Twelve years old

“She can't play,” Dean, Xavier’s new friend, balks. “She's wearing a dress.”

“So,” I snip back, “I can still throw.”

Xavier blows out a breath, saying I'm sorry with his eyes. “It's baseball, Rhi.”

Dean smiles at me, a big Cheshire grin, knowing I'm going to lose at my attempt to join in their game. Almost every day, after school, I race through my homework and head to the small cottage at the back of the property where Xavier lives with his mom. It's the only real routine, I have. But, every afternoon this week, Dean has been here. Dean with his stormy gray eyes and skater blond hair.

“Come on, Rhiannon, you might get hurt,” Xavier says to me, “and you know what happens when you see your own blood.”

I lower my head. “Yeah, I faint.”

“That’s right. We don’t want you fainting all over the place.” He bops my nose with his finger.

“You could be our cheerleader,” Dean offers.

Ignoring him, I turn away and cross to the patio of their home. Hannah waves to me from behind the kitchen island, and I slide the door open and step inside to the scent of garlic.

“Hi, Rhi,” she greets me, her knife flying through the mushrooms on the counter.

“Hey,” I reply, droopy as the daffodils on the counter.

“Why the sour face?”

I shrug, slipping onto the wood stool at the island. “I don't know.” All it takes to loosen my lips is an arch of her brow. “Well, things are changing, and I don't like it,” I confess.

“What do you mean?”

Her hazel eyes flit over my shoulder to the back lawn. “Dean?” she asks, with just enough comfort in her voice, and sympathy in her eyes, to set my tongue to wagging.

“Yeah,” I answer, resting my chin in my palm, “and everything. Everyone gets to do what they want, and I'm stuck in the castle.”

Fortress is more like it. A few years ago, I realized there are invisible bars surrounding the grounds of our house. I don't get to do the things my friends do: sleepovers, movies, hanging out. I'm like a dog that can only go so far before I'm zapped. I have everything I want, except what I really want: to be normal.

Why would Xavier stay imprisoned with me when he can run free with Dean?

“Listen to me, Rhiannon,” she says. “It's life. The only sure thing is the sun rising and setting. What happens between that is always uncertain.”

“Well, I don't like this life,” I pout. “I want to be free too.”

“I don't know that we’re ever truly free, Rhi.” A wistful look crosses her face. “There are always invisible ties tethering us to things.”

“Mom,” Xavier interrupts, peeking his head in the door, “can I go to the ice cream shoppe with Dean?”

I pop a mushroom into my mouth, listening to Xavier haggle his way into a yes. “You can come too, Rhi,” he says, hopefully.

“Fat chance,” I answer, standing.

Xavier knows Dad will never say yes. His favorite word is no.

“Don't give up so easily,” Hannah encourages me.

“Ok,” I concede, “if I'm not back in ten minutes, then you know the answer.”

Four minutes later, I sprint across the checkerboard marble tile in the entryway, down the long hall to the wooden door of my father’s office. My sandaled feet slide to a stop.

I knock.

“Come in,” he calls out. His dark eyes narrow when I step inside his high-tech lair. “What do you need, Rhiannon?”

“I want to go to the ice cream shoppe with Xavier and Dean.”

With one syllable, he squelches my request. “No.”

He looks back at the flat screen monitor, raising his hand and shooing me away like an irritating fly. That's it. No explanation, as usual. Must be nice to be a grown up. If he keeps this up I'm going to lose Xavier to Dean forever. It’s not fair, so I do something I know I shouldn't. Something that is never allowed. “Why?” I question.

The big leather chair he rules his office in squeaks faintly when he leans back, as if it to is too afraid to speak up.

His crisp white dress shirt, always a dress shirt, never a cool t-shirt like I see the other dads wear, strains against his broad shoulders when he crosses his arms that never hug me. Fed up and probably a little foolish, I cross mine too.

“You can go to your room now,” he dismisses me.

His dark eyes hold mine. And that's the end of my attempt to rebel.

The silver clock above his head ticks off the deadline to be back at Xavier’s. One day, I'll go wherever I want, just not today.

I drag my feet out of his office, through the museum we live in, out the back door, across the lawn to my favorite alone spot—between the gnarly roots of the chestnut tree that sits close to the back of the grounds. A bird flutters from the branches when I sink down on the ground and lean back against the trunk. It roams the pink sky; free.

“Hey,” Xavier says, dropping down beside me.

“I can't go,” I tell him, staring straight ahead. “But it's okay. We have chocolate ice cream.”

“Want to make milkshakes?” he asks. “You can bring your ice cream over to my house.”

I look over, confused. “Where's Dean?”

“He left.”

“You didn't want to go?”

“Nah,” he answers. “Not if you can't come with us.”

I should be happy he chose me over Dean, but it doesn't feel very good. Feels kind of bad, actually. Now he doesn't get the crushed Oreos on his ice cream he really likes. Plus, his favorite is vanilla, and I only have chocolate.

“Well, it's looking like that will never happen.”

“We need to work on your bargaining skills,” he says. “I think I'd rather have no dad than one like him.”

I pluck a blade of grass, twisting it around my finger. “Do you ever think about your father?” We never talk about his dad. And neither does Hannah. There's no pictures or anything saying he even existed.

Xavier picks up a stick, discarded from the tree, and throws it. “Not anymore.”

I don't want him to feel weird, so I change the subject. “When I’m old enough, I’m going to live in a giant castle.” It’ll be beautiful.

“A castle? You live in one now.”

I hug my knees. “No, a real castle with a moat and everything in some far-away land.”

“Like Ireland?”

I blink. “I don’t really know. Are there castles in Ireland?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, big ones.”

“And I’ll always have ice cream.”

“You know,” he looks over at me with a gleam in his eye, “we could always go anyways. It's not far, and I've got money.”

“Well, technically,” I rationalize, “he said no to you and Dean. But Dean isn't going.”

He grins at me, his dark hair catching the sun's rays, and I decide in this moment, underneath this chestnut tree, that there isn't anything much better than Xavier’s smile.