Two
TWO
M y seventh grade year came with a lot of changes.
While we were at Meadowbrook Ranch over the summer, Sloan lost his job. And Mama wasn’t rising up to be better because of Sloan anymore. Instead, Sloan had stooped to her level of living. While we were gone, she went back to her bum ways, and from all appearances, it looked like he followed her. When I got home, the house was a mess, the food was depleted, and there was a crack pipe in the sink. New alcohol stains decorated the couches and crumbs were everywhere.
Had Mama written all over it.
That was how she existed, making just enough cash to pursue her next high. Then she wasted away between them. It disgusted me.
Watching them drinking, laughing, and slurring words made my stomach turn. I swore to myself I’d never be that.
The other change in my seventh grade year was far more problematic than food and intoxicated adults—Sloan’s lack of a work schedule.
Cooper’s days were a good deal shorter than mine, and Sloan kicked around the house all day, unemployed and purposeless.
The first day of school, I stressed myself out until I got sick. Cooper would beat me home. How would I protect him if I wasn’t there?
My fingernails dug into my palms every time my bus stopped. I chewed my lip, my thighs bouncing with tension. I silently prodded and prayed the bus forward. Asked the universe to speed up the driver and keep the lights green.
When it stopped at the end of my street, I squeezed out of the doors before they were even fully open. The bus driver yelled at me to cool it, but I didn’t look back.
Cooper was home and perfectly fine.
But he was hungry. So I walked with him to the corner market where I bought him some candy with the money I’d earned from Judd, the foreman at Meadowbrook, over the summer.
Sloan remained content with me.
Until he wasn’t.
One chilly Friday in January, I got home from school and went into the house. Sloan was sleeping on the couch and it took me several minutes to find Cooper. He was curled on the top bunk in our room, covered head to toe with a blanket. His whole form startled, a tiny jump of his body beneath the fabric, when the door clicked behind me.
“Coop? You alright?”
His gray eyes and overgrown mop peeked out. When our gazes connected, knowledge passed between us. I saw something in him that I’d never seen there before. Something hot and alive I knew like the back of my hand, because it ruled like a tyrant within me every waking moment of every single day.
Fear .
And I knew I failed him.
If I hadn’t been such a coward, if I’d known what to do, if I’d known how to get us out of this mess…it wouldn’t have happened. I could’ve stopped this. I could’ve protected him.
But I didn’t .
And Cooper’s life was never the same.
Neither was mine.
As an adult, I still struggle to forgive myself for staying silent. I can’t figure out why I didn’t speak up. Best I can figure is this: If a person doesn’t use their voice, maybe eventually they forget they have one.
That happened to Cooper and I.
We forgot we had voices.
Even if we used them, no one was there to listen.
Our only refuge was Mama and Sloan’s instability. They broke up and made up five times over the course of the school year. There were more months Sloan wasn’t in our home than months he was.
But it didn’t matter whether he was or wasn’t.
We were already broken.
Already voiceless.
Already alone.
Everything changed that spring.
“Sam.” A gentle hand shook my shoulder.
I startled and jerked my head off the desk, my fingers instinctively rubbing the crease a crinkled page left on my face.
“You fell asleep in class again.” Miss Greta stood over my desk, concern knitting her brow. “That’s the third time this week.”
I struggled to pull my eyes open. The last kids in the room were clearing out. I’d slept right through the bell. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Are you not getting enough sleep at night?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t sleep at night. “I just stayed up too late.”
She pursed her lips, thinking. For some reason, I doubted she believed me. And inside, I wanted her to find my lie. I didn’t know how to speak the truth, and I needed someone to pull it out of me.
“Well, now that you’re awake, I might as well tell you…you did an amazing job on the paper you turned in yesterday. I always love reading your writing, but your descriptions for the sensory writing assignment were absolutely phenomenal, Sam. You have a way with wo rds. Most of my students picked physical things to describe. Like jumping into cold water or wind or cooking a meal. You picked something abstract and”—she widened her eyes in surprise—“knocked it out of the park.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you write a lot?”
“Not really. Just for classes. I wish I could write more.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“It’s obvious you’re enthusiastic about the assignments I give you. I wish we had more options for gifted students here.”
Gifted?
“If there was a way to put you in an honors class for writing and language arts, I’d do it.” She tilted her head to the side, her bob brushing the top of her shoulder. “Feel free to say no, but I have an idea. Do you want extra work for fun?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You probably don’t know that I teach a writing class at the library on Tuesday nights. Granted, it’s for adults…but I think your writing would fit right in and we’d be happy to have you. We learn the basics of poetry, creative writing, and all kinds of other things. I think you should come.”
“I will.” I meant it.
She smiled. “Good. And one more thing. I want to say something about the sensory assignment. Loneliness is a deep topic for anyone to explore. But you’re thirteen and you describe being alone like someone who is alone.”
I followed the thin black lines between the white tiles with my gaze, suddenly uncomfortable.
“I know I’m making a big assumption here, but I’m going to say it anyway…Our school counselor, Miss Simone, is fabulous. If you’ve ever been alone like you described…well, you should consider talking to her.”
For a moment, I just blinked at her, surprised she got a little view of my life through a one page description of loneliness. Maybe I should’ve picked something safer to describe, like eating broccoli .
“Yes, ma’am.” I stood from my chair.
My backpack had spilled some of its contents under my chair. When I crouched to scoop it all up, Miss Greta gasped. As exhausted as I was, I didn’t realize the back of my chair had a loose screw that hooked the hem of my shirt. So when I crouched, my shirt lifted.
There happened to be a bit of evidence on my sun-starved skin that Mama and Sloan were back together. He didn’t always leave marks, but that time, he did. I craved my teacher’s respect and there I was, unintentionally proving how worthless I was.
Very few things embarrassed me. Most of life’s little oops moments were no sweat off my brow. But that—Miss Greta getting a full view of my side—humiliated me. It felt like a flashing neon sign.
I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing.
She cleared her throat as I jerked the fabric down.
“Sam, what happened?”
Because I didn’t think anyone would see it, I hadn’t made up a lie. The first thing that popped into my mind was, “football.”
One look at her face, and I knew she didn’t buy my answer. She checked the door to make sure no one was listening. When she spoke, her voice was strained and quiet. “Is that the honest to God truth?”
Her blue gaze held mine, frantically searching, welling tears betraying her silent suspicions.
She saw me.
Her regard crumbled my walls in one fell swoop. I didn’t realize how hungry I was for a moment like that until it happened to me. I wanted someone—anyone—to see what I was incapable of showing and hear what I was incapable of saying.
The weight of what I carried finally crushed me. I couldn’t hold up my facade. I couldn’t keep my face straight. I couldn’t stay strong. Hell, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
I fell apart.
Right there on the black and white tile in the Language Arts room. She crouched down beside me as the second period bell rang.
I ended that school day curled up under a fleece blanket on a bean bag chair in Miss Simone’s office as Child Protective Services was called .
It was the dawn of our salvation.
Miss Greta and Miss Simone were good women—passionate for justice, full of love for the students, and mandated reporters.
And they reported those bruises like any decent human beings would do.
The following weeks were the most turbulent of my life. They passed in a blur. I lost track of the number of meetings I was in with adults who asked so many questions. My insides were numb to it all, empty. When they asked me point blank about my abuse, I couldn’t remember what had happened to me. Pretty sure the only thing I ever really disclosed was that Cooper and I were hungry. And that Sloan liked locking me in the coat closet.
Despite my lack of details, it didn’t take long for CPS to discover Mama’s severe drug and alcohol abuse problem and the resulting neglect of her children. When they knocked on our front door, Mama opened it—high as a kite. Next thing I knew, Mama and Sloan were escorted into the back of a police car, my possessions were gathered up into a big black trash bag, and the two of us were placed in emergency foster care.
Thankfully, we stayed with a kind elderly couple. A little eccentric, but good people. The go-to options—Cooper’s dad, Greg, or Randi’s family—wouldn’t take us.
I was relieved to leave home, but Cooper was devastated. I didn’t understand it.
For the first time in eighteen months, I felt like I could breathe. But Cooper was having daily meltdowns and tantrums and overall just being a big baby about the whole ordeal. I felt angry at him. Now, I realize Cooper was just doing his best to cope. He didn’t know what to do with his feelings so they spilled out and burned everyone in the vicinity. I should’ve been more patient with him.
We were different. I sealed feelings in, he forced them out. I built walls, he obliterated boundaries. I didn’t trust anyone, but he clung to every heartbeat that walked by. Those days strained our relationship as brothers.
Eventually, a permanent decision was made: we would finish out the school year then be relocated to the only place that ever felt like home.
Meadowbrook Ranch.
The end of May couldn’t come fast enough.
The only person I was sad to leave behind was Miss Simone. I found myself sitting in her office more times than I could count those final weeks. She always welcomed me. She had those squishy gel balls, and I played with one while we sat and chatted. Sometimes we talked about difficult things, and sometimes we just made small talk about school and our favorite colors and things you’d think wouldn’t matter to a thirteen-year-old boy. In my blur of existence, she was one person who made me feel seen.
My last day at Burton Falls Middle School, Miss Simone got misty-eyed. She gave me a huge box of paper, pens, journals, books about writing, a big fat thesaurus, and a dictionary. Over the last months, she and Miss Greta had come to know me as a writer. I didn’t even realize I was one. Not until Miss Greta handed me a pen and told me she believed in my words. Miss Simone tapped into that too, encouraging me to write my thoughts on days when I was overwhelmed.
She said, “When words feel big or too jumbled to speak, let paper be your safe space. It doesn’t have to be pretty—just let it be real.”
In a lot of ways, they gave me back my voice.
Maybe the rest of the world wouldn’t hear my words on paper.
But I heard them.
And that alone rebuilt a missing part of myself.
I had a voice, and I knew how to find it. It was muted by a lot of pain and loneliness, almost drowned out by all the storms in my life. But I could find it in a quiet space, on a blank page, leafing through a dictionary.
When I left Miss Simone’s office for the last time, she gave me a hug and whispered in my ear. “Write it out, sweet boy. Things will get better.”
So I did.