.

It made me feel good when he taped our conversations. Like someone cared.

I’m not sure Donovan really did care about me. If I had to choose just one of them to call caring, I would choose McKay. Because he was the one who soothed me after jobs went bad, and taught me how to fight and shoot, and made sure I ate all my vegetables. He even bought me braces when I was fourteen so my teeth would be pretty.

And, in the later years, when I had to leave Old Home and go to the boarding schools for a job, he would be the one to come visit me on parents’ day. Even though he was not my father, and I made sure everyone knew that he was not my father.

The girls at the schools would ask me, “Is he your brother?” And they did this because McKay was very handsome and charming. Maybe not as charming as Donovan, but he was definitely more of a looker than a brain.

Adam was not very charming. But he wasn’t the kind of mean that scared me. He yelled a lot, but he didn’t hit me. And, of the three of them, even though Donovan was the one who asked all the right questions and McKay was the one who paid the most attention, Adam was the one who protected me. And sometimes he even saved me.

One time, when I was in San Francisco and the job went bad, this guy had me by the hair with a knife to my throat. And Adam came in. Just kicked in the damn door and cut that man’s throat with his own knife. And then he said, to the dead man on the floor of that apartment, “Don’t you ever touch her again.” Even though he was dead and there was no chance of that happening, Adam said it anyway.

It wasn’t the only time he had to do that. When I was first starting to work the jobs I messed up a lot and Adam was always there. Saving me. He always came in the nick of time to save my ass.

So. I don’t hate him.

And he never did tell me I was a fuck-up. Ever. Even though I was. He just said, “Indie, you’ll learn. It’s fine.” And that was the end of it.

So they were all three different. But alike in a lot of ways too.