Page 49 of Across Time

He pulls my crutches away from me, throwing them behind him. "Hey!" I shout. "What the—"

He pulls me hard against his chest, arms bound around me so tightly I can barely breathe, my nose pressed to his sternum.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. “I’m so sorry it was like that for you.”

There’s a lump in my throat. I have no idea why something that happened ages ago has me upset now, but I’m torn between wanting to be alone until this feeling goes away and wanting to stay right where I am, my head to his warm chest, breathing him in, feeling his heart beat against my cheekbone.

"I didn't tell you that story so you'd feel sorry for me.”

"You told me because you were mad," he says.

One arm still pulls me close, but the other is on my chin now, forcing me to look him in the eye, and suddenly it feels like I can’t get a full breath. I feel too much…and I think it has as much to do with him as it does the sister I lost. Because I am going to lose him too, whether it’s because I’m leaving or because of the war that looms. I’m back where I’ve been too many times in my life, desperately wishing there was a bargain I could strike with God when I know it won’t work.

"I’m sorry I pushed you so hard,” he says. “I just think you've got secrets that will poison you if you keep holding on to them the way you are."

“What about your secrets?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Marie still has no idea why you came back. And if she did, she wouldn’t insist on staying here, which she shouldn’t because you—" My voice breaks. "You are going to die here if you don't explain to her what's really going on."

He holds my gaze. "I didn't think you cared."

Tears roll down my face. "I don't. I don't care at all."

We hear the sound of bike tires over gravel and step apart. Marie is walking her bike into the barn, but he continues to hold me there, as if he’s trying to capture something before it passes.

"Oh," says Marie. He’s finally let me go but her eyes are wide, taking the two of us in. "Were you crying? Is everything okay?"

Henri hands me my crutches and I propel myself forward, passing her on my way to the house. "I'm just tired," I reply. "But everything is fine."

I'm lying, again, of course. I’m lying about so many things to so many people I don't even know what the truth is anymore.

18

Kit hits the water with an unimpressively small splash.

It’s our favorite game these days, swinging on the rope to see who will land farther. I hold my breath, waiting for her golden head to emerge, and when it finally does she is laughing. Her little arms paddle furiously, propelling her back to where the water is shallow enough to stand.

When she's finally near me she flips onto her back and floats, pulling her hair up so it is flat along the water's surface. "Look at my hair," she says. "Do I look like a mermaid?"

Yes. No. There's a small bite of unhappiness inside me as I decide on an answer. Kit is adorable, everyone's favorite. I can't blame them for it, really—she’s my favorite too. But at the same time I can’t help the small sting of envy I feel toward her. Why couldn’t any of it be shared, all the love and attention that gets sent her way?

"Yes," I reply, swallowing down my envy.

She dives under water and heads for the shore again while I paddle listlessly, sulking over thoughts Kit will never understand. She grabs the rope again and begins to swing, pushing herself off the tree again and again, trying to gain momentum.

It isn’t her fault. I could be the only child and I still wouldn’t be the favorite. But sometimes it feels as if she’s stolen what she has from me. If Kit and Steven didn’t exist, I might be able to convince myself the problem was my mother. But they do, which leaves no doubt that the problem is me. I never saw it more clearly than when my mother stayed with Kit at the hospital as summer began. Such a small thing, but even now the sadness I felt wells in my throat, clogs it.

Kit continues to swing, going higher and higher, but her joy suddenly makes me mad.

"If you go too far, I'm not coming after you!" I shout and she sticks her tongue out at me, knowing good and well that I'll come for her if she can't swim back on her own.

I cleaned the house top-to-bottom on the day they came home from the hospital. I had visions of my mother smiling, looking pleased, or maybe proud of me, for once, but even an hour after they arrived, she still hadn’t noticed. She didn’t even seem to notice me.

I picked up, I finally whispered, and that’s when she looked at me with her flat eyes and her mouth a thin, bitter line.

“You know what would be more helpful?” she asked. “If just once you would not stand there looking like a beaten dog.”

Maybe she was right to be irritated. It’s not as if I’d cleaned the house out of an honest desire to help. I did it merely hoping for a single crumb of the attention she showered on Kit.

Now, watching Kit swing on the rope, I wonder why I bothered. Why did I try to make her happy when nothing I do ever makes her happy? I shouldn’t have. I should have just asked why she hates me so much, why she never visited me in the hospital. I picture it hard, hard enough that it feels real.