On the Fence

Chapter 20

I tossed and turned until the clock read midnight. I slid out of bed and padded to the bathroom, where I splashed cold water on my face. I leaned into the counter and stared at my bloodshot eyes. Water dripped down my face and onto the counter. I grabbed a towel and patted it dry.

Downstairs, I pulled out the box of pictures my dad kept in a drawer beneath the coffee table. I flipped slowly through the ones of my mother. I wanted them to tell me something different. Something they’d never told me before. Clues about her life. Her personality. But they didn’t. They just told me what they always did.

She was beautiful. People said I looked like her, and maybe our faces resembled each other, but her body was wispy and soft. Even in pictures I could tell she was graceful. Maybe she could’ve taught me to be graceful. I wondered if she would have been disappointed with a sporty daughter. Or maybe she’d have been disappointed in who I’d become lately—a liar and a fake.

I tucked the pictures back in the box and headed to my room. The light was off, so the first thing I saw when I walked in was my lit-up cell phone. It was a text from Braden: Are you awake?

Yes. On my way out.

“Everything okay?” I asked him at the fence.

He didn’t answer for several beats. “Fine.”

“Braden. Don’t lie to me.”

He sighed. “It’s just the same old stuff. What’s the point in talking about it?”

“Your dad?”

“Yes.”

I bit my bottom lip, not sure how to help him with this. “Why don’t you talk to him?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. About how he is with you and your mom.”

“It won’t help.”

“Have you tried?”

“No. But my mom tries all the time. You’ve heard the results.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Eh.” He shrugged with that sound. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it well. “It could be worse. What about you? Why are you up so late? More nightmares?”

“Yes.”

“Are they getting worse?”

Yes. “I don’t know.”

“You said before that sometimes you dream about the car accident. What happens in those dreams?”

I thought back. It was definitely the dream I had the most. “Different things every time. I basically just see my mom’s crash. Glass. Blood.” And I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. “My brothers found out something I didn’t want them to tonight and now I have to tell my dad something I don’t want to tell him.”

“Please be more vague. I think you’re speaking too clearly.”

“I’ve been modeling makeup.” I coughed out the word, and he had to ask me to repeat it twice.

“Modeling?”

“In the loosest sense of the word.”

“And why can’t you tell your dad?”

“I could’ve at first. But I didn’t. And now it’s like I’ve been lying to him. He’ll wonder why. He’ll think it’s a bigger deal than it is. He’ll think I’ve gone off the deep end.”

“Have you?”

I laughed.

“I want to see.”

“See what?”

“You at work.”

I thought about it. Showing the disembodied Braden might not be so bad . . . but . . . the real Braden . . . “No, I can’t, it’s too weird. It feels so outside of myself when I do that. And then when I see myself I feel like I’m looking at someone who isn’t even me. It’s like the anti-me. Almost as if I have two lives.”

“Sometimes I feel like that.”

“Yeah?”

“This life, our fence life. And then our day life.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Why do we do that? Why do we pretend during the day that this doesn’t happen?” Our backs must’ve been perfectly aligned against the fence tonight because I could feel his voice vibrating through the board between us.

I thought about his question, wondered why I couldn’t talk about this during the day with him. “Because this is like a dream. It doesn’t have to be real. It almost feels like we’re floating just outside of consciousness and we can say whatever we want, and in the morning, like with dreams, it just slowly melts away. It’s like you’re up in your bed sleeping and I’m in mine and our subconscious minds are talking.”

“And the daytime me . . . the conscious one . . . you don’t like that version?”

“What? No. Of course not. I love that version. That’s my Braden. I don’t want to lose that to this sniveling version of myself.”

“There’s nothing at all sniveling about you, Charles.”

“But your subconscious knows I’m weaker out here at night, because you started calling me that.”

“What?”

“Charles. That’s the name you called me when we were little.”

“No, if you remember right, that’s the name I called you when we talked more. We used to talk more.”

I could usually picture Braden’s expressions in my mind when we talked like this, but right now I couldn’t. His voice sounded even, almost expressionless, so I couldn’t tell how he felt about what he’d just said.

“I know. What happened?”

“Gage.”

“What?”

“You grew up, and then Gage would look at me funny when I would search you out or when we’d join him after having been alone together. I felt like his looks were his way of saying ‘It’s time to distance yourself from my sister.’”

“Really?” This was news to me.

“I think he didn’t quite trust me. He thought I had ulterior motives.” Again, his expressionless voice was leaving me blind to how he felt about all this.

And did you? I wanted to ask. But that question wouldn’t come out. There was too much to lose with that question. “He trusts you. You’re like our brother.”

“But you’re their sister.”

“And yours.”

“You’re not my sister, Charlie. And they know that. They are very protective of you. More than you could possibly know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” It sounded so cryptic.

“You said this is our alternate reality, right? Where we can say anything?”

I was wary. “Yes.”

“I need to tell you something. . . . I think it might help. . . .” He stopped. “But I need to come over there to do it.” Without waiting for my reply, he had hopped the fence and his disembodied voice stood above me, very much bodied. Now I understood why his voice had sounded emotionless—because his eyes had claimed all the emotion. They were so intense that my heart leaped in my chest.

I stood and backed up against the fence. “Wow, you should be a high jumper. Did you ever try that at school?” If I just pretended like this was normal maybe my heart would stop trying to escape. I didn’t want things to change. I didn’t want him to tell me whatever had him standing in front of me with fire in his eyes. He was my friend. My best friend, I realized. There was too much to lose.

“No. I didn’t.”

“You should, with hops like that. That fence is, what, eight feet high, and I’m sure you didn’t leap off the ground or anything but—”

“Charlie.”

“Did you put one foot on the fence or did you rely on your hands to help you over? Because—”

“Please, Charlie, I can’t keep this inside me any longer. You need to know.”

“Stop. I don’t want to know.” I pushed my palms to my eyes. Too many unfamiliar things were happening to me lately, and I didn’t need him to add to it.

He grabbed my wrists, taking my hands away from my eyes. “Don’t hide from this. You already know. You have to know.”

“I don’t.”

“Think, Charlie.”

He dropped my wrists, and I was so nervous that I needed something to hang on to. I pressed both hands against his chest. I could feel his pecs through the thin fabric, his heart beating wildly.

“You know.” It wasn’t a question.

“I think, but I don’t want to.” I didn’t want to lose him as a friend. Not now, when I needed him the most. I didn’t know how I felt right now about anything. I knew I wasn’t completely myself. I felt off. And that wasn’t fair to him. Now wasn’t the time to try to figure out how I felt about him, when I didn’t even know how I felt about me.

“It’s time. You’re older now. It can only help things. They don’t think it’s a good idea, but you’re strong, I know you can handle it.”

Now I was confused. “Who doesn’t think it’s a good idea?”

“Your brothers.”

“It’s none of their business.”

“Of course it is.”

“They can’t tell you to stop having feelings for me.”

He froze mid-nod. “What?” A ripple of confusion ran down his face, and then a light of understanding. He took a step back, my hands slipping from his chest. “I . . . no. That’s not what this is about. Is that what you thought I was trying to tell you?” He put a hand to his forehead. “Man, I’m sorry. No, this is about something completely different. . . .”

I squeezed my eyes shut and wiped my hands on my thighs. “I’m such an idiot.” With an uncomfortable laugh I said, “Good thing this took place in our dream world so that tomorrow won’t be incredibly awkward.” I sidestepped around him and headed for the house.

“No, wait, Charlie, please.”

I lifted my hand in a silent good-bye without turning around, then let the door shut behind me. Of course Braden didn’t like me like that. I was his buddy, his pal, his sister. A burly girl who played sports. The only way a guy would ever like me was with a thick layer of makeup. Not that it mattered. I didn’t like him like that either. Well, maybe I had for a second, but he’d just made those feelings easier to resist.