She tilts her head back, so she can see me better. “Meh. Brains are everything. They make you who you are. To me the brain is like the computer, and the rest of the body is basically a stupid, plastic case.”
“Evie…” I go to thump her nose, then decide to stroke it instead. “You’re just plain wrong. The plastic is the skin, and even then, the skin is more dynamic than a plastic case. You’re going to be one very snobby brain surgeon.”
She grins, making me laugh.
“I think you know you are,” I tell her, mock accusingly.
Her hand strokes my cheek. “What about you, Mr. Smarty Pants? What type of doctor do you want to be?”
I’ve told her in the past that I, too, want to be a doctor. Evie knows me so well now, I don’t think it surprised her. She never once asked if it had anything to do with living here in this house, or with her parents. It has everything to do with me, and nothing to do with the Rutherfords.
I chuckle. “What if I say heart surgeon?”
She kisses my chin. “I don’t think you will. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you said surgeon. I’ve seen you at the dinner table.”
I roll my eyes. Evie loves to talk about my precision with a steak knife, which I think is slightly silly.
I shrug. “Oncology, maybe. I’ve always thought of doing something with kids.”
“Kids?” She looks aghast.
“I know, so crazy. Why would anyone want to save children? Evil little bastards.”
“It’s just...so sad.”
I shrug the shoulder I’m not lying on. “Sometimes shit is sad.”
“Not oncology. Landon, I’d need to prescribe you antidepressants.”
“I don’t think it takes a neurosurgeon to do that.” I nip at her throat, bring one hand up to stroke her through her soft camisole. “In any event,” I say as I trace the smooth line of her collarbone, “you seem a little not yourself tonight. A bit…heartless, one might say. Maybe I should examine you right now…just to be sure everything seems normal…”
Evie
We drive to and from school together, holding hands, exchanging kisses, sometimes leaving the house early for some made-up something—which turns out to be a stop in one of those gas station car washes, where we get dirty instead of clean.
At school, we have to play it cooler, which bothers us both. Makayla knows the truth, and Tia has suspicions, but she’d never ask. We try to act like good friends and nothing more, and hope the truth of the good friends part will shine through.
Parties, football games, field trips…everything and anything that comes up hurts, because we can’t be who we are. We save it all for nighttime—and those wonderful car washes.
I wonder sometimes whether it’s so good because we have to save it up. But I know better. Landon is mine, and I’m his. It’s an objective fact, in the same way the heart has four chambers and the spine thirty-three vertebrae.
For all the hiding we have to do, we’re such a natural fit. Sometimes it makes me sad that I can’t tell my parents. They already love Landon, and I know they want me happy.
Of course, we have to hide. If my mom and dad found out, Landon would get moved to another house. So we make do. I learn the rhythm of my parents’ sleep and even Emmaline’s. I learn the path to Landon’s room in pitch black night. I learn how to walk quietly down the stairs.
Sometimes, Landon reads to me, and I lie on the bed beside his. He likes classic literature, especially Steinbeck and Hemingway. When he’s tired of reading, he’ll come kneel beside the bed I’m on and kiss me, from my toes up.
Some nights, when only one of my parents is home, I stay almost all night downstairs with him, the two of us crammed into his twin bed like sardines. We hold each other, breathe each other, touch each other. Every moment I am more convinced that Landon is my miracle. As for Landon’s part, he sleeps well, dreams well, and loves me oh-so-well.
This is how it goes with all things sweet and lovely. It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever known before it has to end.
It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m lying on my bed, staring at the snow-heaped skylights in my ceiling. At eleven o’clock, the house is quiet in the cozy way it’s only ever quiet on winter nights, when you’re wearing fuzzy socks and staring up at snowy skylights.
Today was one of my favorite days in years. Maybe ever. We built snow people with Oreo cookie eyes and Chick-O-Stick noses. Emmaline used her homemade cotton candy maker to spin pink hair for the snowwoman and blue for the snowman. After we got tired of that, we had a snowball war, and after that, we used pool floats as sleds and sailed down the slope beside our neighbor’s house.
Landon was there. I got to see him smile a lot, and hear him laugh in the cold air. He wore a flannel shirt, some insulated jeans Mom bought him a few weeks back, and his new snow boots, plus a gray beanie, his new black down jacket, and a maroon scarf.
There is nothing better than seeing your guy in winter wear, flashing a rosy-cheeked grin.
More so than any other day, on this day, Landon really seemed at home. Like he belongs here with us. Once, when Em crashed on her “sled” and Landon hauled her back up to the top of the hill, I couldn’t help but think in centuries past, I’d be old enough to wed right now and welcome him into our family in a much more fitting way. The Oregon Trail, the Revolutionary War, even the early 1900s when the stock market crashed…we’d have been happy to welcome another able-bodied person into the family, and if I partnered off with him, all the better. Make some babies, and they’d help us plow the farm.
I know I’m over-simplifying (no doubt we’d all have died of typhoid), but I want it so much. I want Landon in our family, but I also want to love him without lying.
Why is it so wrong to love him? I know that we’re young, but why does youth disqualify us from something so essential? I know he’s living at our house, but didn’t people live in tribes in close proximity to people of the opposite gender for like, most of humanity? I don’t know. I don’t know my history that well. I just want to hug him in the snow.
Finally, around noon, Mom and Dad run to the grocery store, and we get our moment in the laundry room. We kiss, and then he hugs me to him. He feels so good against me—warm and solid and familiar. Merry Christmas.
We go to the candlelight service at church, and all I can think about as I watch the families, with their faces all aglow, holding hands and whispering to children, is that someday, it will be our turn. We won’t always have to be a secret. In just over a year, we can go to college together. I can go where Landon gets a scholarship, and over time, we’ll be able to tell my parents. I hate sneaking around behind their backs. But this will all be worth it.