A Breath Too Late - Rocky Callen Page 0,47

out how to make room for each other so I could stand a little straighter, hands shaking and bones creaking, but my voice strong.

With everyone listening, the sound of me took up all the spaces that felt infinite and inconsequential: the space between me and the stars, the space between my toes, the space between the broken doorjamb and the door, the space between Ms. Hooper’s sparkling eyes and my two hands, the space between me and you.

You watched me, but I didn’t meet your gaze. I was afraid that if I did, I wouldn’t be brave enough to read the words written on my page.

“There once was a boy made of color and brushstrokes, and one day he met a shadow wobbling on shaky legs beside him and he decided to paint her beautiful…”

And then I told our story. Without our names. Without this town. I told a story of swords and sorrow and secrets. I told of a shadow who learned to breathe and a boy who learned to paint the world bright and new.

The only three words I didn’t say were I love you. But every word had those three crammed between them. I love you was swinging from every syllable and hanging off every letter. I love you was whispered in every single line.

And when I finally finished and looked up to see you, your eyes were open and your lips were smiling and I knew that you had heard every single one of them.

48

Father,

I walked home and I felt like I was riding wishing flowers as I skipped over cracks in the cement. Every cell sizzled with effervescent giddiness. I was quite sure that I could become intoxicated on this feeling.

But any high only lasts for so long.

The feeling was doused by your anger when I got home.

You found my college application that day. I had spent months filling it out. I had printed it so I could scribble in the margins and write notes on the forms in the middle of the night. Making sure they were all just right.

You didn’t read them. You just took out your lighter and burned every page.

You locked Momma out of my room and beat me with your belt until it broke the skin.

I cried, but I didn’t break.

And even as the slaps of the belt hit and I bit down on my lip till it bled and Momma cried from behind the door, I wanted to smile at you.

I had already read my story aloud. It was in the world. Infinite. Immortalized. August had heard it.

And that paper application you burned? It had just been for practice for when I had to fill it out online.

I had clicked send on it the day before at school.

You were already too late and you didn’t even know it.

Later that night, my back was too sore from the beating to lie on it. I was exhausted, so I fell asleep sprawled out on my mattress. I still wanted to smile, but sleep claimed me.

I couldn’t be sure, but in between dreams, I thought my eyes opened to see Momma at the foot of my bed with her head in her hands.

49

Momma,

I saw you in the kitchen the next morning.

“How can you stay with him?” I said. “Can’t you see what he is?”

You were quiet at first, but then said, “Of course I can.”

“Then why—”

“Because … Because…” Your voice was tired and uncertain.

“Because what!” I practically shouted over the counter, and your hands paused on the frying pan.

You looked up at me. “Because sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

I stared at you. There was always a choice.

You hunched your shoulders. “He doesn’t try to be the way he is. He just doesn’t know how to hold anything he can’t control, anything that is too real.”

He never saw the me that was real.

Although that wasn’t entirely true. He did see me. The me that was like the old you.

The me who wanted to be free.

You kept us in this box, these bars disguised as walls.

Once we ruled from a throne on a mountaintop. Once you were a queen.

That was so, so long ago.

I leaned away from the counter and turned toward the door. “You are making excuses for him, Momma. We should’ve just left years ago.”

“We will. Ellie, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Momma.”

I’d listened to enough lies in my head.

I wasn’t going to listen to yours.

50

August,

I didn’t go to school on Friday. I was all bruises and butterflies. The black