REN

* * * * * *

2000

 

 

SCENARIOS RAN IN my head as I careened to a stop outside the house where Della Mclary waited for me to fix what I’d broken.

Midmorning meant people inside would be awake. Bright sunlight meant I wouldn’t go unnoticed.

I could wait until darkness and steal her back, but then I ran the risk of stumbling into the wrong bedroom and being caught. I could wait until Social Services arrived tomorrow and grab her, but then I ran the risk of being grabbed myself.

Or—and this was really my only option—I could march up to the front door, knock, and demand Della be given back to me.

I looked over my shoulder at the forest in the distance, seeing my dream of living alone vanishing bit by bit.

I wasn’t afraid of darkness or predators or being completely vulnerable with no one to rely on but myself. But I was afraid of taking Della to such a place.

She was useless.

She was a baby.

I already knew she didn’t fare well in the wild thanks to the previous few weeks we’d survived. She’d inched closer toward death every day.

Only because you weren’t prepared for her.

Only because you didn’t take what you needed.

It wasn’t because I didn’t know how to live off the land, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t provide for us.

She’d been a surprise.

And this time…I had shelter, tools, and equipment that meant we’d flourish not perish.

She wouldn’t be a death sentence anymore, merely a complication I willingly chose.

I stepped back from the house.

Wait, did I willingly choose this, or was I doing it out of fear? Was living with me better or worse than living with another? Just because I’d been sold and the girls sharing the barn with me cried themselves to sleep every night, didn’t mean that would happen to Della.

Perhaps the best thing for her would be to wait for a foster family to take her, love her, house her in a pretty little home and feed her with supermarket purchased food instead of being carried for miles by a boy then bedding down in a tent with a belly full of hunted rabbit.

After all, wasn’t that what I tried to do by leaving her with a family who already had a baby? Why didn’t they want her? They already had one. What was the difference in raising two?

Mclary had sixteen and managed.

The sun beat down on my head, making my back sweat against my pilfered gear. I had to make a decision. I had to leave town before I was noticed—before the owner of the camping store saw his merchandise walking down the streets unpaid for; before the supermarket manager noticed his broken window.

But…Della.

My eyes shot back to the house.

The front door swung open, revealing a woman with a lemon dress and a blue dish cloth in her hands. Her brown hair hung down her back while pink spots decorated her cheeks from chores.

I froze.

We stared at each other.

We stared some more.

Slowly, she lowered the dish towel and stepped off her porch then down the pebbled path to the front gate.

My knees jiggled to sprint. My thighs bunched to flee.

She smiled, cocked her head, and said, “Hello.”

I swallowed.

I hadn’t spoken in days. I’d almost forgotten how. Before I could be polite, she added, “I saw you in the window. Are you okay? Are you lost?” Her gaze landed on my backpack, questions scrolling over her face. “What’s your name?”

Her questions were landmines, and I didn’t want to get blown up.

Looping my fingers under the straps of my bag, I raised my chin, narrowed my gaze, and said coldly, “You have something of mine.”

“Excuse me?”

“I made a mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“I left something behind.”

She frowned. “Left what—” Realization widened her eyes. “Wait, are you talking about—”

“Della Mclary.” I nodded sternly. “She’s mine. I want her back.”

I noticed my stupid error too late.

I’d given her true name.

I’d revealed her family—the name connecting her to everything I was running from. Once again, I looked over my shoulder at the forest with its waving leafy arms and the message on the wind to hurry, hurry, hurry.

“Give her to me.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Now.”

Her gaze slid over me from head to toe. “But…but you’re a kid. What do you mean, she’s yours?”

My heart sped up. I hadn’t thought this through. How could I tell a stranger the truth of how Della and I ended up as a we?

The reality…I couldn’t.

So, I told the first lie of many.

I boldly looked into a stranger’s face and spun the beginnings of a tale that would last the rest of our lives.

“She’s my sister. And I want her back.”

* * * * *

It took what I assumed was fifteen minutes or thereabouts.

I couldn’t tell the time, but the sun’s shadow didn’t move from the beginning where I stood on the street and demanded a baby, to the ending when I bolted from the house with her in my arms.

The woman was home alone with two of her own children, harried and split in all directions, so I was yet another mess to her already messy morning.

A boy about half my age drew on the walls with her pink lipstick—only for her to scream at him to stop. Another boy, a little older than Della, tossed his mug of milk from his booster seat, spraying the kitchen and his mother with white.

Two little devils, undeserving of love and protection and a life littered with possibilities.

They didn’t know how lucky they were.

They didn’t know how evil the outside world could be.

And then, there was Della.

Forgotten and alone on the very same rug where I’d placed her, her little shoulders sank almost to her tiny hips. She was a puddle of despair, and it tore me up inside.

Her hair was cleaner than I’d last seen but not sparkling like the two boys causing mayhem. Her cheeks were a little fuller, but her colour wasn’t perky, just blue.

Blue eyes, blue heart, blue aching sadness.

Left behind and unwanted, she sat sadly, silently, staring at the rug with no toys in front of her, no cat to cuddle, no fish to coo at, no love or friendship or company.

And I’d done that to her.

My feet glued to the kitchen floor as an axe cracked through my ribcage. I wasn’t much older than the boy running circles around his mother, yet in that moment, I felt like a man.

A man who’d made a terrible, heart-clenching mistake. A man who’d left behind a baby but had returned for a friend.

The woman said something, but I didn’t hear her. All I could hear was the eternal emptiness, the sucking vacuum, the crippling need to fix all the pain I’d caused little Della.

My backpack crashed to the floor, clanking and clunking, uncared for as I took my first step toward a future that would mean a life of struggle, hardship, unpredictability, uncertainty, and an unbelievable consequences.

She looked up as my newly booted feet stomped onto the rug.

For a moment, she stared at me blankly. Her mouth pressed together, her blue eyes distrusting, wary, and hurt.

But then a change happened in her.

A change that stole the sun and radiated from her every golden strand and poured from every infant pore.

Something physical slammed into my chest.

Something unmentionable and powerful and so damn pure, I’d never felt anything like it before.

I thought I’d wanted to be on my own.

And I did.

But I wanted to be on my own.

With her.

And then, she cried.

Her arms swept up, her lips spread wide, her joy manifested into tears and gurgles and a crawl so fast and lurching, she looked like a drunken crab desperate to reach the ocean.

I ducked on my haunches and waited for her to scramble into my arms.

And when she did, I knew I would never let her down again. I would die for her. I would live for her. I would kill for her.

In my ten measly years on this unforgiving, cruel, terrible earth, right there I found home, and no matter where we ended up, I’d always be home because I would never let her go again.

“I’m sorry, Della Mclary.” I hugged her tight, squishing her face into my chest, pressing a kiss to her strawberry smelling hair.

That would be the last time she’d ever smelled fake. The next time she’d have a bath, she’d smell like streams and grass and silver-scaled fish.

As much as I didn’t want to upset her by moving too swiftly, I also knew we couldn’t stay here. Behind me, the woman was on the phone, muttering to someone, whispering about me and Della, telling them to come quick and stop whatever I was about to do.

Because she knew what I was about to do.

Della knew too, and the biggest grin split her tiny lips, revealing equally tiny teeth that I’d only just noticed. At the supermarket, I’d grabbed a toothbrush and two tubes of paste. She’d have to share mine. She’d have to share everything of mine.

Yet there were some things she couldn’t share.

I stood upright, and she squalled in fear, wrapping fierce arms around my legs.

Ducking down, I patted her head. “It’s okay. I’m not leaving you. I won’t do that again. You have my word.”

As if she understood, her fear vanished, smothered by indignation and the glow of a pissed-off female. It was a look I’d seen multiple times on her mother as she’d swatted me with anything close by. It was surreal to have the same stare given in two completely different circumstances.

I chuckled.

I’d never chuckled before.

The mother hated me.

The daughter liked me.

I was stealing her for everything the Mclarys had stolen from me.

I would keep her, mould her, train her, turn her into the exact opposite of what they would have made her become, and I would change her name because she no longer belonged to them.

She belonged to me.

Yet something was missing…

I studied her, inspecting the brown trousers and grey long sleeve she’d been dressed in. I frowned at the micro-sized sneakers on her feet. She looked like a tomboy and was happy about it.

But still, something was missing.

Her hands.

They were empty.

No blue satin.

No ribbon.

Ripping her from the carpet with my fingers under her arms, I plonked her on my hip and turned to face the woman. “Her ribbon. Where is it?”

Her two boys continued to reap anarchy as she slowly put down the phone.

“What ribbon?”

Della squirmed in my arms. I squeezed her tight in warning. “The blue ugly thing she loves.”

The woman glanced over my shoulder toward the trash can in the corner.

My teeth clenched. “You threw it away?” Marching toward the can, I manhandled Della so I could hold her with one arm, ripped up the lid with the other, then dropped it before ploughing my hand straight through eggshells and bacon rind until I found the slipperiness of her disgusting ribbon. The moment I pulled it free with new stains and old, Della snatched it.

I wanted to snatch it right back. It needed a wash, but for now, I had other problems to take care of.

Turning back to the woman, we stared some more until she finally admitted, “I called the police. You can’t take her.”

I stepped toward her. “I’m leaving.”

“Just because I let you into my home doesn’t mean I’ll let you take anything out of it.” She slithered from my path, putting the bench in our way. “You can’t take her. You can’t just steal a person like you stole our food.”

Ignoring her tirade on my theft, I said calmly, “I can take her, and I am.” Placing Della by the sink, I tapped her nose. “Don’t fall off. It will hurt.”

She planted her hands—complete with threaded ribbon through her fingers—on the granite and pressed her little sneakered feet against the cabinets below. Trusting her not to be stupid, I wrenched my heavy backpack from the floor.

She would no longer be able to travel on my back.

The extra complication should’ve layered me with doubt, misgivings, and hate.

Not anymore.

Now, I only looked for solutions.

Glancing around the welcoming space, I fell upon a laundry rack drying a mismatch of baby clothes and sheets.

Giving the woman a sharp look, I strode toward the rack and ripped off a few t-shirts, shorts, and jumpers all in blues, blacks, and browns for little boys.

They would fit Della. They’d be too big right now, but she’d grow. We both would.

At the last second, I stole a sheet then stuffed the baby clothes into my backpack, wrapped the sheet around my neck and back and copied what I’d seen Mrs Mclary do when she’d carried Della out to the fields to see her husband.

A sort of pouch on my chest to support Della’s butt with her legs on either side of my waist and arms poking out the sides. She would be a nuisance. I wouldn’t be able to travel far with her weight and our supplies.

But for now, my time had run out, and we were leaving.

Della gurgled something happy as I marched toward her and ducked a little to put her legs in the wrapped sheet first. Once in position, I slipped her into the hammock on my belly and tested the knots around my waist and neck.

Claustrophobia drenched my blood being so burdened, but my mouth watered for the forest.

Sirens sounded on the breeze, far enough away not to be urgent but close enough to warn they were coming. And quickly.

Storming past the woman, I stopped and stared. “You didn’t want her. I changed my mind, and I do.”

Her mouth opened and closed as I unlocked the back door.

“You’re a kid. Where are you going to go?”

“Home.” I shrugged. “We’re going home.”

“And parents? Do you have someone to take care of you?”

Heat filled my limbs, a fiery sort of scorn that put her beneath me. “I’ll take care of her.”

The woman shook her head. “But you? Who will take care of you?”

The door swung wide as a gust of sweet-smelling air swirled in, leaves dancing over the welcome mat, tree branches bristling with speed.

I was being called just as surely as the sirens were running me out of town.

As the police wail grew louder, I stepped from her house and smiled. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I have her. She has me. Family takes care of each other.”

Not waiting for a reply, I half-ran, half-stumbled over her lawn, unbalanced with Della’s weight.

I didn’t look back as I raced through suburbia, chased the wind, and then vanished into the forest.

We were just figments of her imagination.

Ghosts she thought she saw.

Children she thought she’d met but would never remember.