“What’s your name?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment, before dropping her gaze to her shoes. They were scuffed up and looked like they had been put to good use.
“Do you live around here?” He leaned closer, trying to meet her gaze.
“Get away from me!” She swung her leg back and kicked him hard, right in the balls.
There was moment of poignant eye contact between the two.
Dude, how could you? Damian looked at the girl in disbelief before he crumpled to the floor, his hands cupped between his legs in testicle-protection mode.
OhGodnofugwtuf. That.shit.fucking.hurt.
He doubled over, trying to catch his breath.
Pain radiated out of Damian’s testicles, igniting his midsection in hellfire before settling in his kidneys. Every muscle from his knees to his chest felt like it was cramping all at once. Damian’s head started spinning. He felt violently nauseous, but he suppressed the desire to hurl because the slightest movement amplified the pain. After a few sharp, agonizing breaths, the pain gave way to a dull throbbing that radiated out with each heartbeat.
Damian opened his eyes. The girl was gone. His nuts were destroyed. Obliterated. He was pretty sure of it. He lay on the floor, taking stock of the rest of his body.
Legs? Yup, still there.
Arms? Present. And functional.
Torso? All systems go.
Junk?
Come in, junk? Alive, captain. Not happy, but alive.
Damian took a deep breath and stared at the empty space in the hutch. He had survived eight years in prison, but one kick from a little girl had sent him into a fit of convulsions and existential crisis. He remained curled up like a baby and started laughing. For the first time since Skye and the island, Damian laughed long and hard, holding his throbbing balls as they protested with twinges of indignation.
THERE WAS ONE ROOM THAT remained untouched in Casa Paloma. Damian had ignored it for as long as he could, and although the door to Skye’s room remained shut, it called him every time he walked by. When Damian finally walked in, he awakened childhood ghosts that laughed and sang and jumped up and down on the bed. They scattered faded paper animals in his path and filled his head with whispers of distant memories. Damian was defenseless against them now. He had no barrier to keep them at bay, no chains of anger or hatred to tie them down with. He heard them, saw them, felt them all.
This was where Skye had chucked up chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Well, whatever hadn’t landed on his shoes.
Here, he’d watched her scrutinize her reflection and ask him to make her a cardboard tooth.
Here, they’d held hands in a circle—him and MaMaLu and Skye—before Skye said her bedtime prayer.
As Damian swept the room and cleared the cobwebs, the memories became sharper, clearer, more painful, but at the same time sweeter, like little shards of glass candy that dissolved into pockets of nostalgic flavor, to be sampled and tasted and savored, again and again.
Damian rolled up the dusty bed covers and pried the plywood off the window. The sun streamed in, lighting up the walls and corners and bookshelves. The tree outside Skye’s bedroom had grown taller; the branch he’d used to climb in was now scraping the roof. Damian tilted his head back, following it, and saw a pair of brown legs dangling through the leaves. It was the nut-busting girl, with her scuffed-up, nut-busting shoes. She was leaning against the trunk, reading a book, unaware of being observed.
Damian instinctively cupped his balls.