Tight Spaces
When the Fourth came, both Levi and Adam, and my desire and desperation, encouraged me to walk the thin line between brave and stupid by asking my dad if I could attend the fireworks show.
All for him to say, “I don’t think so,” after a slurp from his coffee cup.
My own mechanical movements as I bit into my breakfast didn’t miss their beats, either, but my mouth had a new tempo. “Why not?” The attitude in this question pulled his focus from the numbers on his laptop to the whine in my face.
I saw the thought in his eyes. You are different.
I cleared my throat after my swallow.
“I just got the new grill set up,” he said, his tone hinting that I was inconveniencing the work he did. “I’m making your favorite burgers,” he added, his tone now hinting that he didn’t have to do this for me and I should be more appreciative.
“I love the burgers,” I told him, my mouth watering at the thought of them. The cheese was always melted perfectly, with just the right amount of smoky flavor. I would always get to eat his burgers, though, because he didn’t make them just once a year, but I wouldn’t always get to watch a once a year fireworks show with friends I’d actually made, out on a boat.
“Do you want me to eat alone?”
The Fourth wasn’t an important holiday for our family. Dad just moved the meat to the grill and we watched a random fireworks show on the television while we ate.
The bite of egg I’d just swallowed soured in my stomach as I pushed through my teeth, “No.”
Then after a big breath, I pushed more. “I can do both. We can eat together, watch some TV, then I can go to the dock. I wouldn’t be out late—”
“I don’t want you going anywhere alone.”
He added that last word but it might as well have been silent.
And I wasn’t going to attempt an ask to come with me because I’d be with Levi and Adam. So I couldn’t, and Dad wouldn’t.
My stomach clenched. “I could go with some friends.” It was a bite at never having been able to make them. A slip from the thought of the boys.
“Friends?” Dad’s fingers slowed to a stop on the keyboard as my mouth pulled his focus again. “You haven’t even started school.”
“I could make some,” I mumbled around a sip of milk.
“I don’t think so,” he repeated, and my throat burned to throw back everything I’d already done.
I’ve already made friends.
I’ve already explored this next random town you dropped us in.
I’ve smelled and tasted honeysuckle again.
I wouldn’t even be having this circling conversation if the show was at a later hour.
“Crime free town—”
“Summer.” The warning cut through my final attempt was clear, putting me back in place, making me feel the start of that twist of loss and confusion and worthlessness that would come if I kept at him. “I said no.”
Or what? I thought as two snaps in my brain.
But I knew or what .
I was skating on Dad’s thin ice, that far away look already touching his eyes, the disappointment swirling while I was still right here, inside with him, sitting in my chair. That I sunk against, with Levi’s words in my head, now no big deal statements.
It’s just the Fourth. It’s just some fireworks.
“You’re going to do what I want you to do,” my dad reminded me, after several more silent bites of my breakfast that went down like knots in my throat. “And we always have fun,” he added with a smile as I managed one glance at him sideways. There were no deep dents of his crow’s feet, unfelt on the inside.
I was dying in this shallow end of our surface-level fun and my dad didn’t even care that I was suffocating under his own hands.
That night, I watched the fireworks from one of the front windows, shooting off so high into the sky, the rainbow of colors streaking and blending together across my blurred vision.
Levi texted and asked if I wanted him to send me a video of the experience up close, so I could still be there in some way, and while the gesture warmed me, I turned it down. It wouldn’t have been the same as actually being there, with him. Just more screens to see life through.
Later that night, once Dad was finally asleep, Adam texted for me to come out. He was waiting at his car.
I was slower to meet him. I was wallowing. I was still wide awake, but bone tired.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told me from where we sat on top of his car, our legs touching where they dangled down the sunroof.
I stilled, my mind stalling for the second the words registered. Because of everything I could’ve guessed he’d say tonight, it wasn’t that. “Leaving?”
His smirk was sly as he noticed the jig had left my feet. “You gonna miss me?”
My feet picked up their jig, a sway in my body as I shoved him with a laugh. He hollered as he tipped, and I gasped as I grabbed his flailing arm—
Then I swatted it away as he leaned back up with his own laugh.
“You looked so scared,” he teased.
I mustered a glare. “How do I look now?”
Adam exaggerated studying me, that pucker in his mouth under such a deep squint, I cracked a bit. “Cute,” he finally said, with something like a victory smile, a look I imagined he wore a lot on the baseball field. “Pissed. But mostly relieved. It’s nice to know you care about me.” He bumped my shoulder, a lightened gesture to the weight in his voice, and I bumped him back.
“I do care,” I assured him, holding his stare as I said the words, knowing how that need clawed.
It was baseball that was taking him for the rest of the summer. He’d played for some travel team, to get him noticed more every year. It was the one time he could get out and devote himself to his dream.
Since Levi played baseball, too, I felt a zip of panic in my veins that he was also leaving.
“Just you?” My voice was higher pitched as I glanced out toward the lights of the town, though I knew Levi had the passion for sailing, for Rosalee Bay. That and this was his dream.
I turned my glance to Adam in his silence as he also stared out toward the lights. He relaxed back onto his hands before he met my eyes again and nodded. Then he tapped the toe of his shoe into mine with a playful gleam as he said, “Unless you want me to sneak you in my suitcase.”
I chuckled, relaxing back on my hands, too, as I pretended to consider before saying, “I don’t like tight spaces.”
“It has a zipper. Just open it and poke your head out.”
My next chuckle was in my shoulders as I gave my full attention back to the lights, my imagination taking me, not inside of Adam’s suitcase and the lights of a baseball field, but to more of my story right here.
Those glowing bulbs remained the ones of this town, as I remained under them, alone with Levi for the rest of the summer. . .
Adam’s thumb touching mine brought me back to the sunroof, and he kept us skin to skin, brushing my knuckle for my attention. His eyes were locked to mine, shining and serious as his mouth teased, “Can I get a kiss to hold me until I see you again?”
I froze beneath that look, long enough for him to lean in closer. That and his tone with the question shook me to life with a shaky laugh as I shoved him again, only not as hard, a tease for a tease.
He always said whatever he was thinking. Put on his charm. And he did what he wanted to do.
And I was getting there.
“Am I gross or something?” He laughed out this one, already knowing he was the furthest from gross, but I heard an underlying tension that faded my smile as I shot him a look.
“No!” My jaw bobbed around before I shook my head, my thoughts finally settling on, “Why do you want to kiss me?” I shrugged with small emphasis on myself, stilled again, now with the thought he was going to tell me he liked me.
But I’d forgotten who I was talking to.
“Because you’re not gross,” he said in the most nonchalant way, then he snickered. My face tightened against my own amusement before his grin won me over and softened it out with a snicker back.
“So not gross people should kiss each other,” I deadpanned.
“That and…I wanna show you what you’re missing,” he added with a light poke to my side. “I promise I’m good at it.”
I poked him back. “Okay, I can’t promise I am.”
“I’d bet you are.”
I chewed my lip on a blush, and when I couldn’t find something to say to that, he shrugged all this off, similar to how he had at the bay.
“You might take a shot and miss it,” Adam told me, like some explanation and advice in one, “but you miss every shot you don’t take. And it’s not in my blood to do that.”
He smiled again, that philosophy sprinkling itself over my brain like something intoxicating, a meeting of minds as I smiled right back.
“You gonna be okay without me?” he asked as he walked me back, still less serious as he was full of jokes tonight. But I liked his light. In weight and shine. I could float inside the beam he cast over both of us.
“I think I’ll manage,” I joked back, then stopped cold.
This was my last night with Adam for a few weeks, at least, and when we reached the trellis, I was for sure it would be my last night, period.
My dad’s window was aglow.
The light in me dimmed, my limbs suddenly weighing a ton. All the color ran from my face, as I wanted to do, and my stomach rolled.
I thought Adam said something and I may have hissed at him to go, but I wasn’t sure, when all my focus was on getting up to my room, wishing I had a cannon to just blast me straight there.
My pulse thudded so loudly in my ears I couldn’t hear how loud or how quiet I was being. Quiet, quiet, I willed as I moved as fast as possible up the trellis and had a solid— quiet —both feet on my bedroom floor.
My lungs seized my breath as I did a quick perusal, my air rushing out in a gust, as my dad wasn’t waiting for me on the bed or at the still closed door with his arms crossed and ready to rip into me before everything went silent.
The hall floor creaked and I dove onto my bed, covering my body all the way to my chin and snapping my eyes shut. I was still in my outing clothes and my window was still open, but there was no time to change out and close in. I just prayed he didn’t check in on me, while having the feeling that I didn’t know if I should risk this again.
A worry pressed me in place over my dad possibly moving us again if he found out I’d been living outside these walls.
My mind blanked and my body moved again once I heard the click of the bathroom door, jumping up to close my window and change into my pajamas. Quiet, quiet.
I was back in bed when the next click came, the next creaks, my eyes snapping shut again.
My dad didn’t check in on me, but he could have. This could’ve been it.
But it wasn’t.
My lips curled into a smile and I muffled a laugh into my pillow, my emotions such a whirl, I couldn’t tell if they were just relief or madness.
****
My thoughts had spun into a spiral for the rest of the night, and after barely any sleep, I woke up to texts from Adam.
He was checking on me, and after letting him know I was still in the clear, while gathering clothes, he sent me a picture of his suitcase, half opened, with his hand pointedly holding the zipper.
That put a good clench in my stomach—I would miss him—before the sickly one settled in.
This morning felt like the first. Like I was living in Deja vu days.
Eggshells.
The noisy neighbor who wasn’t.
The sweat.
The locking of my knees.
I didn’t want to think my dad knew, so I couldn’t let myself.
I showered and dressed and brushed my teeth to the chant of no fucks . Old MacDonald was Summer. And there were no fucks here, no fucks there. . .
With all my power, I wasn’t stepping on eggshells and fighting the walk. They say fortune comes to those who are brave. Something to that effect. They talked too much but sometimes their words were useful. Brave was now part of who I was. And I was pedaling for my fortune.
My bones were still rigid beneath my fluid smile, but that one stretch was all I needed to get through those steps to join Dad at the table.
“Are you opening your window?”
Especially after he asked that .
“No,” I lied, quick through the strain in my throat so he couldn’t catch it. “Why?” This one through a bite of sausage.
“There were a few of those flies in there,” he said after a moment, his stare searing on my face as I stuffed my mouth and avoided his eyes, realizing after a stuffed swallow, I was making myself appear suspicious. So I slowed down and looked at him as he assured me, with his empty cup dangling loose from his fingers, “I got them.”
The crane flies.
They flew in with the summer heat in swarms. They flew through my window every night I sneaked out. I would kill them the next day, but I was never on a time limit, because my dad never went into my room.
He’d gone into my room this morning, while I was in the shower.
“There must be a crack in it somewhere,” I said, my hand tight around my fork. “The window,” I clarified low, looking back down at my plate as I scraped up some eggs.
His chair scraped back as he got up from the table…to pour himself another cup of coffee.
Maybe it was work stress, these changes.
Or maybe Dad was changing too. Maybe he knew and he was waiting for me to own up myself, upping his mind games.
I had to be insistent he didn’t know to fight succumbing to the coward I’d been most of my life. It wouldn’t be me who took from me, who stole, who kept, not now or ever.
“I can install a screen if you want some air up there.” His tone sounded like he just laid the best plans. He might as well have said he’d install some bars over my cell.
When my mom was still alive, when the three of us lived in the home I should’ve grown up in, I heard some stray cats meowing on our porch one night I couldn’t sleep, and my little head thought it’d be better to use the window instead of the door. I managed to get it open, but I couldn’t push out the screen, so my little head also thought to cut a hole to toss them some food.
Dad had installed the screens then and they were fixed screens. So I knew if he installed one in my room, it would be fixed too. And I wouldn’t be getting out my window again.
“I don’t go into your room,” I lied again, my mom’s figurines popping into my head, “so can you not go into mine?” That new tempo was in my voice. Thirteen bites to steal my appetite. “Please?” I added through a bubbling nausea, at Dad’s pause back in his chair, his long look I could feel on my face again.
“Fair,” he finally said, and I closed my mouth around a drink of milk at him trying to talk fair. And right now, over this. But what was his argument there? “I’ll get you your own swatter.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, the smile that found me reflexive, almost trained to go with the sentiment, trained to be grateful for anything my dad decided to give. “My shoe appreciates it,” I joked, and he grunted his amusement.
I appreciated it too. A swatter instead of a screen could keep me going out my window.
And I would.
Because he didn’t know.