“No. I’ll stay. It’s your time.”
“No!” the little pig yelled. “You can fly too! LOOK!”
The ground shook harder.
The little pig’s mother turned her head and she had wings too!
The little pig put her hand out and the mother took her hand.
Together they jumped off the billion-mile-high cliff and together they started to fly.
All before the evil monster, dragon, beast could get them.
They were flying! They were happy!
I slid the papers away and smiled.
My throat felt squeezed shut and I wanted to yell, punch a wall, get out a lot of anger just sitting inside me… but I also wanted to rush over to Amelia, scoop her up and tell her that she would never need to worry about flying again.
Yet I had no idea what the hell that meant.
Yeah, it was a story written by a kid. Or a teenager. It was a horrible story. But the meaning of it. The reason why she wrote it. It wasn’t for herself. It was for her mother. And when things were too much, she’d run. She’d go to the worst part of the little town we were from and she’d find me.
And it was always just when I was ready to do something crazy. Or something stupid. Something that would define the rest of my life because as far as I was concerned back then, life was already over. I had lost her. And it wasn’t just her, but everything that came with it. The idea that forever wasn’t true.
Except those rare moments with Amelia when it felt like it could be real.
Only I couldn’t stick around.
I had already caused enough pain.
“Dammit,” I growled to myself as I reached for another drink.
I couldn’t even taste the whiskey by then.
But my thoughts were clear.
Amelia let me read one of her stories.
Which meant I now had to tell her the truth of my story.
Chapter 19
When the Dust Clears
THEN
(Amelia)
There was so much dust in the air I thought the house was on fire. The entire house shook before the dust rose. A picture on my nightstand fell over. I scrambled off the bed and thought about grabbing my stuffed animals, but I told myself not to. Bad enough I still wrote stories that had some of them talking in it.
I was too old for that.
Too old for so many things. But too young for so many things too.
For a second, I looked back and thought about jumping out the window. Not literally, meaning I wanted to hurt myself. But I thought about climbing out and finding a way to drop down. The only problem was that it was a long and straight drop. There were no places for me to put my feet or anything. It wasn’t like in some show or movie where there was a trellis or something to use as a ladder.
So the house shook and stopped.
There was another thud, but this one much quieter.
That was the door slamming.
Then there was the sound of my father’s truck starting and the busted muffler growling. It almost sounded like someone holding the end of a balloon and slowly letting the air out. He was supposed to have gotten it fixed like a month ago, but he claimed he lost the money.
I knew the truth.
So did Mom.
But both of us didn’t say a word.
I guess in some sense, we knew better.
Well, she did at least. I just followed her lead.
I saw the dust the second I got downstairs.
Panic set in, thinking my father had set the house on fire. Which he had threatened to do before. In some crazy romantic gesture, he would get so drunk that his violent side would calm enough that he’d say he wanted to burn the house down and start over.
“Mom!” I called out.
Instantly, she appeared from the cloud of dust, waving her hands.
The smell hit me and that’s when I knew it wasn’t smoke. It was like heavy powder.
That much dust though…
“It’s okay,” she said. “Nothing to worry about. It’s nothing we can’t easily fix.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
The dust danced and dissipated, giving way to the sight of the dining room wall.
Littered with holes.
Holes the size of my father’s fists.
Mom half smirked, as though it should be celebrated that my father chose the wall to hit instead of… you know.
I walked toward the dining room and started to count the holes.
One, two, three, four…
“Come on, Amelia, let’s have a cup of tea together,” Mom said.
She got between me and the wall and put an arm around me. She rushed me to the kitchen where she hurried to push all the junk mail and car parts across the table and against the wall.
“Mom,” I said. “You have to talk about it. At least to me.”
“Yup,” she said in a perky voice. “You got it. Yup.”
She scrambled through the kitchen to get two mugs that didn’t match after she put water in a pot to boil for tea. Her hands shook as she did so.
I just sat there in silence.
The minutes moving like hours.
The reality of my home life settling in deeper.
I kept glancing at the back door, wanting out.
I had nowhere to go.
But there was someone I could go look for.
The tea tasted funny.
The old pots and pans gave this metal flavor to everything.
And I was pretty sure the milk had expired.
I casually sipped the tea only twice. Then I just put the mug to my lips and pretended to drink.
Mom all but chugged hers.
From where I sat, I could see the dining room. The white dust from the wall on the floor looked like someone had opened a bag of flour and dumped it.
“It’ll get fixed,” she said. “You know how he is.”
“He’ll sober up and pretend it never happened, Mom.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s okay with you?”
Mom laughed and reached across the table. “Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure.”
“He bought this house because I saw it one time. On our first date.”
“Oh?”
“I swear, Amelia. I swear. There used to be this
