When My Heart Joins the Thousand(50)

As I turn down Oak Lane, my heartbeat quickens.

I am about to reveal something to him that I haven’t revealed to anyone for a long, long time. It’s not the thing in the Vault—God, no. But even so, this won’t be easy.

“I have to admit,” he says. “I’m completely stumped. We’re in the middle of nowhere. What could you possibly want to show me out here?”

I pull into a gravel driveway and park. “This.”

The yard is overgrown with weeds and wild bushes. The house itself stands a ways back from the road, smothered in shadow. There’s no car in the driveway. The windows are dark, and a yellow sign is tacked to the door—probably a foreclosure notice. Who knows how long that’s been there.

I open the car door and get out.

Stanley’s brow furrows. “Whose house is this?”

“It’s mine,” I reply. “Or rather, it used to be.” I lead him around to the backyard, where an old, rusted swing set stands next to a wooden horse on a spring. I sit in one of the swings.

Stanley gingerly sits in the other. The structure creaks in protest, but it holds us both.

The tips of my black sneakers are stained with mud. I kick the damp earth beneath me. “I lived here with my mother until I was eleven years old. After that, I lived in several different foster homes, but that didn’t work out. I was a difficult child. Eventually I was transferred to a group home for teenagers with emotional and behavioral issues. That didn’t work out, either. I didn’t get along with the other girls. There were several who were accustomed to being in charge and getting their way. I refused to submit to them, so they did everything possible to break me. They hid tacks in my shoes and dead insects in my bed. Once, a dead mouse. And, of course, once they found out I was afraid of water—” I break off, unable to continue, but the memory looms large in my head—two laughing older girls shoving me into a shower stall and turning it on full blast, icy cold, holding me down while I screamed. “It was pretty bad,” I continued. My voice remains flat and neutral, but a tremor has crept into my hands. “I kept running away and getting in trouble with the law, until finally Dr. Bernhardt helped me get my own place.”

“Who?”

I realize I’ve never mentioned Dr. Bernhardt to Stanley. “A social worker. If not for him, I would probably be dead or in prison by now.” In retrospect, I probably should have shown him more gratitude for that. Soon, if all goes well, his visits will be over. I’ll never again hear him fussing over the lack of fruit in my kitchen. My feelings about that are a bit more complicated and ambiguous than I anticipated.

I take my Rubik’s Cube from my pocket and fiddle with it as I stare at my house, the familiar back porch made of yellow pine. Even the birdbath is still there, though now cracked and empty.

I haven’t been back here since the incident. I was sure that by now, I’d be panicking, but somehow I’m not. Maybe because Stanley’s here, too.

A few tiny raindrops strike my face like icy pinpricks. Dark clouds mass in the sky, and more drops fall. “When I was little,” I say, “whenever something was bothering me, I used to come out here and swing as hard as I could. I would imagine that if I swung far and high enough, the momentum would carry me straight into the sky, and I could fly away.”

“Fly away from what?”

“Everything.”

Wind whistles through the trees, and they creak like the timbers of an old ship.

“I drove you all the way out here just to stare at an abandoned house,” I say. “This probably isn’t the sort of surprise you were expecting.”

“No,” he says quietly. “But I’m glad you brought me here.”

The muscles in my back relax a little. I swing lightly back and forth, back and forth. The rocking movement is calming. But a dull ache has spread across the inside of my ribs. There’s a brief flash of memory—I am very small, maybe three or four years old, and Mama is pushing me on the swing. I close my eyes. In my memory, the world feels clean and bright and new. Sunlight dapples the green grass. When I open my eyes, the yard is empty and gray again. “‘My heart has joined the Thousand,’” I murmur, “‘for my friend stopped running today.’”

“What’s that?”

“It’s from Watership Down.”

“Oh . . . right. That’s what the rabbits say when one of them dies?”

I nod.

His brows knit together. “Did someone . . .”

“Not recently.”

I always thought those words were the most accurate expression of grief I had ever encountered. When you lose someone, the heart itself becomes one of the thousand enemies—a force of destruction, ripping you apart from the inside, like a knot of shining razor wire. Sometimes, the only way to survive is to kill your heart. Or lock it in a cage.

Thunder rumbles.

“Do you want to head back?” he asks.

Maybe he expects me to be bothered by the rain and thunder. It would be a reasonable assumption, considering how the sound of water affects me. But I shake my head. It’s strange. I can’t stand fireworks or explosions. Or silverware clattering, or glasses clinking together. Sometimes, even ticking clocks make me want to crawl out of my skin. But I don’t mind thunder. I find it calming.

A gust of wind makes the rocking horse sway back and forth. Its spring squeaks.