23. Colton
TWENTY-THREE
COLTON
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO.
“Morning, Pop,” I greet my father as I enter the kitchen, my little sister Carsyn already at the stove, scrambling eggs.
Despite the fact that we go to school all day, my sister still gets up early and makes breakfast for everyone. The eggs will be lumpy, and maybe undercooked, but she loves learning. I make our lunches, and most times, together we make dinner.
Well, Carsyn and I make dinner. Pop eats it. His contribution to our lives is simply being there and paying the bills, and there are times when that feels like enough.
There are times I wish I had a present father, though, but I’m not gonna feel bad for myself. Lots of kids have abusive parents, absent parents. What I have is a hard-working widowed ranch owner who thought his kids would be raised by his wife and now he’s living a life he never imagined.
He does his best.
I nudge Carsyn with my elbow and she peers up at me, looking sleepy. “What kind of sandwich you want today?” I ask her.
She rolls her lips together, her purple t-shirt donning a bright pink unicorn almost assaulting my corneas at this hour.
“Peanut butter and honey,” she hums, pushing the old metal spatula through the eggs.
“Don’t forget to pepper ’em, Cars,” Dad hollers over his shoulder as he sips his coffee, eyes glued to the paper.
I lean down to my kid sister and use a whisper. “You make the coffee too?”
That’s something she’s recently started. I noticed it the other day when I came out earlier than usual. He was showing her how to make his coffee.
Her smile is missing teeth and lip gloss. “I did!”
I peer back at my father as I shove my hand into a bag of wheat bread. “How’s it, Pop? She do good?”
Dad takes a sip and, while straightening the paper spread between his hands, says, “It’s fine.”
I wink at Cars. “Good job.”
Dad never tells her good job for all the stuff she does around this place, so I make sure to tell her, even though I don’t know a good gosh darn about how to make coffee.
Carsyn plates eggs as I assemble three sandwiches. She points her spatula my way. “Extra hungry?”
Yesterday I made three sandwiches, and the day before that—heck, the entire week before that I did, too.
I shared my sandwich with a girl at school a couple weeks back. Since then, she’s been sitting by me. But I’ve noticed, she doesn’t always bring her lunch. First time she sat next to me without food, I gave her half of everything I had. I noticed around two that afternoon that my stomach was too noisy, so now I bring two sandwiches a day. If she brings her food, I eat it on my way back. And if she doesn’t, well, now she does have lunch.
I nod, because the fact I’m bringing food for a girl I’ve known all of two weeks wouldn’t sit well with my dad. “Yep. Growth spurt,” I tell her, lying.
I don’t make a habit of lying to my sister, but because what I’m doing right now confuses me too, I decide telling her it’s my food is easiest for everyone.
Crumbs crunch on the concrete as I tap my boots over them, left behind by the last class who ate their lunch at this picnic table. Slowly I roll my lunch bag down, trying to be secretive as I eye the space around me. I start to think maybe she’s not here today, or maybe after a few weeks of sitting together, she’s no longer interested in sitting with me. My mind is going haywire, like a bull bucking his rider, because for the life of me, I can’t stop caring where this girl is.
“Hi,” the soft voice knocks me from my internal panic, and I glance up from my bag of food to see her across from me, thumbs hooked in her backpack straps.
Her goldenrod hair is braided, one on each shoulder, and a vibrant scarf wraps her neck. Pink cowboy boots adorned with glitter inlay and vibrant tassels engulf her small feet, all the way up to nearly her knee.
In jeans and a pink sweatshirt, she waves, greeting me again. “Hi, Colton. Can I sit with you again today?”
Behind my ribs, my heart does this little twitch. Or maybe it’s more like a jolt. And my stomach flutters, not like it’s asking me for a sandwich but… for something else. I pat the spot on the picnic bench next to me, hoping my strange heartbeat and funny-feeling stomach aren’t visible on my face.
She grins, and comes around the table, sliding in next to me, dropping her backpack to the ground.
I nod at her. “You got a lunch today?”
Her smile fades and she shakes her head. “I left my Barbies out last night. My daddy stepped on a Barbie shoe this morning.” She looks at the bench, picking off a sheet of flaking emerald paint. “Consequences are how we learn,” she says solemnly, focused on the long strip of lacquer in her fingers.
I hook my elbow into her side, gently though, because she’s a girl, and younger.
And because the idea of anyone hurting her makes me sick.
“I brought you a sandwich today,” I tell her, keeping my voice quiet so that no one around us can hear.
A few students shuffle by, my buddy Ralph dropping a hand to my shoulder, and giving me a “What’s up?” as he passes. But after commotion dies and it’s just the two of us, she blinks up at me, her wide doe eyes making me want to scoot closer.
“Then you’ll be hungry, and I’ll be full.” She looks at me like I’m a fool. And I love it. “That’s not much of a solution.” Her little shoulders slump as she sighs. “It’s okay. I can make it until supper.”
I reach into my bag and gather the two sandwiches I’d made this morning, handing her one of them. “I made an extra for you.”
She blinks up at me, incredulously, and in the distance, a yard duty scolds a kid for running too fast, and behind us somewhere, a soft bell sounds from the high school across the street. But all the noises around me are fuzzy when I’m sitting next to her.
Finally, she grins, hooking her arm through mine to pull herself as close to me as she can get. She buries her face in my arm, showing me her gratitude. I feel it, too, I swear I do. I feel that grin wiggle up my arm, making my chest warm with pride.
“It’s just a sandwich,” I tell her, as she finally releases my arm to tear into the turkey and cheddar I made her.
She smiles with her mouth full, a piece of lettuce poking out from her mouth. “It’s not just a sandwich to me.”
I don’t know what that means, but I think I decide, right here and now, and for the rest of my life, I’ll do whatever I can to make Kinleigh Conway smile that way.