Page 23 of Bear’s House

He let out a long, dramatic sigh.

Elizabeth came back with a rope.

"Hug each other," she said, and pointed at the two of them.

They looked at each other.

"Oh no," JJ said.

But Elizabeth gave him a look, and the courage left him immediately. The two of them wrapped their arms around each other, still kneeling, and Elizabeth began to bind them together with a skill I genuinely admired. She was a master of bondage — she taught classes at The Hearth on the subject. She tied their ankles first, then secured their legs and thighs together, then their wrists while their arms stayed around each other in an embrace, and finally their torsos in complex knots that I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to undo. When she finished, the two of them were bound tightly together, kneeling, unable to separate or get up and having to actively work just to keep their balance.

"You'll stay right there until I decide you're sorry enough," Elizabeth said.

"Mommy!" Lucy protested.

"Yes, my love?" Elizabeth asked, with the innocence of someone who had no idea whatsoever what her little girl could possibly want at that moment. "Let's see if this teaches you both something."

I laughed.

JJ was going to complain until the very end. But I thought it was perfect — and those fries had absolutely, without any question, cost him far more than they were worth.

Chapter 10. Sawyer

It had been a rough week at school. Rough was actually an understatement.

By Thursday I was seriously considering quitting and finding a different career entirely. It started when the seniors decided to pull a prank and released a box of ladybugs into my gym — ordered online and deliberately dumped somewhere near the bleachers. I was pretty sure releasing a shipment of insects inside a school had to violate some rule or law, but I also couldn't bring myself to kill the little things, so I spent an embarrassing amount of time scooping ladybugs into buckets with a broom and dustpan, trying to make sure none of them made it into my pants, which happened more than once anyway.

I called JJ to help me, and he showed up with three of our teacher friends in tow, including Silvana — an older woman who had essentially adopted the two of us — who immediately took the whole situation very personally on my behalf.

"You need to find out who did this and punish them," she said.

JJ looked at me sideways, grinning, clearly finding the word funny given our home life, but I didn't say anything. I was too busy trying to maintain some dignity while sweeping bugs off the gym floor.

"I'm not going to bother," I said. "They're just kids messing around."

"They are not that young anymore. Some of those seniors are basically adults," Silvana said, deeply offended on my behalf.

The next day, the principal stopped me in the hall. I'd like to speak with you later. I spent the rest of the day convinced I was getting fired. I wasn't even sure which offense had done it — the ladybug incident, or the fact that I'd left the staff microwave absolutely disgusting after heating up pasta and hadn't cleaned it out of sheer laziness, or the fact that I'd been two days late submitting my lesson plans. That last one especially. If Daddy found out about the late lesson plans, I was going to be in serious trouble at home too. But mostly I was just certain I was losing my job.

I spent the whole day anxious. Daddy could give me as much money as I needed, obviously — but I didn't like that idea. I wanted my own income. And he always said it was good for us to keep our jobs, that some independence was healthy, that it taught us responsibility. He was going to be so disappointed. And I wasn't going to work with JJ anymore.

I showed up at the principal's office absolutely certain it was my last day.

He wanted to know if I could represent the school at the next regional staff development conference.

That was it.

I stood there for a second genuinely unable to process that nothing bad was happening. And then, because the week wasn't finished with me, the freshman class escaped from the gym during my last period and hid in the bathrooms, and I spent twenty minutes looking for them while other staff members watched me with expressions that were trying very hard not to be amused.

I definitely made a terrible career choice. Some days I loved it. Most of that week was not those days.

By Thursday morning I had a fever and body aches. I told myself it was probably just stress at that point, because admitting I might actually be getting sick would have required me to do something about it. And I hadn't said a word to Daddy about any of it — I wanted to seem capable, adult, like someone who handled his own problems.

Which was, obviously, terrible behavior on my part. One of our rules was that we were always supposed to be honest about what was happening in our lives. So on top of everything else, I was also quietly guilty about that, which only made everything worse. I felt myself tearing up. I almost never cried — unlike my brothers, who were much more little than me, and that was sometimes its own kind of weight in our dynamic. I liked being the oldest. But they demanded so much of Daddy's attention, and I didn't want to be another thing he had to manage constantly.

We were very different. Mikey played house and wore diapers. JJ needed constant attention. I liked older kid things — video games, going out with friends, getting my nails done — and most of all I liked hearing Daddy tell me I wasn't old enough to get out of a good spanking when I acted up.

But that morning I couldn't make myself get out of bed. I just didn't feel well.