Take Me With You(72)

I try not to panic. This could be another direction. I have no idea how we got to this area. I can't let despair sink in when I've found a way to maintain hope. Instead, I choose to appreciate the bright yellow sun blazing my cheeks and the occasional huff of the Palomino under us. There was a time my world was just a fourteen by ten box. It's already become so much larger.

Once we're done, he blindfolds me and takes me back to my cabin which is now regularly stocked with basic food to keep me happy when he can't make me a fresh meal.

Back by evening, he says.

I wave him off with a smile and he latches the door behind him. Taking the rare opportunity to possibly eat something without losing it in the morning, I grab a box of crackers, an apple, and snack on them while listening to my ever-growing record collection. I'm biding my time here, but I have to admit, even now that I have things to keep me entertained without losing my sanity, it's not the same when he's not here. Human company is as essential as air, water, and food.

Eventually, after filling up on snacks exhaustion hits and I doze off to the sounds of Carole King.





The intense pain in my abdomen jolts me from my nap. Though it's been longer than a nap as I can already see the bright sky dimming through my roof. I grab at my stomach as panic sets in.

For most of the time after I learned of my pregnancy, I didn't care about this baby. It was an obligation. A tool. But a feeling of dread comes over me, and suddenly I want to do everything in my power to keep it alive, not just for my protection, but because this baby has filled me with promise. I was just starting to get to know him or her. Just beginning to feel something grow inside of me. Watch its mere existence change a monster into the kind of man who would take me out for a surprise horseback ride. It can't leave me. Not after giving me a glimpse of that life, in between a girl confined to a cabin all day, and one out in the world, trying to please a mother who never wanted her.

I tell myself it's going to pass. I'm (almost) a nurse and I know there many reasons for abdominal pain. But as I feel my innards contracting, I can't avoid thinking the worst.

I run to the door of the cabin, slamming my palm against it as hard as I can. “Sam! Sam!” I cry out, knowing my voice is simply echoing through the trees.





I listen at my mother's bedroom door for the sounds of the sewing machine to die down. Once she's asleep, I'll do what I've been doing for almost a year now, slipping out into the night, living a second life. The one I can't when the sun is up and shining, when my mother's only remaining sliver of sanity comes from knowing I am home with her. Ever since dad died, she lives more in the tiny world inside her bedroom walls and less in the one outside of them. While I go through the motions all day, tending to the ranch, reading, riding, doing things to keep my hungry mind occupied-I am living less and less during the day and more at night.

I convinced mother that it would be safe for me to go to a local college during the day. I'm strong now, stronger than her. But if I am even a minute late returning home, it sets her off into a frenzy. I don't have to worry about that when she takes her pills and sinks into a deep sleep. My time belongs to me again.

The whirring stops.

“Sam! I'm taking my pills and going to sleep!” she calls out, thinking I'm in my room. I wait a few beats, then open her door.

“Good night,” I say. Ever since dad died, my stuttering has improved even more at home. I keep quiet at school, staying to myself. I sit in the back or on a bench on the quad and watch everyone else. Socializing, smiling, communicating. It all comes too easily to them, the way the words just pour out of their mouths. Now that he's gone, the constant tension I used to feel in my neck and throat has eased. I think I can do it. I think the words can come out of me with maybe a stammer here or there, but I can't bring myself to try. It's been so long since I've tried to make a friend, the thought of it makes my heart race and my palms sticky with sweat. So I watch. It's better than being alone at home. I fill in the blanks from a distance, pretending to be part of their conversations.

That's what I was doing yesterday, hypnotized by the moving lips of a cute girl talking to a guy, when someone called out my name.

“Hey, Sam!” It's distant, the voice, as if muffled by a smothering pillow. I'm so caught up in what I'm watching, I think it's just another part of the fantasy. “Sam!” the voice is right beside me now, and a hand slaps my back. I jump to my feet ready to defend myself. My mother's beliefs have been ingrained so deeply in my psyche, that even now that I'm not sure any of it was real, I don't trust anyone.

I spin around to meet the person accosting me. Scoot.

“Wh—what are you doing here?” I ask.

“I'm seeing a girl here. She used to go to school down by me, but she transferred. What are you doing here?”

“I'm taking classes.”

He tucks his chin in a bit, as if he's taken aback. Scoot went back to school a couple of weeks after dad died. He calls home every week, but I never told him about this. I don't know why.

“Well, that's great. What for?”

“Thinking electrical engineering,” I say. “Mom d-didn't say you were coming home.”

Scoot's smile morphs into a frown as he breaks eye contact. “I didn't tell her. Ya know, I was just going to visit for a night. I didn't want to make a thing of it.”