Page 39 of Creeping Beautiful

Even mine. Even my true one.

And I think I already made it clear that I can tell a fuckin’ story.

Two. Nathan St. James also peppered his real-life true facts with the prettiest words you ever heard.

For instance. Nate would say, “Indie, you see that tree over there with the green velvet trunk? That velvet only grows on the north side of the tree because that star up there in the sky is a ball of fiery heat and velvet doesn’t like heat. So that’s how you know where north is.”

And I would look and look for green velvet and a star in the blue sky of daylight and only see moss and the stupid old sun. And of course, I knew that he was talking about the tree with the moss and the fuckin’ sun in the sky, but that word ‘velvet’ and the way he saw past the surface of the sun and peeked inside it… it just changed everything about the way I saw moss on a tree from then on.

He was like that with all the things in the woods. He’s the one who told me that his little brick house was the color of the mud in the Pearl River when the water was low.

I didn’t make that up on my own. It was all Nate.

In Nate’s mind’s eye the world was pretty pictures made up of soft, hazy words.

Who needs clarity when you can have Nathan St. James’s outlook on life?

After I went home—rather, after Donovan came and called me home from the woods those first weeks I was living at Old Home—Nathan and I got tight. We even did the whole blood brothers thing, even though I was not his brother, nor was I a boy. It’s just what you call it and I am not easily offended by labels like that. But we did that blood brother thing. I always carried a knife and so did Nate. But his was a folding knife handy for things like cutting fishing line and peeling apples. And mine was a hunting knife handy for things like huntin’. Animals. People. Whatever.

But we used my knife for our little ritual. One slice across our palms. It hurt too, because at this point in time McKay had already showed me how to keep that knife sharp. In fact, we actually had to get stitched up that same afternoon because it might’ve went just a little too deep.

Adam was furious about that because he had to go over to Nate’s house and explain to his grandfather why McKay had to stitch up Nate’s palm and it was now covered in white bandages.

I heard Adam yelling about that in the nighttime. He was telling McKay, “It’s your job! It’s your job!” Meaning it was McKay’s job to keep me in line and ‘in line’ did specifically not mean letting me carve up the neighbor boy with a knife I had used to kill someone two weekends ago.

Of course, I was not in the same room when this yelling took place. I was upstairs sitting on the top step, spying on them. But if I had been in the same room, I would’ve said that I wanted to do this ritual two years ago, before I was killing people with that knife. But Nate was too chicken. So… sometimes things just shake out that way and it’s nobody’s fault.

Nate was grounded for two months after that. Not from going outside or anything. Just me. His grandfather said I was a bad influence. And what kind of little girl lives with two grown men who are not her brothers, or fathers, or uncles and doesn’t even go to school?

Me.

That was the answer. Just me.

But Nate and I were a special thing. And he did live just across the duck lake. And there were no other neighbors. There was a nature preserve on the other side of the river and their little brick house used to be some kind of carriage house on Adam’s family land. Which there was plenty of. And so the nearest neighbors were almost a mile away.

Who else was Nate gonna play with if not me?

So. Two months. We took our punishment and then when it was over, and our hands were all sealed up with new skin and matching fancy white scars, we got back to the business of being best friends.

Nate did not know what I did on the side.

He probably guessed, though. I mean, we were always shooting guns off in the woods. McKay had set up a shootin’ range in this gulley down on the north side of the property. And he took me out there almost every day. And Nate would mostly watch. His grandfather threw a fit about our shooting habits. But sometimes McKay would let Nate shoot too. He wasn’t as good at it as I was, but that’s because he grew up with a proper grandfather who didn’t let him shoot nothing, not even cans, until he was twelve. Then when he was twelve his grandfather used to take him turkey hunting.

So after that happened McKay said he could shoot on our range. And Nate got to watch me shoot. And he could tell right away that my shootin’ skills were something special.

That was all McKay. He made me sharp like that.

But I tell you what Nathan St. James was very good at—besides fishing. He could out-fish me any day of the week.

He was very good at the martial arts McKay and I did.

I started learning that the day after my runaway trip into the woods when I first arrived. And Nate saw that happening too. Because by the time I decided to not be a runaway anymore, Nate and I were already well into our friendship.

And McKay was tired of pulling his punches. So he said I should learn with Nate. And that’s what we did.

Nate kicked my ass in martial arts nearly every day. I was good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like Nate saw into my soul when we were sparring. He knew what I was gonna do before I did it. Every time.

Back then McKay didn’t mind Nathan so much. Nate had grown a little so he was a few inches taller than me by then. So McKay had to teach me how to take down people bigger than me. Which was everyone. And I had just started doing jobs—real jobs—the year before when I was thirteen.