Tethered (2 page)

There it was. The line I spoke to Luke about. I had one foot on the right side of the line and one foot on the wrong side of it. This was the third time this week I had found myself standing like this, with the line between my legs, but it had happened too many times over the years. The line got blurrier and blurrier every time I even poked a toe over it. If not careful, the line would dissolve, and so would so many other things. I knew this, yet I could not make myself pull away. I could not push him off of me and walk away. He would always find me again. He would always tug on that tether and I would always return.

Eventually, the line needed to be cut. Or we were all going to crash and burn.

I turned around and looked into those green eyes I fell in love with as a child, and spoke his name.

“Emmet.”

Book One

Chapter One

“My name is Emmy, and I don’t like your shirt, but your hair is pretty. What is your name?”

I looked down at my red and white striped shirt. What was wrong with it? My mom let me pick it out at K-Mart. I was lucky she even took me shopping because she was so tired so much anymore.

I looked at Emmy’s shirt. It was blue and had a ruffle down the front with gold buttons. I frowned, because I really did like her shirt better than mine.

“Don’t be sad,” she said, touching my arm. “I just don’t like the lines in shirts. They hurt my eyes.”

What a weird kid!

“What is your name?” she asked again.

“Donya Elisabeth Stewart,” I said quietly. Emmy was the first kid to really talk to me since the school day started. She was sitting right next to me at our table and we were eating snack. Well, she was eating snack, and a lot of the other kids were eating snack, but my mom didn’t give me money for snack time.

“Where is your snack, Donya Elisabeth Stewart?” Emmy asked as she looked at the empty space before me.

“I don’t have one,” I said and felt embarrassed.

Without a word, Emmy divided up her four cookies, gave me two and put her carton of chocolate milk between us. She kissed my cheek and then said “You can share with me, Donya Elisabeth Stewart.”

Hesitantly, I smiled at her. She was the nicest girl I ever met.

After that day, Emmy slept on the mat next to mine at quiet time, played with me at every playtime and shared her snack with me at every snack time. She was the first friend I had ever had and I really liked her. She was pretty with long wavy brown hair and she always wore pretty clothes and shoes. I even liked her mom when she came to pick Emmy up from school every day. She was really pretty too, but a little loud, not like my quiet mother.

My mother was late everyday picking me up from school. I was always the last kid to leave. Emmy and her mother Samantha stayed with me every day until my mom or dad arrived, but one day Sam asked my mom if it was okay if she picked me up with Emmy every afternoon.. She said she would take me back to their house, give me lunch with Emmy and let us play and have me home by dinner. It took my mom a couple of days to think about it, and I begged her and bugged her so much about it that she finally gave in. I didn’t have anything to do at home anyway. My mom was spending more and more time sleeping or watching television and less time with me. It was no fun to play with my toys by myself and I didn’t care too much about cartoons.

The first day when I was supposed to go home with Emmy, I was so excited that I got into trouble a few times with our teacher because I was talking too much. Samantha made us a nice lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, celery with peanut butter and we had cups of apple juice with it. It was so much better than the lunches I had at home, and I told Emmy and her mom that.

“What do you usually have at home?” Samantha asked me.

“Cereal,” I answered. “But if there’s no milk, I just eat it with my fingers. Sometimes there is bread and I’ll have toast.”

“But you don’t eat lunch every day,” Emmy reminded me and I agreed. I did not eat lunch every day.

“You need to eat more,” Samantha said. “You’re too skinny.”

“I don’t always have lunch to eat,” I said very quietly. Even at five, I knew that it was weird for me not to have food in the house. I felt ready to cry, because I felt so embarrassed. I wasn’t like other kids. I wasn’t like Emmy. Her mom and my mom weren’t alike either.

“Well, don’t worry about that,” Samantha said, tenderly caressing my wild hair. “You can eat lunch here every day, even on the weekends. If you can’t be here to eat lunch, I will send something to your house, okay?”

I nodded. I felt better, because she was very nice about it, and Emmy smiled at me and held my hand.

After lunch, we went outside to play. They had a big back yard with a swing set and a sliding board and a hanging tire. There was even a little playhouse that we could play in. My back yard only had dead grass. We played restaurant. We made mud pies and grass cakes and flower stew. We got super dirty. There was dirt caked under our nails, our knees were dirty and I know I had a few muddy streaks smeared on my cheek.

“Let’s take a break and swing,” Emmy said after we grew tired of cooking.

I followed her to the swings, but I didn’t know how to swing. I had only been on a swing a couple of times and I never learned how to swing myself. I sat down on mine and watched as Emmy began to swing. Her legs kicked out and pulled back again and again until she was swinging high.

“Don’t you know how to swing?” she called to me.

“No,” I said sadly.

She tried to explain it to me, and I tried to do as she said, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was frustrated and angry and sad because she was swinging and I wasn’t. The back door opened, and I expected to see Sam come outside, but instead a boy came out. I knew Emmy had brothers and sisters but I had never seen them until just then.

Even from across the yard and with his brown hair covering his eyes a little bit, I could see his green eyes. I had never seen anyone with green eyes before, and his were bright green. He looked right at me as he walked across the yard, his hands in his pockets. He was older than us, a big kid almost. I didn’t know if he was going to play with us or not, but I was feeling a little shy as I looked at him. I don’t know why I was so nervous about meeting him. I had butterflies in my chest and I wanted to stop looking at him, but I couldn’t.

“Emmet!” Emmy called as she swung high. “Push Donya on the swing! She doesn’t know how to swing by herself!”

He stopped a couple of feet away from me and looked at me.

“You don’t know how to swing?”

I shook my head.

“You have dirt on your face,” he said, and reached out and touched my cheek where the mud was streaked. His touch made my skin feel funny and the butterflies went crazy in my chest.

“I’ll teach you how to swing,” Emmet said and walked around me.

He told me how to move my legs and how fast. He reminded me to hold on to the chains no matter what.

“I’m going to push you for a little while until you get it,” he said. Then his hands were on my waist and I held my breath. “Here we go,” he said gently from behind me.

He gave me a small push and then another. I started to move my legs as he told me and he continued to push me. His hands were so soft on my back even though he was pushing me higher and higher.

“You’re doing it, you’re doing it!” Emmy cried out as I began to fly.

Eventually Emmet stopped pushing me and got on the swing on the other side of me. The three of us swung together for a long time. Emmy was first to stop and Emmet stopped soon after her. I wasn’t sure how to stop swinging when I was ready to get off, and before the swing could stop moving, I had let go of the chains and fallen to the ground. I wasn’t hurt, but I was embarrassed.

“I told you not to let go of the chains,” Emmet said as he helped me to my feet.

“I didn’t know how to stop,” I said quietly as I looked down at the ground.

“Well…that was one way of stopping,” he said. He plucked me in the forehead, gave me a grin and walked back to the house.

I stood there rubbing my forehead, watching him leave. Just before he went inside, he paused and gave me a long look. Then he shook his head and went inside.

*~*~*

I was seven years old and I was mad as hell. I had been riding Emmet’s skateboard, even though he told me not to, and I had fallen off. My knees were scraped and so were my elbows. I didn’t just fall off of the board because I was a terrible rider. I was pretty good and getting better all of the time. I fell off because the punk big kid from a few streets over pushed me off. Benny was such a bully. He was Emmet’s age but he was always picking on kids my age.

Emmet was my best friend’s older brother, but he was a lot like my brother, too. We argued a lot and he was always yelling at me not to touch his stuff, but like the skateboard, I always did anyway. Even though I had no business being on that skateboard, when Benny pushed me Emmet dropped the basketball he had been bouncing around in the street and took off after Benny.

“Don’t ever touch my sisters!” Emmet yelled after he bloodied Benny’s lip. Benny ran away crying while I tried hard not to cry. Boy did my skinned knees and elbows burn.

“Are you okay, Donya?” Emmy asked, bending over me. She pushed strands of loose hair off of my forehead.

“I hate that kid!” I snarled and pushed myself to my feet.

“Come on, brat,” Emmet said. He picked up the skateboard in one hand and took my hand with his other. “Mom will give you a Band-Aid.”

Emmy took my other hand and we headed across the grass to the house.

“What in the lord’s name happened to you?” Samantha Grayne asked with her hands on her hips. She was wearing a flowery apron that I really liked. I liked her aprons. She always looked like a TV mom with her perfect blonde hair and big green eyes. But she wasn’t like a TV mom. She was kind of loopy.

“Benny pushed her off of Emmet’s skateboard,” Emmy said, stomping a foot. “I hate him!”

“I told you to stay off of my board anyway,” Emmet said, plucking me square in the forehead.

“Ow,” I murmured, rubbing the spot.

“Did you kick his ass?” Samantha asked her son.

“Yes, I kicked his ass,” he said, standing up straighter.

“Don’t curse,” she admonished and then put her hand on my shoulder. “Come on, honey. Let’s go get you cleaned up. You should feel blessed that you have a brother like Emmet.”

Blessed? He just plucked me in the forehead!

I stayed for dinner, like I did most days after school. I had my own place at the table, between Emmy and her dad Fred at the head of the table. He talked to me like I was one of his kids. Besides Emmy and sometimes Emmet, he was my favorite. My other “brothers and sisters” were okay, but they were so much older than me. The oldest brother, Freddy was about to graduate from college already. Charlotte was only a couple of years younger than him and Lucy was about to turn sixteen, so she was a little bit closer in age to Emmy, and Emmet and I, but honestly, I didn’t understand those mystifying teenage years. So, I didn’t spend much time with her. I spent most of my time with Em and Em.

After dinner, Samantha packed up a bag full of food for me to take home for my parents. My dad wouldn’t be home from work until it was almost my bedtime and my mom didn’t cook much. She didn’t clean much either. She didn’t do much of anything but sleep and watch television. Sam said my mom was sick, but I never saw any tissues or anything, so I wasn’t sure about that.

Sam told Emmet to walk me home. He argued. He was tired of me and Emmy. He put up with us all afternoon and even beat up Benny for me. Why couldn’t Lucy walk me home, he had whined.

“Boy, if you don’t pick up that bag and walk that girl home I will slap your head sideways,” Samantha threatened.

Emmet huffed and he puffed and picked the bag up.

“Can I walk with them?” Emmy asked, hanging by the door.

“You need to go take a bath and get ready for bed,” her mother said. “You look like hell. How do you get so dirty? What happened to your hair anyway?”

Emmy rolled her eyes. “I like my hair in a side ponytail, mom. You always put it where I don’t like it. So I fixed it.”

“Well, it looks stupid,” Samantha spat out.

“Your shirt looks stupid,” Emmy sassed. “Nobody likes stripes anyway.”

“Let’s go,” Emmet growled, snatching up my hand. We stepped outside and the door closed behind us. I could hear Emmy and her mom arguing a little bit.

Emmet was quiet. He was probably still mad about the skateboard and then having to walk me home. He always got stuck walking me home. It made my chest feel funny to know that he was mad at me.

“I’m sorry you always have to walk me home,” I said quietly.

He looked down at me with green eyes. “It’s not your fault.”

“I come over every day. I can maybe not come over so much and you won’t have to walk me home every day.”

We were quiet again until we were almost to my house.

“You have to keep coming over,” he said when he started to talk again.

“Why?” I asked.

We stopped at the end of the walkway to my front door. He handed me the bag. It was a little heavy, but I tried to pretend that I could handle it.