Chapter 30 Vale #2
If I didn’t have the memory of his bruises tattooed across my brain—or the image of his glossy, dazed eyes and pinched, pale expression—I’d never know Aston was injured by the way he all but skips over to the barrier meant to keep people from getting too close to the cage, and leans as far as he can across it.
Getting as close as possible to where a monkey hangs from a branch, chattering away.
Aston’s grin is huge. Even as he talks to the monkey, he never stops smiling. Eyes wide and bright in a way I’ve so rarely seen. It makes me feel…funny inside. Almost annoyed.
Just beyond him, a man with a little boy sitting on his shoulders points and squeals at the monkeys, and I find my steps slowing as I’m suddenly thrown back to the time my own dad carried me like that at the aquarium.
It’s one of the only vivid memories I still have.
Probably because it was later that same day, on our way home, that we got in the car crash that killed him and Mom.
A different funny feeling rises, one that has my throat closing up. I look down at my feet for the remainder of the distance, shoving that day far into the back of my mind.
When I reach Aston’s side, I catch the tail-end of whatever he was saying—“…home with me.”—before he turns his light grayish green eyes on me. “Isn’t he the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?” he gushes.
From under my lashes, I drag my gaze from his face to the monkey on the other side of the chain link divider, and the thing blows a raspberry, sticking its tongue at me.
Aston bursts out laughing as I scowl. “I thought you wanted to see the tiger?” I mutter.
“I want to see everything. Duh.” Grubby fingers curl around mine, squeezing, and next thing I know, I’m being dragged away from the monkeys, past the man with the little boy on his shoulders, and toward the cage on the other side of the footpath.
While Aston oohs and ahhs over the chimpanzees, I dart my gaze around, unable to stop myself from registering the clusters of happy families surrounding us.
I was eight when my parents died. I’m eleven now, going on twelve in a couple months. In January, it will be four years since I lost them.
Sure, I still miss them at times—still feel sad about it, I guess—but I’ve never felt like this. Like I’m looking at something that was stolen from me. A life…not just my mom and dad.
The hand still clutching mine gives a couple tugs, and I whip my head around to find Aston watching me with his head cocked. He’s no longer smiling. I don’t really know what to make of his expression.
“You’re not having fun,” he says.
I just shrug in response.
His gaze darts over my head to where I was just looking. “Does it make you sad?”
I don’t have to ask what he means. “No.”
His forehead wrinkles when he refocuses on my face. “It doesn’t?”
Tensing, I give a short shake of my head. No.
Something’s wrong with me.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought it. Not the first time I’ve wondered why I don’t feel things the way others do.
It’s not that I can’t feel anything at all.
It’s just really easy for me to turn off the feelings that don’t really do anything for me.
Like sadness. At least when I’m angry, it feels like there’s a point to all of this.
Losing my parents. Living in a crappy foster home with crappy foster parents. Living…period.
I didn’t know how to use my feelings—anger, especially—to get what I wanted when I was a little kid, like when I laid out those tacks for my teacher to sit on, or like when I drowned Gran’s remote and killed her fish to get back at her.
Once I realized it didn’t solve anything—didn’t get me anywhere but in trouble—it all just felt like such a waste of my time and energy. Pointless.
But now?
Like that time I bashed that kid’s head?
Well, who knows what he would’ve done to Aston after he punched him, if I didn’t put a stop to it. Not only that…but I got away with it, thanks to Aston. A win-win.
Well, that is until Rick hurt him even worse.
Then it didn’t feel like much of a win at all.
If anything, it just made me furious with myself for not figuring out a way to clear us both of what happened. If Aston didn’t rush in to take the blame, we could’ve tried to cover it up. Insist it was an accident—that he fell and hit his head.
Lesson learned…
Now, in the zoo, Aston tips his head to the side, studying me in a way that makes it feel as if he’s forcefully peeling layers back. Prodding me for something that, even if I wanted to give it, I’m not even sure I could.
An itchy feeling consumes me, and I find myself snarling, “Stop.”
I try to shake him free, but he just holds on tighter, determined to ignore me.
Clearly not afraid of what I could do to him, should I get pissed off enough.
He might be bigger than me, but when I lose myself to that twisting, boiling red-hot feeling that takes over me sometimes, there’s no telling what I’m capable of.
I’ll do whatever gets me what I want.
And right now, I want him to back off.
“I like to pretend,” he says suddenly.
A beat passes where my need to shove him off me falls to the wayside, as curiosity gets the best of me. “Pretend?”
He nods, smiling. Then, hand in hand, he drags me onto the footpath, leading me around a walled off slope of grass covered in pink flowers.
“That I’m here with my parents,” he says.
“But you don’t even know who your parents are.”
He bugs his eyes at me over his shoulder. “That’s why it’s called pretend, silly.”
I make face. “But you don’t know what they look like.”
“So? That’s what an imagination is for.”
Before I can ask him how that works, he points to a tall, wide man standing by himself in line for ice cream. “See him? That’s our dad.”
“Our?”
“Yep. We’re brothers.” He flashes me a grin. “Real brothers.”
I twist my lips together, and drop my gaze to the ground, watching the rocky path pass under my sneakers as Aston continues dragging me across the zoo.
“As I was saying…Dad’s getting us ice cream. Strawberry for me with rainbow sprinkles. And vanilla for you with chocolate drizzle. And look! There’s Mom.”
Lifting my gaze, I follow his free hand to where he points at a woman standing outside the bathrooms with her phone pressed to her ear.
“She got a work call, even though it’s supposed to be family day. But it’s okay, because when she hangs up, she’ll turn all her attention on us. Her husband. Her kids. She and Dad are going to meet us at the tiger exhibit.”
“They let us go off by ourselves?” I can’t help but ask, despite how stupid this is. Those aren’t our parents. They probably don’t even know each other.
“Yep! We’re always good boys, so they decide to give us a chance to prove we can be trusted on our own today.”
I almost snort at that.
“Look!” he says brightly, picking up the pace, and giving me no choice but to run after him toward where the path Ts off up ahead in front of a large glass enclosure.
I can’t see what’s inside, but I have a feeling it’s the new tiger the zoo brought in—something we saw printed across the front page of a newspaper last week, and why Aston was so insistent on getting in here, even if it meant we’d have to sneak in.
Apparently, this is the first tiger this zoo has had in years, not since before Aston and I were born. While he’s been here a couple times in the past—back before I moved in, with the kid I replaced, presumably—this is the first time we’ve gone together. My first time, period.
As we rudely cut through the crowd, I don’t miss the glances and glares shot our way as we knock people out of our path.
I also don’t miss the judgy looks aimed at our joined hands.
It’s only then that it occurs to me what this would look like if we were older.
Gay.
Even still, I imagine it’s not a common sight to see. Amongst young girls, yes. Boys, not so much.
If Aston notices the attention, he doesn’t let it faze him. If anything, he holds my hand tighter, like he’s worried I might pull away. And it makes me feel… good. Knowing he could care less what these people think. Knowing he’s not ashamed of me—of us…
Of what this sort of thing might imply to creeps who have nothing better to do than stare and judge and assume stupid things.
I find myself no longer wishing to be free of his grip…but instead wanting to do something stupid like stick my tongue out at anyone who dares glance this way.
Aston presses his face right up against the glass wall separating us from the orange and black tiger prowling across its artificial habitat, its striped tail flicking back and forth.
And I can’t help but watch the way Aston’s face slackens with awe.
It’s the same face he made when I gave him his Christmas present last year—a dingy little butterfly trinket I’d found on the road that made me think of him.
Why? I don’t know. Perhaps because Aston’s like a dragon when it comes to little trinkets, collecting anything shiny and sparkly he finds. Or maybe it was because of the coloring—a grayish green that nearly matched his eyes. When you held it up against the sun, the wings sparkled.
Maybe it was both those things.
It was such a lame gift, looking back—a lazy one too. He went out of his way to shoplift me a football, and all I could manage was roadside garbage.
And yet, he’d never looked as happy as he did when I gave it to him. Said it was the best present he’s ever gotten. Which is just plain sad, but I kept that thought to myself. If he was happy about it, I wasn’t going to ruin that by reminding him that the way we live isn’t normal.
That hoarding dirty, sometimes broken discarded objects, and treating them like treasure is…well, weird.
“Do you think he’s happy in there?” Aston asks after a long moment, pulling me from my thoughts.
I notice now his face is bunched like he’s thinking real hard. Following his gaze to where the tiger lays down, licking its front paw, I cock my head and say, “He doesn’t look unhappy.”