The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(18)

I curled up beside her.

The tent went unused that night.

*

We stayed there for three nights, getting used to the equipment I’d stolen, sunbaking in the dappling light through the leaves, eating squished bananas and apples, and growing fat on melted chocolate bars and deliciously salted pretzels.

I’d never eaten so well or had time off just to do nothing.

I didn’t care we went through our rations crazy fast.

I didn’t care we should probably keep moving.

This was every birthday that I’d never had, and I wanted it to last forever.

Della seemed to go through a growth spurt just like the lambs at Mclary’s. One night, the baby sheep were all legs and skinny, the next they were fat and bouncy.

Della did the same thing.

The colour returned to her cheeks with regular food, and the sun browned the rest of her thanks to us barely wearing any clothes.

We learned to share the sleeping bag, clean our teeth with one brush, and scrub our clothes with the single bar of soap.

So many chores just to stay healthy and alive, but everything was so much more rewarding than fighting for scraps after a never-ending day raking, baling, feeding, milking, tending, mending…an eternal list of tasks.

In the evenings, we listened side by side to night crawlers and creatures and stayed dry and warm as a rain shower found us on the second night. The splatter of droplets on the tent lulled us to sleep instead of keeping us awake and shivering under a tree.

Life had never been so good.

And on the third night, when my mind was busy with plans of finding a new paradise, Della wriggled upright in the sleeping bag, pointed at my nose, and said, “Boy.”





CHAPTER TEN


DELLA



Present Day





OKAY, I MADE my decision, Professor Baxter.

I’m going to do the assignment. I’m going write a non-fiction tale and make it read as fiction. However, I can’t take all the credit as it already reads fake without any embellishment from me.

I suppose I should start this tale with the requisite address that’s always used at the beginning of a story.

I don’t know what sort of grades my biography will earn from you, and I’m still marginally terrified of the consequences of what he’ll do for breaking my promises, but I’m actually excited to relive the past. To smile at the happy times. To flinch at the hard. To cry at the sad.

There are so many moments to sift through that it’s like cracking open a jewellery box after decades of dust, pulling out gemstones and diamonds, and struggling to choose what to wear.

That was what he did to me, you see? He made my entire life a jewellery box of special, sad, hard, happy, incredible moments that I want to wear each and every day.

He always said the truth was ours, no one else’s.

Well, now it’s yours, so here it goes…

*

Once upon a time, there was a boy and a baby.

This boy didn’t say much, he scowled often, worked too hard, cared too deeply, and nursed a deep distrust of people and society that nothing and no one could soothe. He had scars on his skinny body that clenched my heart the more stories he told. He had wisdom in his eyes that came from suffering, not age. And he had mannerisms born from a man who already knew his fate rather than a boy just beginning.

This boy and the baby were never meant to be together.

They were from different blood, different people, yet because of what the baby’s father and mother had done, they were technically family in a strange, unexplainable way.

They say a child’s earliest memories occur when they’re as young as three years old, but those memories aren’t there forever. There’s a phenomenon called child amnesia that starts to delete those memories when they reach seven or so and continues to erase as you grow into adulthood. Only recollections of great importance are retained while the rest becomes a life-blur with no clarity.

I don’t know about you, but I know that to be true.

When I was younger, I remembered more. I know I did. But now I’m eighteen, I struggle to recall exact days unless something happened so crisp and clear it’s burned into my psyche.

I suppose you’re thinking how then can I tell my life story starting as early as a baby? I don’t know what happened, and my memory isn’t a reliable witness.

Well...I can tell you because of him.

I can tell you every day from the day I came into this world because that very same night—or it might’ve been the night before—my father cut off his finger. I can retell every night we ran and every night we swam. I can tell you every moment until right now while I sit in my room typing this paper.

I know I’m not following the fiction-writing rules by breaking the fourth wall and talking to you as if you here beside me, but it helps this way. It helps trick me into thinking once I tell you the truth, it will be forgotten the same way I’ve forgotten so many precious things. It helps pretending I’m not writing this down, so there is no permanent scar on the secrets I promised to keep.

So with child amnesia and adulthood slowly stealing my past, how can I sit here confidently and tell you my tale?

I’ll tell you again.

It’s because of my favourite thing of all.

The thing I’d beg for, the thing I’d do anything he asked for, the cherished time of day that no one could steal.