Faking Normal

by Courtney C. Stevens

  “Love you back, Coo-Coo,” I say so she’ll smile again.

  My mom is blissfully simple and unsuspecting that any bad thing has ever touched her younger daughter. As she leaves the room, I decide that’s my gift to her. I’ll keep it that way as long as I can.

  Bodee’s towel in the bathroom is damp. He’s up, but I take my time washing away last night. My neck isn’t as bad in the morning light as I thought, so I tuck my wet hair under a baseball cap and set out to find Bodee.

  He’s on the back deck eating bacon from a paper plate. He has a blue-and-black flannel shirt I’ve never seen tied around his waist, but other than that he’s back to wearing a white T-shirt and jeans.

  “You ready to go somewhere?” I snag a piece of bacon and bite into it before he can protest.

  “Been ready all morning.”

  I open the gate of the privacy fence that surrounds our pool without letting my eyes drift to the area near the deep end. “Follow me,” I say as we step into the backyard.

  There’s nothing great about our house; it’s just a brick split-level ranch we’ve added on to three different times. But I love the trees that surround us and make our house an island in the midst of the woods.

  “You guys own all this?” Bodee runs a hand back and forth over his hair. It is purple-brown today, and now it’s standing up like a forest of its own.

  “Yeah.” The subdivision ends with our house, and we own the land behind us all the way to the river. There’s still a remnant of my path. Weeds, those little plants I call umbrellas, and fallen trees clutter what was once a well-traveled thoroughfare for my bare feet. I pick my way forward, swinging my arms right and left at the spiderwebs hanging from low branches. If not for spiders (and the fear of snakes), I could navigate this path on a starless night.

  Craig and Dad must have made a hundred wheelbarrow trips this way. It should have taken fewer trips, but I insisted on riding atop the pile of building supplies each time.

  Dad would sing out, “Have you met the Queen of Never Ever Land?” And Craig always went along with him and pretended he couldn’t see me. I remember as if it happened this morning instead of eight years ago.

  I laugh, and Bodee raises an eyebrow. “This is Never Ever Land,” I explain.

  “Nice,” he says. “Why Never Ever Land?”

  “Well, I would have named it Land of the Lost, but I had a lisp,” I say, “so Lost sounded like Loth.”

  “I remember. We had speech together in elementary school.”

  “We did,” I say. And there he is in another memory. In a white T-shirt and jeans, sitting in the desk across from mine.

  “We got trapped during that storm too,” he says.

  “I’d forgotten about that,” I say, wondering how I could have forgotten something that wasn’t that long ago. June. But it was before. And it’s like when I whited out the bad, I also whited out the good.

  “I didn’t.” Long pause. “I like your Never Ever Land.”

  “Thought you would. You could bring your tent out here sometime if you wanted.”

  “I might,” he says.

  There’s no grass growing under the trees, but everywhere else green is changing into red and yellow and orange. In another month, my fort will be visible from here. But right now, the leaves haven’t abandoned their summer homes for the forest floor. One of the smaller creeks we cross is bone dry, so we don’t use the plank bridge my dad set up against a huge fallen oak.

  “Almost there,” I say as I claw my way up the dry bank. I can feel the magic of my old hideout calling me. It’s where I played G. I. Joes and Polly Pockets and Hot Wheels. It’s where I read stacks of library books. And pretended. My fort became a plane wreck, a log cabin, a space station, a boxcar, and dozens of other stories in Never Ever Land.

  “Who built this?” Bodee asks as he gets his first look at my fort.

  “Dad and my uncle Tommy. And Craig.” The urgency to be inside, to show Bodee my safe place, is overwhelming. I plow through the last part of the trail to reach the four tall poplars Dad used to frame the fort. First, I check the mailbox Craig nailed to the tree. Empty. Well, of course it would be. Even in its golden years, it held only imaginary mail. Then, with one hand on the ladder, I say, “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “More than cool.”

  I wonder if Bodee’s thinking that this place is a palace compared to his tent. Two tiers of platforms and real windows and doors have to be better than whatever was in that small nylon bag I put in the closet of the bonus room for him. We climb to the top level, probably twenty feet from the ground, and I open all four windows. I lean out and let the breeze kiss my face and swirl the loose curls that have come untucked from my ball cap. Oh, I’ve craved this for months without knowing it.

  Bodee sticks his head through the window beside me. “Easy to breathe up here.”

  The sweat I worked up from traipsing out here is cool on my back. I lean my head next to his, our shoulders touch, and we take in the aerial view of the woods. There’s plenty to see, but not houses, not subdivisions, not schools. In their place are bird nests and chattering squirrels, trickling creeks and a new growth of evergreens along the southern boundary. Even a deer with its white tail erect and alert before it disappears from our sight.

  It’s a world away from the world.

  We are silent like that for a bit, looking and breathing the magic and feeling easy. Time passes as the sun filters through the canopy and creates shifting shadows below.

  “I love this place,” I tell Bodee as I extract myself from the window and grab the broom from the corner. Dust motes swim in the air before sinking to the ladder opening.

  “Who wouldn’t?” Bodee says without turning. “Alexi, there’s something I need to ask you.”

  This makes me nervous, but I say, “Okay.”

  “Did I scare you last night?” he asks. He backs out of the window opening and sits on the wooden floor.

  Tossing the broom in the corner, I sink down beside him. “Scare me? No.”

  “Are you sure? ’Cause it’s the last thing I wanna do.”

  “You were protective.” Why won’t he look at me? This is the old Bodee, the Bodee he rarely shows me anymore. The guy who slumps his shoulders and buries his head like a turtle. “Hey.” I touch his knee. “I promise.”

  He sighs. “Okay. Hayden said . . . something about me being crazy like my dad.”

  “You aren’t.” I stare at the purple top of his head.

  “Lex, this’ll sound weird, but when I was a kid I believed in monsters. You know, like vampires. Werewolves. Ghosts. And I believed in them because I knew at least one monster existed. He wore a shirt with his name stitched across the pocket. And carried a fifth for a weapon. And sometimes a knife.”

  Bodee pauses and then cracks his knuckles. Both hands. One at a time.

  “He always hated me,” Bodee says, “and I don’t know why. Must have hated Ben, too, because he enlisted the second he turned eighteen.”

  “Why didn’t your mom leave him?” It’s a cheap question that people who don’t understand abuse ask. I realize this too late.

  He looks up and massages his temple. “She tried to leave once. The earring. Her mom gave her the pair, and she pawned one for our bus tickets. That’s why there’s only one. But he found out, and she never tried again.” Bodee’s voice hardens. “‘You try to leave me and I’ll kill you,’ he’d say every other day or so, just so she wouldn’t forget. And where would she go? Her parents died young. No support. No education. No job and no way to make any money; he never let her have a thing in her own name.” Bodee’s eyes are bright with unshed tears. “And she had me.”

  Gasping, I say, “I’m sorry.”

  “Mom tried to get me out of there. I think she even talked to your mom about it once. But I wouldn’t leave her. I knew he’d kill her one day. Knew it. And I was going to be there to stop him.” A tear drops off Bodee’s chin and makes a round, wet mark in the old wood. “We work
ed out the plan for me to camp in the woods at night . . . so when he came home drunk he wouldn’t—couldn’t—take his anger out on me. In the morning when he was asleep, I’d slip inside and shower and check on Mom. Always at seven a.m. Always.”

  More tears stain the wood, but this time they’re mine. I cannot imagine this life Bodee’s lived.

  “Until . . . that morning. I woke up early because it was hot. I was fifty feet away from the house when I heard her scream. Fifty feet.”

  As Bodee speaks, the kitchen in the Lennox house appears in my mind. The sink. The table. The stove. I could put them all in place, and I can see her running, screaming, throwing pots and pans at Bodee’s dad. Anything to stall him, to keep him away from her.

  “I took off running. He never woke up that early. Never. God, Lex, she was screaming like crazy, so I grabbed a broom from the porch. It was the only thing I could find, and I was gonna kill him.” Bodee stares past my shoulder and relives it. “She saw me at the door and waved me off and I was just frozen . . . like I’d been Krazy-Glued to the porch. I couldn’t go in, and I couldn’t leave the way she wanted me to.”

  I squeeze his knee because I can’t bear it, and his hand comes down on top of mine in a death grip.

  “Lex, I watched him. I just stood there and watched him kill my mom.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  chapter 13

  I think first of Bodee’s safety. “Does he know you saw him?”

  “No. I hid under the porch until he passed out.”

  Bodee wears shame in the scrunched bridge of his nose and in his clenched jaw. This would look like anger on other guys, but it is too weighty, too painful for anger. It’s as if he wants me to say he could have stopped his dad, so he’s handing me a whip to beat him. But I won’t, because I’m glad he hid. Glad he’s beside me instead of six feet under.

  “Thank God you did,” I say.

  He releases me and wraps his hands around the back of his neck. Clenching his fists. Unclenching them. “But I let her die without . . . She was alone and I . . . I left her.”

  He’s silent for a moment while I consider this. He knows his mother waved him off and why she did it. So do I. But these memories are still a cage without a key for him. But I don’t say this, because I can tell he is not finished with his confession.

  “So last night,” he says, “when I saw Hayden leave with you, something in me just unraveled. Maybe he’s a decent guy, but anybody could see he was drunk. At least I could.”

  Bodee unties the flannel shirt from his waist and lays it across my shoulders before I even realize I’m shaking. The shirt swallows me, but I welcome the warmth and the scent of him and slide my arms into the sleeves.

  “Then when I got to the parking lot and . . . he was on top of you . . . it was like it happened all over again. I hated Hayden. Like I hate my dad for . . . for everything. Treating my mom like he did, and then . . . you know.” Bodee’s hands are fidgety. He shapes his hair into a faux hawk and then flattens it before he speaks again. “I guess I lost it.”

  He doesn’t ask me how I felt about Hayden on top of me. Not because it’s taboo. I’d probably tell him, but it’s as if he already knows. As if he takes it as a given I didn’t want Hayden.

  “I hit him before I even realized it, but I didn’t care. I wanted him off you. Knowing where to hit his lower jaw so it wouldn’t bruise was automatic. I learned that because of him.” Bodee is quiet again, and I wait him out, my stomach churning and knotting around a ball of pain. “And if I could do what my dad did so easily, Alexi, maybe I’m not safe to be around.”

  “You’re safe.” I say it with confidence. Because Bodee pulls back when other guys his age rush forward. Because his two fingers on my hips while we’re dancing and swaying to slow songs don’t threaten me.

  I know he’s 100 percent safe.

  “But if Mr. Tanner hadn’t separated us, I might have—”

  “Stop. You’re torturing yourself for no reason. I don’t know your dad, other than the obvious, but I’ve gotten to know you pretty well over the last couple weeks, and you are not like him.” I don’t say it, but I’m thinking, You can’t be. “I told you last night I wasn’t sorry, and I meant it.”

  An odd feeling niggles at me, though, the way a worm squirms its way through an apple. Maybe I’m a little uneasy about how Bodee’s so protective of me, how it speaks through his actions. And the dance: the Hayden stare-down followed by the Hayden smack-down. And how Bodee noticed the scratches on my neck. He’s close. Closer than any guy’s ever been to me emotionally, and I have a choice right now: reel him in or cast him out. But I can’t decide to do either yet, because I can’t unravel why Bodee is Bodee.

  He doesn’t talk. Except to me. Doesn’t smile. Except for me. Doesn’t go to dances. Except for me. This is the refrain of our song. He’s different with me, and yet I know this is the real Bodee. He’s not pretending anymore.

  Is it because he feels burdened with guilt? Am I only the replacement for the mother he couldn’t help and didn’t save?

  Am I okay with that, or do I want more from him? A relationship? Almost. Maybe. But I’ve never wanted more with anyone.

  Can he give anything to a relationship? Can I?

  After what I’ve been through, I’m like a burnt and crumbly cake that some sly baker covers up with beautiful icing. So even if he likes me on the outside, my inside is tasteless crap.

  We’re not skipping ahead, I remind myself.

  Bodee needs a good friend right now, not some selfish girlfriend. This guy’s life sucks. He’s survived worse stuff than anyone I know, and he’s still amazing.

  “I must be like him or I wouldn’t have hit Hayden,” Bodee continues as my mind races a million miles per hour.

  “Come on, Bodee. Did you hit Hayden for the pleasure of hitting him or because you thought he was hurting me?”

  “Because I thought he was hurting you, but—”

  “Then you’re not like your dad,” I say, and squeeze his knee. He stares down at my hand, and then looks up to meet my eyes.

  “I’m glad you believe that.” He shakes his head. “There’s, uh, one more thing.”

  I close my eyes as he reaches for me, my heart thudding loud enough that anyone a mile away could hear. When nothing happens, I open them and realize he’s only fastening the top button of his shirt at my neck. Embarrassed, my face burns and I look away.

  “The police know I saw him. When I called it in that morning . . .”

  He pauses, and I know he still sees his mom lying on the floor. I can almost see her myself. Lifeless and broken, my imagination says. With thumb-shaped bruises on her neck as purple as Bodee’s hair.

  I exhale for us both.

  “I told the police everything,” he says. “And now the lawyers want me to give a deposition before the trial. They say I can make sure he goes away for life.”

  “You’ll do it.”

  “You saw what happened at the funeral. Here with you . . . I can talk. But that’s a first. In a courthouse or some office, with those lawyer people watching me, I’ll freeze.”

  “But if he gets away with it, he might come back and . . . hurt you.”

  “I know,” he says.

  I’ve lived all but two weeks of my life without Bodee. But now, sitting with him in my fort, I know these two weeks have been God walking right into my life like he has flesh and Kool-Aid-colored hair. The gospel according to Bodee Lennox. His safety. His protection. And love.

  “Then you know you have to do it,” I say. “Testify.”

  “Yeah. But knowing and doing are two totally different things. You probably think it’s easy, since it’s just words. I mean, how hard can it be to say, ‘I know what he did’?”

  “Very hard. Almost impossible, but—” My hands grip each other as if they have minds of their own. M
inds to scratch and tear at my neck until I really believe what I’m saying. “We’ll get you through it,” I promise him with more fear than assurance.

  “There’s a whole lot of it going around.” He nudges me with his knee. “You need to talk about last night?”

  This is an intentional conversation shift. Away from him to me. I should recognize the technique. I’ve done it to my mom often enough, though she never notices. “My hero showed up, so there’s nothing to talk about.”

  Bodee smiles the teeth smile, and he doesn’t press me any further about last night.

  “You ready to go back to the house?” I ask.

  “Can we come again soon?”

  Kayla and Craig and even Mom and Dad were forbidden from entering my sanctuary (unless repairs or improvements were necessary). I’ve never before wanted to share this special place with anyone. “Anytime,” I tell Bodee.

  When we get back to the yard, Craig is waiting for us with his Coach Tanner glare. Kayla’s propped up in the Adirondack rocker, and she doesn’t seem much happier. The cap comes off and my hair falls over my neck as we walk through the gate and around the pool.

  “We need to settle up before your mom and dad get home.” Craig indicates that we should sit in the glider opposite them.

  “Mr. Tanner,” Bodee starts.

  “You only have to call me that at school.” Craig sighs and crosses one ankle over his knee.

  Craig’s edgy, chewing one side of his mouth. He’s wearing his doghouse expression. Something’s up and it’s not good. Has Kayla broken up with him? Again?

  No; Craig usually cries when she does.

  I brace for bad news.

  “About last night. Both of you—,” Craig starts.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tanner,” Bodee says. “I really thought Hayden was hurting Alexi.”