“You were okay,” I said. “At times.”
She smiled. “Yeah. After you saved me from the sharks.” She pulled up her knees and showed me the silver bracelet I gave her that day. She was wearing it around her ankle. Leave it to somebody like her, to think of something like that. I couldn’t believe she still had it.
“It’s not like they were going to take you down. I never got why you were so scared.”
“Because they’re evil creatures with dagger-like teeth? Why were you not?”
“No reason. I’m just not. I like thinking about the ocean, and what all is living in there. It’s like my brain-Lysol. It calms me down or something.”
“Seriously. Sharks calm you down.”
I could see pieces of the everyday Emmy sneaking back into the conversation, but I didn’t mind. Maybe it meant this thing we were doing now, whatever it was, might not just go poof in the morning. “Not sharks specifically,” I said. “The whole being-underwater thing. I put myself there and float. Just, you know. Inside my skull movie.”
“You have a skull movie? You could see yourself drowning. That’s relaxing.”
“I don’t, though. That’s the one bad thing that for sure won’t ever happen to me.”
“Because what? You took Junior Red Cross swimming?”
I laughed. “No. To tell you the truth, I haven’t ever been swimming that much. In water that was deeper than like, an inch.”
“And still you’re drown-proof, because?”
I’d never told anybody the weird way I got born. But being awake in the dark with a girl was outside my normal. The whole world quiet. I tried to put it in the best light: I took Mom by surprise, coming out so fast I was still in the water bubble that protects babies in the before-life.
“The caul,” Emmy said.
“What?”
“You were born in the caul. That’s the medical terminology. Mom saw it happen one time and said it even freaked out the doctors. You’d be amazed how many babies get born in the ER.”
Nothing at all would surprise me as far as Aunt June and the ER. But I liked knowing what happened to me was real, with a name. “Yeah, that. I had the call. If that happens to you, it’s a guarantee you won’t drown. So the ocean is this giant thing that won’t ever defeat me.”
Emmy laughed. “That’s just some old hillbilly superstition.”
I got a little hurt at her for that. Even if she was right. “Your mammaw is the one that told me, so take it up with her. Ask about Jesus coming back from the dead, while you’re at it.”
We’d been talking so quietly, our faces were just a few inches apart. Now I sat up. This whatever-it-was was over. Probably in the morning it would be a never-happened. But she didn’t go away. She sat up too, looking at me a while, and then said the words I hate: “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well. No big deal.”
“It is, though. I could understand why you’d want to think about someplace totally safe. After everything you’ve been through. Your mom and all.”
“My mom dying is not even the worst part. If you really want to know.”
She sat facing me, waiting. She smelled like fruit shampoo. I wanted to say something mean, or just the truth. I wanted to tell her about my baby brother that was technically younger than the murder-family baby, and dead. I said that word: Sorry. “But you know what? If that kid ends up dying, it’s not the worst thing. Being dead is better than an orphan your whole fucking life.”
“No!” she said, so loud she put her hand over her mouth. Then took it off and whispered, “He’s got grandparents. They’re in some other country, but they’re going to come get him.”
“Good for him. Somebody wants him.”
She reached over and touched me on the head. No person had touched me since Mom. My hair was on its own devices at that point, and I knew the sorry sight I was. With every part of me growing out of my sleeves or growing fuzz or changing shape that year, even the bone part of my nose, some way. And I was still sleeping in Tommy’s shirt.
“Poor Demon,” she said quietly. “Can’t they find anybody to adopt you?”
She’d only ever called me Damon before, like Mrs. Peggot and Aunt June, to show she was taking their side. I didn’t want to be poor anybody. But I felt like kissing Emmy. Or throwing up, from how mixed up I was. Possibly both. You’d want to do it in the right order, though.
“Everybody thinks adoption is just automatic,” I said. “But there’s a lot more orphan kids in Lee County than people wanting them. My caseworker says it’s nothing personal.”
“Is she nice, at least? Your caseworker?”
Somehow, I knew not to mention that Miss Barks was a babe. Or that I saved up things to tell her week to week because she was the only person I talked to anymore. “She’s got a ton of kids she’s looking after. Mostly younger than me. So, you know. Nice, if she’s got a minute.”
“That must be so hard.”
We both lay back down, and she looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.
19
I was the person not invited at June’s house. That feeling hangs on you like a smell. I had put showers between myself and Creaky’s barn, but this is not something that washes off. You get used to it, not in the good way, to the extent of the entire world oftentimes feeling like a place where you weren’t invited. If you’ve been here, you know. If not, must be nice.
June didn’t mind me though, or was good at being sweet whether she felt like it or not. Which they probably do teach you in nurse school. She read my mind, same as she had with going to the ocean place. Again she took us places I liked. The skateboard park, even though Maggot and Emmy weren’t into it because all we did was watch. But Jesus God. For kids with zero sidewalks in our lives, watching skateboarders on TV is just cartoons or sci-fi, you don’t buy in. But seeing them in real life? Shit. I about died of happiness. Like boys could fly.
So that was June, seeing my little moments. Putting extra food on my plate at every meal. Not in the Lady Leaders way of “watch me being nice,” just on the quiet. I tried to use manners and not act like a person that’s been wanting seconds ever since around August.
What I dreaded was Christmas morning. The Peggots had brought presents they piled under Aunt June’s tree, but weirdly nobody discussed them, no shaking or checking tags to see who got the biggest. Because of me, the kid not supposed to be there. Awkward. I planned on making myself scarce Christmas morning. I’d fake a stomachache or take a really long shower until the presents all got opened. Mainly I just wished Christmas didn’t exist.
The worst was at night, with me and Maggot lying practically under the tree with the presents. Which wasn’t a tree, honestly, just fake, small, set up on a table. You’d expect better from somebody so classy. But where are you going to go cut a cedar in Knoxville? At home, any farmer will let you come get one out of his fencerow. At Creaky’s we cut cedars out of the pastures to pile up and burn, because they’re too many and a nuisance. Why Aunt June hated it in Knoxville, being so far away from everything: from free Christmas trees, just for example.