I promised myself that I would find out what it’s like to be normal.
It’s what I have to do to have a good night out for once and maybe this way, when I fall asleep tonight, I won’t walk into a nightmare.
“Um, I have to tell you something,” Garbageman begins as he starts to unwrap his straw. I look up at him expectantly before I begin to mimic his movements.
That’s when I learn to do things best; when I watch someone do them first then try them on my own.
“Okay,” I reply quietly.
“There’s a reason I keep coming by to see you, Karolina,” he continues as he pulls the straw out of the wrapper.
I continue staring at him and notice that he’s concentrating extra hard on placing the straw into his dark, fizzy drink.
With my silence maintained, I move my foot under the table to nudge him like he did to me and he shakes his head quickly as he raises his eyes, staring directly into mine.
“I’m your brother.”
Chapter Seven
He’s a liar.
“Wait, I want to hear what he has to say.”
“What?” he asks in confusion.
I shake my head and lean back against the booth seat, waiting for him to prove his lie when some new young person shows up with a big plate of what I’m assuming are nachos.
Garbageman holds up a finger toward me as stealthily as he can, while he thanks the person who has already turned to leave.
“You never knew about me because after Mom and Pop dropped off Paloma in the wilderness somewhere, they locked you in that room. They adopted me because they were damn determined to have the perfect child. You don’t know this, but those nights that you got the extra scraps of food and cups of water? That was me. I knew they were hiding something, but I never knew what it was exactly. Not until I was doing yardwork one day and you jumped out of the window. Remember? I helped you get to your feet before you shoved me away and ran.”
His tenor is desperate, his words are jumbled, and his rambling makes more sense to me than it would to anyone else, but I still don’t remember—
He’s … not lying?
“Look,” he says, blowing out his breath and reaching into his back pocket. He pulls out a worn, leather wallet and flips it open. Garbageman gets to his feet and gives me a gentle shove so I allow him to have some space next to me and he sets it down in front of me.
… Albertine.
I use the tips of my fingers to push it back toward him. I know Mama and Papa’s names and mine and Grace’s but that’s only because she taught me in case we ever got away.
“What’s the first word?” I ask him quietly.
“Jack,” he says softly as he slips two fingers into one of the small pockets and pulls out a picture. “And this is you and Paloma when you were little, isn’t it?”
I turn my face toward him without looking at the picture. There are too many painful memories to even risk looking at it and seeing what we once were and haven’t been in years.
“Grace,” I correct him testily. “She never liked Paloma.”
“Then Grace it is,” he agrees as he gives me a small smile. “And what do you prefer?”
“Karolina. I never did like Haight.”
When his eyes soften and he nods, I scoot away from him, pressing myself against the wall.
“Jack. Your name is Jack.”
“It is.”
“Do you know where Grace is, Jack?” I ask, resting the side of my face against the wall.
“No.”
“Charlie does.”
“Who’s Charlie?”
Don’t tell him yet.
“I can’t tell you.”
But you can show him.
He lets out a sigh as he reaches for one of the yellow chip things and dips it in what I think is cheese. Once it’s nice and loaded, he holds it out toward me.
“Karolina?”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, before I sit up again, lean toward him, and open my mouth.
As I begin to crunch down slowly on a new flavor that I’ve never experienced before, I smile slightly when I see the hope in his eyes again.
He makes me feel … safe. Remarkably close to how I felt when Grace was around, though not entirely.
Say his name.
“Jack.”
After he fed me my dinner, he went back to his side of the table and has been eating in silence. I wonder if he thinks I believe him or not, or if it’s even important to him, but I’m still trying to remember the boy that I startled when I landed on the grass and rocks outside of my window.
Look closer.
“Any closer and I’ll be inside of him.”
“You say something?” he asks, glancing up at me curiously. I shake my head as my eyes immediately fall to my lap.
They tried to pick a boy that looked like you and Grace. Blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned; it’s almost like they tried to replace you both.
“It’s okay.”
Jack levels a confused stare at me and I shake my head. He nods as he places his fork down onto his damn near empty plate, and then glances around the side of the booth for our server.
“Do you have room for dessert, Karolina? You can take it home to eat it later if you want.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I admit quietly.
He looks over at me with sympathy in his eyes and nods, “We’ll get you something to go.”
The moon is higher in the sky by the time we get back to my home. Jack walks me up the walkway and when I sit down on the porch, he takes the spot next to me.
Don’t take him inside.
“Shut up.”
He clears his throat but decides to sidestep asking me yet again if I’ve said anything.
“Did you have a good time tonight?” he asks, giving me a gentle nudge with his arm.
I nod, “Thank you.”
We sit in silence for a few more painful seconds before he clears
