99 Percent Mine

“Don’t be like that,” Marco roars as the doors slide closed behind me. I settle back into my car, lock the doors, idle the engine, and crank the music even louder. I know he can see me, because he’s banging on the window of his little murder-proof cube trying to get my attention. Men in a Perspex nutshell.

I open a pack on my lap and cram four jumbo pink marshmallows into my mouth, resulting in chipmunk cheeks. Then I give him the finger and his eyes pop out of his head. It is one of the best moments of my life lately, and I laugh for probably five minutes as I drive, sugar dust in my lungs.

Thank God I’m laughing, otherwise I think I might be crying. Who do I think I am, anyway?

“Hey, Loretta,” I say out loud to my grandmother. She’s hopefully up there on a cloud right above me as I stop at a red light and put my hand inside the cellophane bag, pillowy softness on my fingertips. If anyone is going to be my guardian angel, it’s her; she’d insist on it.

“Please, please, give me something better than sugar. I really need it.” Just saying it aloud chokes me up. I need a hug. I need someone’s warm skin on mine. I ache with loneliness, and I still would, even if Vince came and went.

Who do I think I am? I’m unloved, untethered. And I’m twinless.

The light turns green like it’s given me an answer, but I have a few more marshmallows before I bother accelerating. The world has gone to bed, and I’m completely alone.

Except maybe I’m not.

I pull into Marlin Street and see a strange car parked in front of my house. I turn down the music and slow down. It’s a big black utility truck, just like that construction redneck would drive. It looks brand new and shiny, with out-of-state plates. He’s found where I live? The hairs on my arms are standing on end.

I turn my head as I roll past slowly. There’s no one sitting in it. It can’t possibly be Jamie—he’d never accept a truck from a rental place, and he’d park in the drive, not in the street. I drive around the block with my heart trying to beat itself to death. I briefly wish for Keith before I remember.

Then I get mad.

I pull into the drive with an aggressive engine-rev and put my headlights on high beam. Rolling my window down a few inches, I say over the deafening throb of my heart, “Who’s there?”

I hear a yap and a stiff-legged old Chihuahua canters out of the shadows, dressed in a striped sweater. A man emerges too, and I’m okay now. Even without the dog, I’d know his huge shape anywhere. I’m not about to be murdered. I’m now the safest girl on the planet.

“Thanks, Loretta,” I say to the cloud above me. There’s only one thing sweeter than sugar. “That was quick.”

Chapter 3

Tom Valeska has an animal inside him, and I’ve felt it every time he’s looked at me.

Jamie found him locked out of his house across the road. Jamie called it that house for poor people because sad families moved in and out with alarming regularity. Mom would scold him for that. Just because we have a lot, it doesn’t mean you can be nasty, Prince. She made Jamie mow that lawn for free. Every six months or so, we’d make a welcome basket for our new neighbors—usually scared women, peeping around their new door frames, shadows under their eyes.

But summer had been hot. Mom had a lot of singing students, Dad was busy at his architectural firm, and Mrs. Valeska had been notoriously difficult to pin down. The welcome basket was already wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon, but Mrs. Valeska was off at dawn in her rusty car, always carrying buckets and baskets of cleaning gear.

Her son, eight years old like us, strayed around, chipping at a log on his front lawn with an axe to pass the time. I knew because I saw him days before Jamie found him. If I’d been allowed outside past the doormat, I would have gone over and bossed him. Hey, aren’t you hot? Thirsty? Sit in the shade.

Jamie, allowed to roam the street as long as he could see the house, found Tom locked out late and brought him home. He dragged him into the kitchen by the sleeve. Tom looked like he could use a flea bath. We fed him chicken nuggets.

“I was going to sleep on the porch swing. I don’t have a key yet,” Tom explained to my parents in a shy husky whisper. They were so used to Jamie’s bellow, they could barely hear him. He was so calm about the prospect of no dinner and no bed. I was in awe. Dazzled, like I was in the presence of celebrity. Every time he took one-second glances at me with his orange-brown eyes, I felt a zipper in my stomach.

He looked like he knew me, from A to Z.

That night was a game changer at the Barrett dining table.

Tom was virtually mute with shyness, so he weathered the onslaught of Jamie’s talking. His one-word replies had a growly edge that I liked. No longer required to referee the twins, our parents could smooch and murmur cozily to each other. And I was forgotten and invisible for the first time in my life.

I liked it. No nuggets were stolen from my plate. Nobody thought about my heart or my medication. I could play with the old Pentax camera on my lap in between bites and sneak glances at the interesting creature sitting opposite Jamie. Everyone had accepted at face value that he was human, but I wasn’t so sure. My grandmother Loretta had told me enough fairy stories about animals and humans’ swapping bodies to make me suspicious. What else could give that edge to his stare, and make my insides zap?

The welcome basket was delivered to his exhausted mother late that night. She cried, sitting with my parents for a long time on the front porch with a glass of wine. We decided to keep Tom for the summer while she was at work. He was the buffer our family never knew it needed. My parents literally begged to take him to Disney with us. Mrs. Valeska was proud and tried to say no, but they said, It’s really for our benefit. That boy is worth his weight in gold. We’ll have to wait until Darcy’s medication level is worked out, and then we’ll all be free to travel a lot more. Unless we leave her with her grandmother. Maybe that would be best.

And after that first dinner, I admit I did something very weird. I went to my room and I drew a sled dog in the middle of a notebook I kept hidden in the heating vent.

I didn’t know what else to do with this sensation that filled me. On the sled dog’s name tag, too tiny to be read, was: Valeska. I imagined a creature that would sleep at the foot of my bed. He’d take food from my hand but could tear out the throat of anything that opened my door.

I knew it was weird. Jamie would crucify me for creating a fictional animal based on the new boy across the street—not that he’d have proof. But that’s exactly what I did, and to this day, when I’m alone in a foreign bar and want to look busy, my hand will still draw the outline of Valeska on a coaster, with his eyes like a wolf, or an enchanted prince.

I’m an excellent judge of character.