Author's Note: Thank you guys for your well-wishes! I am certainly feeling better now. Not having school in the fall for the first time (I graduated in the spring), boy drama, and getting big news on my career all conspired to make me anxious last week, but I am adjusted now, and I thank you for your support. In fact, the career news is pretty exciting. I'm a screenwriter, as well as a novelist, and my manager thinks we're finally ready to take my first script to the market to see if we can get anyone interested in buying it! :)

BROKEN WINGS

CHAPTER 20: CREATIVITY

J.D. woke up on Sunday morning from a fitful night of sleep. He'd had nightmares he couldn't place or explain but they'd left him sweating and confused. As he lay in bed, listening to the rest of the house wake up, he thought about how he had heard his mother's voice just yesterday. She had been terse and had sounded strained, and he wished he'd told her not to worry because he didn't mind that she had never come for him. Well, he did mind, but if not minding anymore would make her come home now, then he would stop minding right away.

While Tami, Eric and Gracie went to church that morning, J.D. and Julie stayed home and worked on assignments. The rain had yet to let up and sitting alone in his room, the gentle roar on the roof began to unsettle the teen. Grabbing his backpack, he padded down the hall to Julie's room and knocked on the door. "Yeah?" she called from the bed.

"Um, do you mind if I work in here?"

"No, not at all," she said, hopping up to open the door for him.

"Thanks. It's just..."

"Creepy quiet?" she asked with an amused expression.

J.D. smiled. "Yeah. It's weird."

"I know. It bothers me, too, so I usually play music." She hopped back onto the bed. "Make yourself at home."

J.D. sat down on the floor at the foot of her bed and leaned against it as he pulled out his World Literature book. After glancing at his assignment, he flipped to the correct page and started reading a short story from South Africa. Julie absentmindedly tapped her pencil as she worked on something, but J.D. was soon able to block out the noise as he read the story. It was about a young boy who was walking miles to buy food for his family, and since he was black in Apartheid South Africa, J.D. knew something bad was going to happen to him.

As the boy in the story bought the pork rinds and began on his long walk home, he was surrounded by a group of white boys. J.D. began to tap his thumb against the page. The white boys had a switch with them, and after spilling the black boy's food, they began to beat him. J.D. felt his heart rate beginning to climb, and when the story began to describe the gashes the boy had on his back from the switch, and how the white boys began throwing rocks and calling him names, he closed the book and tossed it aside. Why anyone would ever write something so awful was beyond him.

"What's wrong?" Julie asked from above, and J.D. realized he'd forgotten she was there.

"Nothing."

"Okaaay," she drawled, obviously not believing him. "Are you thinking about Madison?"

J.D. furrowed his brow and craned his neck to look up at her. "What?"

Julie laughed. "Oh, please. You have to know she's still totally into you."

He straightened again, but instead of finding a wall to stare it, there was a mirror that reflected his puzzled face for Julie's entertainment.

"What?" she asked. "You don't like her?"

"No, I like her. I mean, as a friend."

"She keeps asking when you're coming back to school."

J.D. sighed and yanked his backpack over. He grabbed the World Literature book with his good arm and stuffed it inside. When he looked up at Julie's reflection, her amused expression was gone.

"Hey. If I'd been through what you've been through, I'd get nervous sometimes, too."

"I'm not nervous sometimes," he mumbled. "I'm nervous all the time."

Julie sat up and folded her legs under her. "You seem to have fun with Gracie Bell."

He shrugged.

"Maybe you just need to be around more people your age," Julie suggested. "Going back to school will probably help because it's something normal. It's structured."

"Yeah..." he said quietly. "I feel like I'll never be ready to go back."

"Well, you're still healing. You have to give yourself time. You can't expect to just magically feel normal again."

He locked eyes with her reflection. "What if I never feel normal again?"

Julie sighed then scooted to the edge of the bed to look him in the eye for real. "I don't think you will. But I think that in time, you'll find a new normal. Like, I remember how angry I was when I moved here. I hated it. I just wanted to go back to our old house where everything was 'normal.' But after a while, I made some friends, had some fun, and now Dillon is my new 'normal.' I mean, it feels like home now. Obviously, you've been through something more dramatic than moving, but... I think it'll be okay. Everything will be okay. Just trust in that."

J.D. took in a deep breath and slowly let it out, nodding a little. He envied her conviction and her faith in her own thoughts, and hoped that when he was as old as her, he'd be able to have the same trust in himself. "But... aren't you leaving in a few months?"

Julie sighed. "I guess so."

"Aren't you scared?"

"Not yet, but I probably will be. I mean, college is just school. Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself."

J.D. looked across the hall through the open door to Gracie's room. "I just thought you might not want to go away. I mean, if I had a little sister and a family like this, I wouldn't want to leave them."

"You do."

"What?" He looked back up to her.

"J.D., you do have a family like that. You're part of our family."

The look in her eyes was so earnest that he had to cast his gaze elsewhere and looked down to the carpet, suddenly shy, even as her words warmed him. "I just don't want to be in the way," he said quietly.

"You're not, okay? And besides, I always secretly wanted a brother."

He smiled a little and forgot that she could still see his reaction in the mirror until she giggled.

"Well, I wanted an older brother, but this'll do. You're bigger than me, at least."

"I guess that technically counts as a big brother."

"No way. I'm the one who gets to pick on you."

J.D. smiled again, and a moment later, the house was split with the sounds of Gracie's happy shrieks as the rest of the family got home.

After his conversation with Julie, J.D. felt better and more secure with the insecurity of his life at the moment. She was right, he did have a family now, and while Tami and Eric would never replace his real parents, he was finally beginning to feel that loving them was not only okay, but wonderful. They weren't supposed to be the same as his birth parents, but they were part of his new normal and he decided to welcome the change.

When the power went out that afternoon, he made a fort in the living room with his foster sisters, and Gracie was overjoyed when they were allowed to eat snacks under the sheet, as if they were hidden away on a safari. It was a bit of a let down when the lights came back on that night and their fort didn't seem as magical anymore. Thunder rolled on into the night, and J.D. found it difficult to fall asleep against the distant rumbles. As a result, he awoke late the next morning to a house that had already started its day. Tami and Julie were off to school and Eric and Gracie were silent.

J.D. stumbled out to look for them and found Gracie watching TV and Eric checking his e-mail on Tami's laptop. The older man smiled when he saw him. "Hey, morning, kiddo. Get any sleep last night?"

J.D. nodded and slumped at the table, gently resting his healing wrist on the surface.

"How're you feeling?" Eric asked.

"I'm okay," J.D. said hoarsely, and he realized that it was more than just an automated response. It was true. The anxiety he had felt not long ago was still living with him, but it was quieter, and he felt that if he kept ignoring it and focusing on the smiles of the people around him, it would wither away all together. He could be free.

"You know, I can't tell you how nice it is to have another male in the house," Eric said, his eyes scrunched up a bit from his smile. "Sometimes there's just too much estrogen around here, if you know what I mean."

J.D. smiled a little. "I guess I never thought of that."

"Well, you're used to being around females. You spent a lot of time with your mom, right?"

J.D. nodded and Eric noted how the teen's smile faded at the thought.

"You're lucky. Learn all you can about the womanly mind now and you'll be better prepared for life. I'm telling you. There ain't that much difference between men and women, but when it comes to communication..."

J.D. swallowed and bit his lower lip.

Eric sighed. "How was it talking to your mom?"

The boy shrugged, studying the grains of salt on the tabletop.

"Must've been pretty hard."

"I just miss her," J.D. quietly replied.

Eric nodded. "I'm sure she misses you, too."

"I mean, I really like it here, but I just wish she'd come home, you know?" he said, meeting Eric's dark gaze.

"Nothing will ever replace your relationship with her. And you'll have that again when she is ready to come home."

J.D. nodded, but the action was stiff and mechanical.

"We were thinking about going out to eat tonight. That sound good to you?"

J.D. swallowed again. He hated that his stomach had been made so queasy with nerves that he didn't know when he could trust himself to hold down food. He'd been eating so little lately that any amount of food bigger than a few bites was bound to make him queasy as it challenged the smallness that had become his stomach. "Sure," he said, hoping he wouldn't wind up puking at the restaurant.

"You got a favorite place?"

He shook his head no. "Just about anywhere is fine."

Eric smirked. "See, this is what I mean. Most guys don't mind so long as it's food. If I asked Tami and Julie that same question, they would've gotten into a debate on where the restaurant got its beef from."

J.D. smiled a little, realizing that he found the way the family teased about each other's quirks and biases to be more honest and refreshing than hurtful. He could only imagine what would've happened if he'd ever kept up a joke like that around his dad. The one time that he'd teased with his mom about proposing to two cheerleaders, which was obviously a joke, had received a laugh from his mom and a stern lecture about focusing on football from his dad.

The morning passed more quickly than J.D. anticipated, and he was happy to find sunlight peering through the overcast sky. Steam was rising from the surrounding rooftops as they warmed in the sun, shedding their rain. He attempted to tackle another chapter in his Math book, but the process was so boring that he quickly grew tired. When Eric left early to take Gracie to a play date before heading to work, J.D. curled up in a patch of sunlight in his room and was soon dozing.

Time slipped and slid with the noise of cars driving by outside, and at one point he thought Tami or Julie had come home for he heard the front door open. When there were no further sounds of life in the house, however, he decided it must've just been the house making a settling noise. He began to drift again, and was in a light sleep when he felt fingers brush against his forehead. He tried to ignore the sensation, for he was so warm and peaceful asleep, but then there was a weight on his arm, and a sigh that sounded like his father. He jerked into full wakefulness at the shutting of the front door.

Taking several short breaths, he sat up and looked around him, expecting to see someone, but he was alone. He sat stock still for several minutes, listening to the house around him as his blood surged past his ears, worried that someone had come in who wasn't supposed to be there. He touched his forehead, sure he had felt someone else do the same earlier, and had just begun to calm himself with the reasoning that it was probably just a fly, when the front door really did open.

His heart leapt in his chest at the sound and he was ready to flee into the closet until he heard Tami's familiar voice announce that she was home. He closed his eyes as relief flooded through him. He longed to cement his mind to the present and chase away the aggravating in-betweenness of dreams, so when she poked her head in to check on him, he got to his feet and hugged her tightly.

"Oh, sweetie," Tami said, wrapping her arms around him. "You all right?"

He didn't speak for a moment, for he could feel her warmth and the beating of her heart, anchoring him to his body, anchoring him to her presence. Tami reacted to the intensity of his embrace by rubbing his back and not asking further questions, happy to comfort him with her arms until he felt steady enough to speak. She could feel his heart racing against his ribs, which she could feel much more easily than in the past, and the thought filled her with concern. "I dreamed my dad came in here," he whispered at length.

"In our house?" she asked quietly, still holding him as tightly as he was holding her.

"He touched me."

Tami sighed. "I'm sorry, honey. That must've scared you."

J.D. took a few steadying breaths before letting go of his foster mother to look her in the eye. "I want him to just go away. I wish I could forget about him."

She brushed her thumb across his cheek. "I know, sweetheart, and I wish you could, too. C'mere." She pulled him into another hug and kissed the top of his head. "You wanna do something fun? You wanna do something to help you forget your dream?"

"Like what?"

"Halloween's getting close and we've got some decorations in the garage I've been meaning to put up. Wanna help me?"

He smiled a little as he pulled away again. "Sure."

Tami smiled and rubbed his arm before leading him to the garage. J.D. had just as much fun looking at the old decorations Julie had made as a child as he did putting them up. Tami caught him examining a jack-o'-lantern Julie had made when she was ten. She had cut out the face then pasted yellow tissue paper to the back of the construction paper so that when the decoration was taped to a window, the eyes appeared to glow. "You make one of those, too?" she asked.

He shook his head. "If I did, I don't remember."

"Your mom didn't keep your decorations?"

"I think maybe she did, somewhere once, but we moved, you know. So... stuff gets lost."

Tami tried not to give him a pitying look as she continued to unpack the box. She could just imagine Katie praising her child for his handiwork on a decoration then saying, "let's keep it somewhere safe" so that she wouldn't ruin the sterile symmetry of her walls by putting it up. Other than football, she doubted J.D. ever saw proof that his parents valued what he had to offer inside. "Hmm," was all she said in response, but as she got to the bottom of the box and found some orange and black construction paper, she got an idea.

The two spent the next two hours decorating the house and making new decorations of their own, and she was surprised by how focused the teen was on fashioning his own paper jack-o'-lanterns. After witnessing him helping with the fort the other day, and Gracie Bell's Cafe the day before that, Tami was beginning to notice a pattern. The boy had a lot of creativity in him that had either been squashed out by his father or had never found an outlet because the kid was always so exhausted after putting all of his energy into school and football.

"Oh, that looks great," she said, pretending to have just noticed the decoration he was finishing.

He smiled bashfully. "It's just a pumpkin."

"No, you're doing a great job. I wish I had creativity like that."

He finished pasting on the last detail then cocked his head at his creation, and Tami couldn't help but smile at his pensive expression, hoping that he believed her when she said that he was talented. She thought of what she knew of the boy, and how he said he used to love learning about space. There was a lot of unknown about space, and a lot of ideas that were found by thinking outside of the box. Space was a vast expanse where the imagination could run wild, so she found that it made sense for J.D. to be drawn towards activities and games where he could use his long-neglected imagination. At the very least, escaping into a game like he had with Gracie Bell, or a craft like he was right now, was a means of focusing his mental energy and keeping his thoughts away from his pain.

By the time Eric came home that evening with Gracie and Julie, who had stuck around school to study in the library, the house was festively decorated. Darkness was falling outside and with the scent of the leaves and the earth after a rainfall, it truly felt like autumn was in the air. "Look at this," Eric said as he hung up his coat and strolled further into the house. "Y'all have been busy. Look, Gracie." He tried to point out the decorations to the toddler but she was too busy squirming to try to get out of his arms, so Eric let her down on the floor.

Tami greeted her husband with a hug and a kiss, and while the teens were getting ready to go out to dinner, she showed him some of the decorations J.D. had made. "Isn't that great?" she said under her breath. "I think this is something good for him – something he's good at other than football."

Eric narrowed his eyes at the jack-o'-lantern J.D. had made. "Honey, that thing looks like it's about to come alive and eat us."

"Oh, it's just artistic expression."

Eric glanced around at the rest of the decorations his foster son had made, and as Tami did with a fresh eye, she realized that they did stand out from the rest. The boy certainly had a flare for the gothic, and for a moment she felt like she was on a Tim Burton set.

"Anyway," she said. "He had a nightmare or something this afternoon and was upset when I got home, so this helped distract him."

"What do you mean a nightmare?" Eric asked as he sat down to change out of his tennis shoes and into a nicer pair.

"I mean," Tami continued, tucking her hair behind her ear while keeping her voice down. "He was shaking when I held him. I think it was really real to him. He thought his dad had slipped into our house and touched him."

Eric furrowed his brow. "That's a little odd for a nightmare, don't you think?"

Tami shrugged. "Honey, they don't always make sense."

"No, I mean..." He glanced around to make sure they were alone. "I didn't lock the door when I left."

Tami furrowed her brow. "Yeah, so?"

"I thought Julie was on her way home then she texted me to say that she was staying late to study."

"Honey, I really don't see where you're going with –"

"I just think that's a pretty realistic dream."

Tami blinked for a few moments. "You mean... you think he was here?"

"You remember that time he visited you at the office? You said he was asking about who was watching J.D. and said something about how me being home half the day then you being home must be nice. He was trying to find out our schedule. He knew our work hours overlap – he knew when the kid would be here alone."

Tami's eyes grew a little rounder and her lips formed a thin line. J.D. walked into the room and grabbed his sweatshirt off the back of the couch. The two fell rather suspiciously silent as soon as he did so, and he glanced at them as he stuck his good arm through a sleeve. "What?"

"Nothing –" Tami began, but Eric cut her off.

"Tami was just telling me about the bad dream you had this afternoon, is all."

J.D. tucked in his lower lip a little in embarrassment. "Oh."

"Y'all almost ready?" Tami asked, forcing cheerfulness in her voice as she smiled at her foster son.

J.D. continued to try to struggle into his sweatshirt as Eric strode past him and Tami got up to help. Flipping on the switch to the outside light, Eric stepped outside. J.D. looked to Tami once his head was through the neck hole of his sweatshirt. "What's he doing?"

"Honey, I have no idea. But we should get going before it gets too busy."

"Hey, J.D.," Eric called from outside. "Can you come here for a sec?"

The teen cast a confused look to Tami then headed outside to follow Eric.

Eric pointed at a business card that had been stepped on and muddied, but appeared to have fallen out of a car.

J.D. looked from the card to Eric. "What is it?"

The coach picked up the card, pursing his lips as his shoulders grew tense. Tami appeared in the doorway, gazing out in confusion and Eric shared a dark look with her before returning his attention to J.D. "It's your dad's business card."

"What?" Tami asked, sounding exasperated.

J.D. looked between the two. "Why... why would that be here?"

"You ever have one of these with you?" Eric asked and the boy shook his head no. Eric sighed, lowering his voice. "That son of a bitch."

J.D. inched closer to Eric to look at the bedraggled card himself.

"Honey," Tami said, her voice strained. "Just because his card fell out of someone's car doesn't mean he was here."

J.D.'s eyes grew a little larger. "You think he was here?"

"No," Tami said.

"Son, I think your dream wasn't really a dream," Eric said, making the teen grow pale.

"Eric," Tami hissed.

"No, this is serious," Eric replied, ignoring her warning tone. "I think he's trying to intimidate us. I think he left this here on purpose so that we'd know what he'd done. And of course, there ain't any way to prove that it's true so we can't get him in trouble for violating his restraining order."

A hand suddenly latched onto the back of his shirt and Eric looked over his shoulder to find J.D. all but trying to disappear behind him.

"Eric," Tami said again, and this time the warning in her voice was vile, for the damage had already been done.

Eric looked from her to J.D. Knowing that what he'd said would scare the kid was different than seeing the deer-like fear on the boy's face as he surveyed the dark street, as if afraid his father would show up again at any moment. "Hey," Eric said softly. "C'mere. I gotcha." He hung an arm around the boy's shoulders, but J.D. only stiffened.

"What if he comes back?" J.D. asked, his voice shaking. "Why would he do that? He knows he's not supposed to see me. Why would he –"

"J.D., sweetie," Tami said from the doorway. "Even if he was here, that doesn't mean he came inside. He could've just stopped by to talk to one of us, saw we weren't here, then left."

Crystalline tears had pooled in the bottoms of the boy's blue eyes. "But I heard his breathing. I heard him breathing and he touched me and he was... he was in my room..."

As one of the tears broke loose, Eric ignored the boy's body language and pulled him into a hug anyway. "It's not your job to worry about that, all right?" he whispered, and he could feel the teen relaxing a little. "That's my job. All you have to worry about is taking care of yourself. You got that?"

J.D. nodded, but his body was trembling, and as Eric looked to Tami over his foster son's shoulder, the look of disapproval that she was giving him made him wish he hadn't ever voiced his concerns in the first place.

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