I lift my elbow and peek out from underneath it and see her feet walking away from me. I grab her present off my knee and run it through my fingers. She made me a bracelet. It’s stretchy and purple and has half of a heart on it. I slide it on my wrist and smile, even though I’m still crying. I lift up my head and he’s still here, looking at me. He looks sad and I feel bad because I feel like I’m making him sad.
He stands up and faces my house. He looks at it for a long time without saying anything. He always thinks a lot and it makes me wonder what he’s always thinking about. He stops looking at the house and looks back down at me. “Don’t worry,” he says, trying to smile for me. “He won’t live forever.” He turns around and walks back to his house, so I close my eyes and lay my head on my arms again.
I don’t know why he would say that. I don’t want my Daddy to die…I just want him to stop calling me Princess.
I don’t pull it out very often, but for some reason I want to look at it today. I guess talking about the past with Holder Saturday has left me feeling a little nostalgic. I know I told Holder I’d never look for my father, but sometimes I’m still curious. I can’t help but wonder how a parent can raise a child for several years, then just give them away. I’ll never understand it, and maybe I don’t need to. That’s why I never push it. I never ask Karen questions. I never try to separate the memories from the dreams and I don’t like bringing it up…because I just don’t need to.
I take the bracelet out of the box and slide it onto my wrist. I don’t know who gave it to me, and I don’t even really care. I’m sure with two years in foster care, I received lots of things from friends. What’s different about this gift, though, is that it’s attached to the only memory I have of that life. The bracelet validates that my memory is a real one. And knowing that the memory is real somehow validates that I was someone else before I was me. A girl I don’t remember. A girl that cried a lot. A girl that isn’t anything like who I am today.
Someday I’ll throw the bracelet away because I need to. But today, I just feel like wearing it.
Holder and I decided to take a breather from each other yesterday. And I say breather, because after Saturday night, we went quite a while on my bed without breathing at all. Besides, Karen was coming home and the last thing I wanted to do was re-introduce her to my new…whatever he is. We never got far enough to label what’s going on between us. It feels like I haven’t known him near long enough to refer to him as my boyfriend, considering we haven’t even kissed yet. But dammit if it doesn’t piss me off to think of his lips being on anyone else. So whether or not we’re dating, I’m declaring us exclusive. Can you even be exclusive without actually kissing first? Are exclusive and dating mutually exclusive?
I make myself laugh out loud. Or lol.
When I woke up yesterday morning, I had two texts. I’m really getting into this whole texting thing. I get really giddy when I have one and I can’t imagine how addictive email and Facebook and everything else technology-related must be. One of the texts was from Six, going on and on about my impeccable baking abilities, followed up with strict instructions to call her Sunday night from her house phone to catch her up on everything. I did. We talked for an hour and she’s just as floored as I am that Holder isn’t at all how we expected him to be. I asked her about Lorenzo and she didn’t even know who I was referring to, so I laughed and dropped it. I miss her and hate that she’s gone, but she’s loving it and that makes me happy.
The second text I had was from Holder. All it said was, “I’m dreading seeing you at school on Monday. So bad.”
Running used to be the highlight of my day, but now it’s receiving insulting texts from Holder. And speaking of running and Holder, we aren’t doing that anymore. Together, anyway. After texting back and forth yesterday, we decided it was probably best if we didn’t run together on a daily basis because that might be too much, too soon. I told him I didn’t want things to get weird between us. Besides, I’m really self-conscious when I’m sweaty and snotty and wheezing and smelly and I would just rather run alone.
Now I’m staring into my locker in a daze, sort of stalling because I really don’t want to go to class. It’s first period and the only class I have with Holder, so I’m really nervous about how it’ll play out. I take Breckin’s book out of my backpack and the other two books I brought him, then put the rest of my things in my locker. I walk into the classroom and to my seat, but Breckin isn’t here yet, and neither is Holder. I sit down and stare at the door, not really sure why I’m so nervous. It’s just different, seeing him here rather than on home turf. Public school is just way too…public.