A Girl Like Me

by Ginger Scott

  “Lake Isabella,” I say.

  “That’s so close to home,” he says.

  I nod, my stomach fluttering, my pulse racing throughout my body.

  Kyle shifts the gear and looks over his shoulder, pulling us back onto the highway, his foot heavy on the gas. I watch his speedometer approach a hundred before he eases off, but he doesn’t let up much.

  He believes it’s the right Shawn, too. And even more—he believes we’re close.

  We’re close to finding Wes.

  Three

  It’s night by the time we near Lake Isabella. Not even early night. It’s late. Just after ten. My needs won’t wait until morning, though. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I were forced to. Kyle doesn’t ask, either. He lets me navigate him directly to the address on the envelope.

  The homes around here are rather random, and the roads are just as bad. We wind along a dirt road closer to the lake when we eventually spot a mailbox with the right numbers to match the address on my envelope.

  “You think this is it?” Kyle asks as he pulls to a stop, his tires kicking up a cloud of dust that fogs our view of the small gray trailer about a hundred yards away.

  I take a deep breath and blow it out, letting my lips make a flapping sound as I raise my shoulders.

  “That didn’t sound confident,” Kyle laughs.

  “It’s not,” I chuckle back.

  Kyle eases his foot from the brake and the truck crawls closer, crunching along the ground underneath us. I turned the radio off about an hour ago. My nerves couldn’t handle sound any longer. Now, the sound of the tires rolling seems deafening.

  Kyle stops about halfway between the mailbox and the mobile home, shifting to park and then turning the truck off. I flex my fingers then form a fist, trying to push feeling to the tips. My heart starts to pound loudly in my ears, and I swallow once because I’m starting to feel nauseous.

  “I don’t see his van,” I say, pausing to stare at our destination for another minute. “There’s a ramp, though. The last time I saw Shawn, he was in a wheelchair. He would need a ramp.”

  “Yeah…he would.” Kyle folds his arms over the steering wheel and leans forward, squinting. “There’s a light on; you can sorta see it through the blinds.”

  I nod, my head shaking vigorously.

  “We should go knock,” he says.

  I nod again, but I don’t move. For almost a full minute before he opens his door and turns to me, Kyle lets me sit still, except for the trembling in my legs.

  “I can do it. If you want.”

  I shift to the side and meet his eyes, a voice inside of me screaming, “Yes, please!” I eventually shake my head, though. He can’t do it. This…it needs to be me. All of this needs to be me. This is my quest for answers, and I need to be the one marching toward the people who can answer my questions.

  “Okay, but I’m coming with you. This is the kind of place where people have bodies preserved in freezers covered in weeds in the backyard,” he says as he steps from the truck, watching me and waiting for me to do the same.

  “Encouraging,” I deadpan.

  Kyle’s lips pucker a smirk.

  One more breath, and I exit quickly, shutting the truck door before I have a chance to back out. I meet Kyle by the front of his truck, and without thinking we both link hands, his squeeze tight—reassuring. Our feet crunch along the loose gravel and dirt that lead us here, and we keep a slow but steady pace up the ramp until I’m faced with a vinyl-covered door. My eyes run along the NO SOLICITING sign taped above the chipped-gold doorknob, and I instantly concoct a lie in case whoever answers this door isn’t Shawn. We’ll say we were lost or that someone gave us the wrong address.

  I look at Kyle and nod, my teeth clenched and my jaw locked with nerves as he nods back, raises his hand and knocks on the door. The knob jiggles when he does, and within a second or two I can feel the deck beneath us vibrate from movement inside the home.

  My eyelids sweep closed, and I don’t let them open until I hear the door opening. When my eyes meet Shawn’s, I’m not sure if I should cry or scream. He doesn’t speak right away, but he leans his weight back into his chair, his head falling slightly to one side as his mouth curves into a slight grin.

  “Josselyn.”

  I’m rushed all at once with everything I’ve learned over the last forty hours. He’s said my name before—many times. He wrote my name to my mom. He fed me, clothed me, soothed me, watched over me. Why are he and I so intertwined? Why have I never known this connection?

  “Can I come in?”

  I feel Kyle’s hand let go of mine, but move to my lower back. As it does, Shawn’s attention flits to him.

  “Shawn Stokes,” he says, reaching his palm for my friend.

  Kyle looks to me first, and I nod. He lets his hand drop from my back and brings it to connect with Shawn’s, his eyes narrowed.

  “Good to meet you, sir.”

  Shawn’s mouth tugs up higher on one side as he chuckles at my protector. When he lets go from their shake, his hand moves to his right wheel, and he turns it enough to unblock his entrance.

  “Come on in,” he says, holding his palm open and gesturing inside.

  I pause for a second, and in my hesitation, Kyle’s hand returns to my back.

  My eyes focus first on the brown sofa against the wall across from me. I head there quickly, my legs shaking. I sit down fast, leaving enough room for Kyle to sit by my side. Shawn reaches out and grabs a band on his door, pulling it closed, then smirks when he faces us.

  “Sometimes I can’t reach the damn door to shut it. I believe you’d call that there one of those life hacks,” he says, laughing lightly. I join him for a second, but mostly from nerves.

  Our eyes quickly settle on one another. How many times have I looked into these eyes as a baby? I study him as he studies me. While I explore his face for any trigger of a memory—other than the time I met him at the Stokes’s house—I feel as if he’s flooded with memories from looking at me. His eyes dazzle, slight wrinkles on the sides, his cheeks puffed out and pulled high with the smile that slowly forms on his mouth.

  He looks away and pushes into his kitchen, pulling a few glasses from a drying rack on the counter. My gaze drifts.

  “Can I get you guys something to drink? Juice? Or I have some tea. I don’t think I’ve got any soda, sorry.”

  “I’ll take a water, thanks,” I say.

  “Make it two,” Kyle adds.

  My focus dances around the room. It’s a simple home—one main living space that consists of this couch, a television and a reading lamp, bleeding right into a kitchen area with a small card table pushed up against the wall. No chairs, and nothing on the floor except for a few plastic bins stacked near the television. A wide doorway to my left leads to what looks like his bedroom and probably bathroom. As for the floorplan, it’s essentially two squares attached by a door.

  The walls, however, tell a much different story. They’re filled with organized clutter—glass cases mounted with comic books displayed, figurines lined on shelves, signed drawings framed and bunched together, superhero costumes pinned to the walls in the shape of the man or woman who they were probably made for.

  I don’t stop darting my eyes around the room until Shawn is in front of me, holding out a glass of water.

  “Thank you,” I say, taking it into both of my shaking hands. Unable to fight the urge, my eyes move back to the various displays. Shawn hands Kyle his water, which he removes from the cup holder affixed to the side of his chair, then twists so he’s sitting directly across from me. He follows my gaze to the wall of costumes, and begins to chuckle.

  “It’s a hobby. I’ve been obsessed since I was a kid. When my dad died, I inherited his collection. Most of the costumes were his,” he says.

  I nod slowly and pull my lips in, smiling, mostly to be polite. Shawn holds up a finger and moves over to the stack of bins, pulling the one on the top into his lap before pushing back to me. He s
tarts to rifle through a few cards and small booklets, finally pulling out a wax envelope and handing it to me.

  My brow bunches and I look to him for permission before opening it.

  “Sure, go on. But just hold it by the edges,” he says.

  With tentative fingers, I bend the flap and reach inside, pinching a piece of film reel. I hold it up to the light to see if I can make out the action happening in the four or five frames.

  “They all look about the same. It’s a hiccup worth of twenty-millimeter from one of the first prints of The Shadow. I got that last week at an estate sale. That little piece right there is worth a couple thousand bucks.”

  My fingers shake when he tells me that, so I work the strip back into the envelope and return it to him.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what The Shadow is,” I say, tucking my hands under my thighs to ease the trembling.

  Shawn pulls the bin close to his stomach and curls his hands over the rim, shaking it with his laugh.

  “No, I suppose young kids like you wouldn’t know anything about that,” he says, his eyes coming back to that comfortable rest on me again.

  I look down to my lap and start to pick at the nail on my left thumb. Kyle slides his foot into mine, and I glance up at him to see him nod slightly.

  “Something you come up here to talk about? The way I figure, you must have gone through a bit to find out where I live, maybe some trouble to get here, too, this late at night and all.” Shawn breaks our short silence. Kyle nods to me again.

  I draw in a deep breath and leave my chest full as I turn back to our host. He knows what I’m here for. He knows everything I now know—I’m sure of it by the way he’s studying me. It’s like a force field has been removed.

  “I found this…I was visiting my grandmother, and she gave me a few of my mom’s things,” I say, sitting up enough to slide the photo of him and me out of my back pocket.

  His eyes warm and a tiny gasp escapes him, his smile growing fast as he takes the photo into his palms before removing a pair of glasses from his pocket and sliding them on his face.

  “Would you look at that. There’s hair on my head,” he says, belly shaking again as his throat crackles with laughter. He turns his mouth into his sleeve to cough, but quickly returns to examining the photo.

  My foot begins to tap the longer he stares at the pair of us without speaking, but I wait. He isn’t denying anything. He’s just not explaining.

  “You were so small,” he finally says. My foot pauses with my toes in the air, heel to the floor. “Did you know you were born three weeks early?”

  I blink once…twice.

  “No,” I say.

  “You were,” he says, glancing up at me over the rims of his glasses then down to the photo. He holds it for a few more seconds before giving it back. “You were this tiny little thing. Skinny arms and legs. You grew strong, though. It seems like it only took you days to make up what you were missing.”

  Shawn’s eyes travel down to my leg then blink back to my face. He begins to nod slowly, I presume applauding how far I’ve come with my prosthetic and rehab. I am stronger. I’m stronger now than I ever was.

  “You were our neighbor…that’s what Grace said.” My words are coming more easily, yet still not easy enough.

  “I was. I probably should have said something when I saw you, but I don’t know…it didn’t seem like the time, and a person doesn’t really remember things from when they were two.”

  His eyes linger on me when he’s done answering. Every time he stares, his mouth ticks up just a hint. It’s how I know we’re both playing a game. He’s trying to unearth exactly how much I know, or think I know, about Wes and what he can do, while I’m trying to find the right words to get the answers I need. The thing about games, though…I don’t lose them.

  “You took care of Wes when I was little,” I say, sitting up a little taller. I see Kyle shift a bit in my periphery. He already knows these details. We talked about them as we left Tucson.

  Shawn brings his hand up to his face, leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair and holding his knuckle against his bottom lip. His mouth twitches again on one side.

  “You remember.”

  I hold his stare for a few seconds, deciding whether it’s best to lie and say I do or stick with the truth. Eventually I shake my head no.

  “I don’t,” I say. “I wish I did.”

  His lips pucker, suppressing a chuckle that his body shakes with.

  “You two have always had this…connection.”

  I can feel the crease form between my brows when Shawn says this, and he holds up a finger, winking as he backs away and rolls down the hallway.

  “I don’t think I trust this guy,” Kyle whispers as he leans into me.

  “He knows something. Just play along,” I say back, my voice hushed.

  I spend the next minute or two it takes Shawn to find whatever he’s looking for in the back room bouncing my left leg up and down. My right one hurts, and I haven’t stretched like I should, or like my body is used to, so I rub my thigh and press on my quad muscle with my thumbs.

  “We need to get you home,” Kyle says, less quiet.

  “We need to find Wes. That’s our priority,” I snap back, shutting my mouth when I hear Shawn approaching.

  Kyle looks to our host then back to me, nudging me with his elbow until I meet his eyes. His brow lowers slightly, and his lips pinch at the corners, stretching his mouth into a tight, straight line. I shake him off. I know he’s worried about me, but this is more important. It just…is.

  “I’m glad I kept this,” Shawn says, moving close to me again.

  His thumb is marking a page inside a leather-bound photo album. He flips it open in his lap then turns it to face me. I recognize the bricks—the curve of the grass and line of rose bushes that still exist next door to my house. The grass has died some over the years, and the bushes bloom less, but it’s still the same.

  “You were one, maybe just a little older,” he says. My hand moves in to the photo as I pull the book closer to me, my finger tracing the spot where the little boy’s hand is holding mine. “You’d just mastered walking, but that wasn’t enough for you,” Shawn chuckles. “You…you were born to run.”

  My heart kicks at those words. As if it weren’t already, somehow the air inside this small space has grown thicker—the atmosphere more serious. I can hear Kyle’s heavy breathing. He’s skeptical. I’m not. And Shawn is right. I was born to run. I was also born to fight.

  “How did Wes end up with you?” I ask, not able to take my eyes off the photo. Both of us barely a hair on our heads, Wes’s small hand is wrapped around mine, holding me steady as I walk toward a red wagon. I remember that wagon, yet this moment…I can’t find it inside. It’s gone.

  “Not everyone is meant to be a parent,” Shawn says.

  I breathe out a punctuated laugh.

  “That’s true,” I say, running my fingertips over the photo one last time before giving the book to Kyle so he can see. “Some people can learn, though.”

  “Not in Wes’s case,” Shawn says.

  I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and hold it as my gaze moves back to Shawn. I think about the boy I remember—about Christopher. He’s gone through many sets of people not meant to be parents.

  “Why didn’t you place him with Bruce earlier? Why go through so many foster homes first?” I ask, tucking my hands back under my thighs.

  Shawn exhales as he leans back, weaving his fingers together and resting them on his bulging belly, the cream-colored T-shirt stretched tight around his frame and the denim button-down unable to close around his body.

  “I hadn’t really thought of it. My brother and Maggie had never talked about wanting kids, and to be honest, we weren’t really close.”

  His response surprises me. I don’t know him well, or his brother for that matter, but the few times I was with Wes’s family, they always seemed warm and kind. And I never heard any
one say anything bad about Shawn.

  Except, of course, when Wes told me he was dead.

  “You and Wes…” I begin, but stop. I don’t know how to ask him what happened, why Wes would say he was dead, especially when every fact I’ve learned so far seems to point to Shawn being the only constant person Wes could rely on until he was adopted. My usual directness feels like a misstep right now. I decide to take another approach.

  “Why didn’t you just adopt him?” I ask. Shawn’s eyes haze just enough that I notice. A sort of darkness comes over him, and the way his mouth is caught somewhere between the straight line and a hint of a smile makes my arms and legs feel restless. I stand to give myself space, walking around the room to look at Shawn’s collection more closely.

  “I kept him as long as I could,” he says once my back is to him. “But like I said—some people just aren’t meant to be parents.”

  I twist and peer at him over my shoulder. His eyes are waiting for me.

  “He wanted to stay with you,” I say.

  Shawn nods, confirming what I’d always thought. Wes must resent him for putting him through those years with the foster families who were cruel to him.

  I turn my focus back to the framed prints of rare comic books, some dated back to the fifties. I only look at them briefly though, closing my eyes and balling my hands into tight fists in my pockets. It’s why I came here. I have to ask.

  “Is he staying here now?”

  I don’t turn to see his response. Without looking, I know his eyes are hazed as they were before. I know the not-quite-there smile is on his lips. I know my friend is nervous for me, for us. I know that I’m only getting pieces—half-truths. But I also know he won’t lie. Not completely.

  “He is.”

  My eyes open, and the first thing I see are a pair of eyes on a damsel in distress. It’s a comic I don’t recognize—the hero only outlined in shadows, standing on top of a building while the woman is being dragged on her back by something evil holding her tightly around the wrists and dragging her along the ground below. Her eyes are blue. Her hair blonde. We’re glaring right at one another, only me…I’m real.