Chapter 7

~Bella~

We sat in the sun for most of the afternoon and watched him paint his house.

I did most of the watching, actually. The fawn didn't seem interested. It sat beside me in the grass for a while before it got bored and wandered off to eat everything in sight: the soft green leaves and pale pink flowers off of the clover. We were mostly hidden, tucked into the trees, just a stone's throw away from this strange new inhabitant. He'd probably see me if he looked in exactly the right spot, but he was too intent on his job to notice much of anything.

I noticed everything.

He was tall, with a shadow that stretched on forever when he stepped into the sun. He'd be even taller if he didn't slouch, but he did, just a little, like he was cowering over an ache hidden deep beneath his ribs. He ran his hands through his hair a lot as though he wasn't used to the feel of it, and his arms were already baked a dark brown, coming from sunshine, wherever that was. He swallowed a lot, nursed four beers for almost an hour, and muttered to himself under his breath all the time. He had a big black tattoo on one arm and hummed along to scratchy songs out of a transistor radio. He smiled, only once, and all to himself.

Something about it made me certain he didn't do that very often.

He really did have an eyepatch. I thought for sure I'd made it up—mistook a shadow across his face for something solid—but sure enough, there it was. Strapped to his head with a thin band that rumpled his hair, a big gaping black spot held over the place where his eye should be. I wondered how he'd lost it or if he'd even lost it at all. Wondered what his view of the world was like: if it was lopsided, tilted at an angle, or skewed forever sideways. Wondered what it looked like under there, a sagging empty hole or a twisted gash of scar tissue or totally normal.

Wondered what happened to him. Wondered when and where and why.

I wondered what color his other eye was.

He worked for most of the day which meant that he probably owned the house now. You didn't spend that kind of energy on something you might leave behind one day. A new coat of paint was like marking your territory, and he marked his with color. Not just one or two either, the way normal people paint their home: the clapboards white and then the trim something somber like grey or blue or green. Plain colors, 'cause being too different out here wasn't exactly the best thing to be. He used four. Green and yellow, blue, purple.

Wrapped a rainbow around the house like a belt.

My ribbon was still fluttering on the flagpole, stained orange from the rusted metal. It was so obvious to me that my eyes kept drifting toward it, a little white flag flapping in the breeze. Maybe he hadn't seen it. I didn't really know if I wanted him to see it, or why I had done it in the first place. Some neighbors brought pie and gossip, but I wasn't like most neighbors.

I turned their property into a graveyard and then tied up white-ribbon apologies like I wanted them to know.

The fawn nosed through an entire bush of buffalo berries before it was finally full. It tried to curl up in my lap afterward, boney hooves digging into my soft ankles. I pulled it close and folded its legs between mine, stroking its soft ears until it was breathing slowly, peaceful, its heartbeat resonating through my stomach. I was still feeding it the baby formula, still out of the china bowl. I had let it sleep in my bed last night because it cried from the floor, its chin on the mattress until I helped it up next to me. I woke to find it curled up against my stomach, ears twitching dreamily, buried right down in my blankets beside me. Blinking those little doe eyes, licking my neck with a warm tongue, and tumbling off the bed in a tangle of legs. It spent every moment of the morning underneath my feet, ears caught up in the hem of my nightdress, legs knotted up with mine.

I still hadn't changed.

The nightdress needed to be washed. It was stained and muddy, smears from when I had fallen in the forest last night, grass rubbed from my morning in the field, all those ribbons coming undone from the storm. My skin was ashy, and my hands were still crusted in dirt from my midnight digging. My hair was hanging limp, scraggly around my elbows. I was still picking things out of it, wilted flowers and soft green leaves. A twig. An acorn.

I needed a washing as badly as the dress.

I woke the fawn and crept away, daydreaming of the stream, the gentle trickle of water that marked the serpentine property line between me and this strange new neighbor. The stream ran close to my house, just a few steps through the trees, but it was set far back on the other end of his property, across an overgrown marsh. He was still painting, now shirtless and sweating and still humming along to the old-time songs from his radio. I was pretty sure he hadn't even been here long enough to explore as far as the stream and figured he wasn't likely to stumble across me there by accident.

At least not anytime soon.

We took the long way, stopping by the house so I could grab the can of soft buttery soap I bought off Sparrow, my tiny withered friend who lived across town, the one with the crystals and cats and the ability to see my aura. She called me Agaskawee, swan girl, in her native tongue, and my heart always glowed purple, whatever that meant. She hawked all sorts of strange concoctions, love potions, and prayer beads, but her soap was her best seller. It was thick and creamy, all natural, nothing but soap lilies and yucca. The color of moss, it smelled like springtime, a thousand springtimes, a million of them, all boiled down into one.

My favorite spot was technically on new Neighbor's property. The banks got washed away with the floodwaters after that big storm when I was nine, water clear up to the porch, but still Mom wouldn't think of leaving. I was sure the house would lift right off its foundation like a boat and float all the way to Texas by the time the water receded, and I wore a snorkel mask to bed for a week expecting it. The swimming hole was carved out of the shoreline during that flood, a shallow pool haloed in cattails and lily pads. Fed from one end and draining from the other, it was shaded by a group of crabapple trees, most of their flowers blown clean off from the storm, the ground a pink carpet and the shoreline mottled rose. The fawn scampered by me and tripped right into the water, face first, slipping on the rocks. It came up drenched, soft baby fur plastered to scrawny ribs, raindrop eyelashes. It planted all four legs wide in the slippery rocks and shook itself, a spray of water across my knees before it looked up at me, blinking wildly.

"You're okay," I told it, and it must have agreed. It bobbed its head, ears flopping before it jumped suddenly sideways, kicking up water, landing with another splash. It wiggled its backside before it pounced again with a squeal of excitement, the first sound I'd ever heard it make other than the crying from last night.

I laughed and stepped into the water, the creek a welcome chill against the heat. I sank down into the water, up to my armpits with a heavy sigh. I scrubbed at my legs with a handful of soft sand while the fawn played nearby. The mud on my calves came off easy enough, a brown cloud floating downstream, but my feet required more attention, still coated with the sticky remains of the fawn's milk and berry meal last night. I shimmied out of the dress and took a handful of soap to it, washing it tenderly, in case it fell apart altogether. The yucca and the lilies frothed foamy white, bubbles sticking to my skin, and I rinsed the dress clean, hanging it from a nearby branch to dry. There were still ghostly stains around the bottom, but it was almost white again. I sank back down into the water and watched it sway from the tree.

So what if Mom wanted to be buried in that nightdress.

So what if she wanted anything at all—she wasn't here to voice it, and she sure wasn't hanging around the house like I expected her to. She wasn't lingering in the doorways or knocking over knickknacks, dropping pennies in strange places or appearing like a shadow in the back corners of my eyes. I figured she'd be stuck there in the house somehow. Watermarked to the walls like that stain on the carpet, but she wasn't. The house was silent and still, the hollow, see-through shell of a creature that shed it for a better version.

All of the life just crawled right out, and I didn't know if that made it worse or better.

An enormous part of me wanted to burn the entire thing to the ground. Every memory— the good, the bad, and the absolutely fucking terrible—all of it up in smoke. Every shingle, every nail, every housedress, all of it just laid to waste by a single lick of flame. Maybe I'd light it up and then leave, disappear, so the town would think I died in there too. Maybe I'd run to town, stumble into the fire station, beg for help, play the part. Let my heart break and guilt ravage my conscience as they tried to salvage what vestiges they could. Maybe I'd stand in the front yard and watch from start to finish, dusted down with ash and misery, dirty as the day I was born into this mess.

Dirty as the day I was left behind in it.

I was meant for something different, something more than this, something less painful. But here I was, finally washed clean like a kid gone too long without a bath, defying my mother and my adulthood and my stubbed-toe reality. Floundering through my life in a nightdress meant for a graveyard and a house meant for a matchstick.

Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.

Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!

HB&PB

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