Past the Broken Bridges

Prologue Sawyer

Prologue

Sawyer

2005

The slow trickle of running water is how I know I’m close. Just past the two big crape myrtles blooming with pretty pink blossoms and through the magnolia bushes that always scratch my arms is a little wooden walking bridge over the tiniest stream. I tried following it once to see where the water went, but the shrubs that surround the area are too thick to get through.

Mom hates it when I explore because I always wind up coming home with stains and rips on my clothes, but Daddy says there’s a reason my name is Sawyer—I was born to explore. And since I’m brave like he is, nothing about the humid air, wild animals, or chance of getting lost scares me. I always find a way home.

Pushing past one of the shrubs that separates me from my favorite place, which is the area of streams and gardens outside the big houses I want to live in someday, I stop short when I spot a little boy leaning against one of the mossy oaks shading the area.

A startled noise escapes me, and I step back onto a twig until it snaps under the weight of my rain boot, causing me to fall backward onto the damp ground. I frown when I lift my hand and see the mud caked onto my palm.

Mom is gonna be mad again.

The shrubs part with a different set of small hands, bringing my eyes up to the boy standing in front of me on the other side. Doesn’t he know this is my secret place? I found it months ago and never had to share it with anybody. Not even Mom or Daddy when they ask me where it is I go on my bike in the middle of the day.

I squint past the sun to get a better look at his dark-brown hair that’s similar to Daddy’s and then down to his eyes that remind me of the muddy Mississippi. I don’t know many other kids outside my new school, but he looks about the same size as the boys in my class.

He’s watching me curiously through a pair of black glasses when he finally asks, “Why are you on the ground?”

I lift my hand to show him the mess. “I fell.”

“Why’d you fall?”

I was told not to talk to strangers, which is exactly what I tell him. He smiles at that and reaches down like he’s offering to help me up, but I don’t take his hand. I push myself off the ground and wipe my hands down the front of my jeans, leaving streaks of mud on the denim.

“This is my bridge,” I tell him, crossing my arms over my chest.

He looks behind him and then back at me, pushing those glasses up his nose and smiling. “You built it?”

I blink. How could he think I built that thing when I’m only eight? “No, but it’s mine.”

His smile grows. “If you didn’t build it, isn’t it anybody’s bridge? Your name isn’t on it.”

I stand confidently. “Yes, it is.”

He watches me. “Are you SH?”

The third time I came here, I snuck one of Mom’s butter knives to carve my initials into the side of the wood. But as soon as I did it, I thought I’d get caught, so I packed up my things and biked home as fast as I could pedal before the police came after me.

“What’s that stand for?” he asks.

I press my lips together.

He looks down and kicks his sneakers, caked with dirt, on the ground. Quietly, he says, “I’m Paxton if it makes you feel any better. That way we’re not strangers.”

My parents told me to be really careful whom I trust, but they always talked about adults being the dangerous ones. Daddy sat me down and said to never go into somebody else’s vehicle or accept candy from anyone I didn’t know. But Paxton is too young to drive, and he hasn’t offered me any candy. So he can’t be so bad, right?

The girls I go to school with only ever want to play dolls and dress-up, which are boring. Maybe having a boy friend would be better.

“I’m Sawyer.”

The name has him looking back up.

“Like Tom Sawyer ,” I add. “It’s a book.”

“I haven’t heard of it.”

Shrugging, I look behind him at my happy place. “Can I come in? I have fruit snacks.”

When he sees me lift the small backpack, his muddy-brown eyes light up. “What kind?”

That night, I tell my parents about my new friend Paxton, who’s nine and goes to a neighboring school. His dad isn’t in the Navy like mine, but he teaches about grass or something at the big college in Baton Rouge. Paxton knows a lot about plants because of his dad, just like how I know about boats from mine.

And the next week, he’s at the same spot by the mossy oak, waiting for me like he said he’d be. He tells me that his friends at school only like playing video games, and I tell him mine only like playing with makeup and girly things. I sneak two bags of chips and some fruit cups into my bag, and we share them on the little bridge, swinging our legs above the flowing water.

“You never talk about your family besides your dad being a teacher,” I say, crushing up little pieces of potato chips and holding out my hand to the birds chirping on the oak branch above us.

Paxton watches me curiously. “They won’t come to you.”

I stay still, watching as the robins tilt their heads and creep closer to examine the offerings in my palm, squawking in indecision.

Eventually, the bigger one swoops down and lands on the heel of my hand, pecking at the bigger pieces of the salty snack. I smile at him.

“They’re robins,” I tell the boy staring in disbelief. “See how this one is darker than the other one? That means it’s a male.”

The robin brings back pieces to the female waiting for his return, their rusty bellies moving as they swallow the chips.

Paxton pushes up his glasses. “How did you do that?”

“They know I won’t hurt them,” I answer, brushing the crumbs off my hands. “So how come you don’t talk about your family much?”

He frowns, staring at the birds watching us and waiting for more food. “I don’t know. They fight a lot.”

“About what?”

Paxton stays quiet, ripping up blades of grass from the ground and watching the breeze blow them out of his palm. “About everything.”

I hug my knees to my chest. “My mom gets angry at my dad all the time. I think it’s an adult thing. That’s why I don’t want to get old. They seem mad a lot.”

He lifts his shoulders silently.

“Do you want to try feeding the birds? Robins are docile. I’m sure they’ll come up to you too.”

Paxton looks over to the last chip before plucking it from my hand. “How do you know so much about birds?”

“My dad bought me books on animals, and there’s one all about different species of birds,” I explain, watching as he crushes the chip and lifts his arm like I did.

We wait for a few minutes before the same bird flies down and takes the offering.

“See?” I ask happily, noticing the small smile return to his face. “Do you feel better now?”

He leans back and watches the birds. “Yeah. Maybe a little.”

The week after that, he brings us snacks and tells me that his parents are getting a divorce. I tell him I’m sorry even though I don’t know what that means. When I ask my parents, they tell me it’s when two people fall out of love and decide to live separately. I ask them if they’re going to get one since Daddy is deployed a lot, but they promise me they won’t.

A month goes by, and I see Paxton every single week. I tell him that my mom is going to have a baby, so I’ll have to share their attention, but that I’m excited. Especially if it’s a boy. He asks how I’d feel if it’s a girl, and I guess I’d be okay with it as long as Daddy teaches her the same stuff he taught me so she’s not boring.

“I think she caught cooties,” I tell Paxton, trying to teach him how to skip rocks in the streams. “Daddy told me that girls can catch cooties from boys, so that must be how she got the baby.”

Paxton thinks about it, mimicking what I did as he tosses the rock only to see it sink. “Maybe. Someone at my school tried telling me that a stork brings it, but I don’t think I believe that.”

I make a face. “A stork?” I ask thoughtfully, searching for another rock to throw. “I don’t remember reading about that in my bird book.”

Paxton just shrugs.

After almost two months of our afternoon meetups, I find a bruise on his arm that sort of looks like the one I got when I fell trying to climb the tree in my backyard. “What happened?”

He winces when I poke it, jerking his arm away and rubbing it. “I don’t know,” he says, tugging on the sleeve of his T-shirt to cover it. When it bounces up, I see three more just like it.

“Mom says I bruise like an apple,” I tell him, lifting my pant leg to show him the three tiny ones on my shin. I’m always covered in them, but these have been taking forever to heal. “See? I got this one from tripping up the stairs, this one from our dog Maggie, and this one from our evil cat, Moon. I don’t like her.”

“Why not?”

“She’s evil,” I repeat. Then I tell him how she hisses all the time. Maybe she knows I prefer Maggie and gets jealous of the easygoing golden retriever.

The rest of the afternoon, we watch the clouds roll in, knowing our time is coming to an end for the day. I turn to him, crossing my legs under me. “Do you think the storm they’re talking about is going to be really bad? Daddy had to go into work, but he told Mom that she should take me to my grandma’s house for a few days just in case.”

I haven’t seen Daddy worried before, but whenever I ask if everything is going to be okay, he and Mom tell me it’ll be fine. Then I see them watch the TV and look at each other the way they did when I had to be rushed to the hospital after falling from that tree.

Paxton frowns, looking up to the sky. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it hit Florida that hard, but my parents are thinking about going too.”

“Where?”

He lifts his shoulders. “Probably just inland. We’ve got some family in northern Louisiana that are far enough from the water that it should be fine. It’s not like hurricanes haven’t happened here before, right?”

I nod, eyes moving back to the sky. “Right.”

We sit in silence again, watching the sun completely vanish behind the fluffy gray clouds.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad and we can meet here next weekend,” he suggests, resting his chin on his knees. “It’s nice having a friend.”

I smile cheekily. “I’m your friend?”

His cheeks turn pink. “Unless you don’t want to be?”

I pull out the last pack of fruit snacks I brought with me and pass it to him. “I don’t just share my snacks with anybody, Paxton.”

He grins, dumping half of the gummies into his hand and giving me the other half. “What about the cooties?”

Giggling, I pop a fruit snack into my mouth and nudge him with my foot. “I’m willing to risk it for you. Just don’t give me a baby, okay?”

He holds out his hand. “Deal.”

We shake and then sit there until the first raindrop falls, only parting ways when the sky opens up around us.

If I’d known that was the last time I’d be walking away from my happy place and the brown-haired boy with my favorite muddy eyes, I probably would have tried staying longer. Learned his last name. His favorite color.

Anything.

But three days later, on August 29, 2005, I found out why Daddy looked so worried about Hurricane Katrina.

And even though he sent us to my grandparents’ house in North Carolina and we heard from Daddy as much as we could while he was out on rescue efforts, I was sad. Sad because I knew the chances of me ever seeing Paxton again were low. Sad because Mom was sad. Sad because Daddy told us he’d be away for a long time to help the people who couldn’t get out.

When I watched the news on the TV with my aunt Taylor and grandma, I learned a new word from the anchor. Devastation.

Maybe sadness didn’t cover what I felt.

I guess I was devastated.

For me and my family and the state I hoped Daddy’s job wouldn’t take us from this time, like it had from New York and Florida and Virginia.

But I guess the storm did that for him.

And months later, when I’m still thinking about the place I’m told I can’t go back to, I swear to myself that one day when I’m a grown-up, I will.