by Allie Martin
“Nicole. I caught you with a lighter today. How are you supposed to get through this if you lie?” Mom’s hard stare flickers with the sadness I know she tries to bury for my sake. She hates when I lie, but it’s not so much that I don’t want to tell the truth. It’s that I don’t want to talk at all. I want to build and burn. I want to collect my stories. I want to survive the rest of this school year and get to summer. I want to imagine my brother driving his beloved car down the East Coast to my dad’s childhood home in Morehead City, North Carolina. Me and my brother.
That’s what I want.
But now there’s only me.
“Yes, I’m still burning.” I sigh and cross my arms in front of my chest, shielding my hole-filled heart from the winds of LaSalle’s concern.
Burning is what we affectionately call my need to burn everything I create. I’m not technically a pyro or anything, but a few months ago I spent a hundred hours hand carving a chair from pine before dousing the wood in gasoline and lighting a match to it in the middle of my driveway. Apparently it’s illegal to burn things without a permit in city limits, or so the police told my parents after the neighbors complained.
I didn’t burn a chair; I burned what that chair represented. No one seems to get that.
LaSalle’s eyes narrow, and Mom rubs circles on her temples.
“Nicole...” he starts, and this intense feeling of irritation tries to crack through my feelings-barrier. I jump to my feet and run my hands up and down my bare thighs.
“I’m better, okay? It’s only been a couple more times.” I tug at my long sleeves, covering my hands with my bright yellow shirt, and re-cross my arms. I’m lying, and I can tell by the doc’s pursed lips he knows. “I made them. I can do whatever I want with them.” I teeter on the edge of anger, the box around my heart warping and splitting...pushing against me, but I fight. No feeling. Tighten the vice. For a moment, I decide I’m going to burn the other chairs as soon as I get home, but I tuck the thought away with the rest.
“I understand how you might feel that way, Nicole. But your lack of respect for your parents’ wishes, your belongings, and now your creations, has us worried it might leak to your person.” He scans my outfit before he continues, judging my ripped shorts, my v-cut shirt, my unlaced boots, tongues flopping out. “I was only asking. We don’t have to talk if you feel uncomfortable.”
I press the heels of my hands against my temples. The psychobabble pushes me further into myself, closer to the anger I try to stay away from. I know all his tricks. He uses my name to humanize me, to make me an individual. He legitimizes my feelings. He gives me options. Choices. He pretends I have a say in what happens to me. But if I had a say, Jon would be alive, his organs all where they should be, and I wouldn’t be standing here.
I’d have my life back. I’d be getting ready to leave for the summer to the town my dad grew up in before he moved to Canada to be with my Mom. Jon would be telling me I wasn’t allowed, under any circumstances, to leave the house in the new bikini I bought. I’d be begging him to stop texting his secret girlfriends and help me cut down all my clothes to the one suitcase I’m allowed on the airplane. He’d be fighting with my parents to let us drive the coast like we always wanted.
That’s where I’d be if I had what I wanted.
“Nicole?” This time it’s my mom’s voice.
“Oh my God, stop saying my name. I heard you. I hear you.”
Irritation rakes through me, and I leave the room before I explode.
2:45 PM
Mom sighs for the twelfth time—I started officially counting after three—as we turn into our driveway, and I know she wants to say something. I’m not currently open to listening.
She pulls the car up close to the garage, which is like my shining haven of quiet, whispering for me to get out and go build something.
Mom puts the gear in park rather forcefully. She turns to me, but I pretend I don’t see her while reaching into the backseat for my stuff.
A soft touch freezes me in place. Mom’s warm hand on my arm sends chills through me. Hot and cold crash together, making me lukewarm. Love and hate cancel each other out, leaving nothing but indifference.
“Your father and I have been talking about cancelling the trip to Morehead this summer.”
The chills turn to ice. “You can’t do that.” The tone of my voice is pure desperation. They can’t cancel. I’ve been waiting to get out of here. Eager to escape.
“We don’t know if this is a good idea. It might be too soon. Your father has a few business trips planned... a big trip to Philadelphia right when we’re supposed to be leaving.” Mom’s eyes shine with a layer of sadness, and I see beneath the surface. Whatever’s happening inside her is jumbled and messy, but I know very clearly my Dad’s trips have nothing to do with this.
“Dad’s always on business trips.” I lean forward, clutching her arm. She stares out the window behind me.
This can’t be happening. First Jon steals away any hope of our trip then Mom rips the beach out from under me altogether. I may have been born in Canada, but I live for the warm sand, cool water, and burning sun of the South.
“I don’t know if I can do this alone.”
“Do what alone?”
She sighs deeply yet again.
“We found your papers, Nicole.” It’s a straight statement, tensing my whole body. Fear pins me against the seat. “In Jon’s car. We know you haven’t stopped.”
“What?” I understand her, but I have no other response. Everything feels delayed, vibrating like the echo of grinding steel in a metal shop.
“The papers with all those donor stories. The ones you’re hoping to be about Jonathan.”
“How could you?” I start, and Mom holds her hand out to silence me.
“I was cleaning the car to take photos of it. Don’t look at me like that. We’ve told you, Nicole. A hundred times. This is not healthy.”
I blink a couple times. “You’re selling Jon’s car?” There are too many negative reactions, all vying for my attention right now, that I’m frozen.
“Eventually, yes.” Mom watches me with shoulders pulled in and tense.
“Because of the stories?” I suddenly feel the weight of punishment press down on me.
“Because it can’t sit in the yard forever, Nicole,” she snaps and pinches her nose. “I don’t understand what you’re searching for. We decided finding out who these people are isn’t what this family needs to heal.”
No, you decided.
“And you’ve gone behind our backs. All this acting out is exhausting. I don’t think the summer house is a good idea,” she continues.
“No. Mom, please. I’ll get rid of them. No more acting out.” I clutch her hand, ready to beg. “I’m sorry. Please don’t cancel.”
A tear slides down Mom’s cheek as she sucks in a deep breath.
“You promise?”
I nod.
“You’ll get rid of all of them? You’ll put this nonsense out of your mind? Stop skipping meetings?”
I nod vigorously, and after a few moments she pulls me in for a hug.
“We want to help you, sweetheart. We want what’s best for you, for our family.” Her breath hitches when she speaks, because family isn’t the right word. Not without Jon.
I close my eyes and let myself relax in her arms. “I know, Mom.”
But I also know I’m not giving up my search.
How could she ever know what I need to heal?
About the Author
Allison Martin lives in Northern Canada with her daughter, her partner and all his camping gear. She is a cover designer at Makeready Designs. She spends most of her non-writing time outdoors hiking, paddling, snowshoeing, skiing and trying not to fall off the side of a mountain. Inside time is spent writing, reading or having Netflix marathons of her favourite show du jour.
She is represented by Sharon Pelletier of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret Literary Management.
; She also writes Young Adult Speculative Fiction with Jolene Perry under the name AJ Brooks.
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Also by Allie Martin
A Holloway Farms novel
Under the Dusty Sky
Mills Lake
The Truth About Us
Standalone
Tight Knit
Even on the Darkest Night
Watch for more at Allie Martin’s site.
