Obsessed(4)

With his light features similar to ours, he fit into the family to the point strangers thought he was related by blood. None of us corrected them either (though I itched to). In fact, Dad felt like he finally had a son. It was in the way they stared at each other, silently communicating words I didn’t know; their bond was tighter than anything I’d seen before. They fit together, like two puzzle pieces, and from day dot it was like…Aston just belonged.

I wasn’t jealous. We did everything together, so there was nothing to feel jealousy over. I did the same things I’d done before, only with a boy close to my age to share it with. We grew closer during the first summer. We camped, fished, and rode our quads in the muddy earth of the Pacific Northwest, down mountain trails and through farmlands. I taught him how to swim in the lake, and rescued him from drowning half a million times. He clutched me to him in the water every time I pulled him out, an arm around my waist, his frightened eyes on mine (and I liked these moments because his touch felt like fire).

“Elise!” Dad had growled one time, catching us. “Don’t you take Aston in the deep end again! You know better than that.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, pretending to blink back tears as he observed me. I was an expert at putting on a show for Dad.

His temper quickly faded. “It’s alright, butterfly. Just…be very careful. Aston’s new to all this, alright? Give him some time.”

But I didn’t. Aston waited until Dad was gone before turning to me and whispering, “Do it again! I need to know how to swim.”

“But Dad said not to!”

“Dad won’t know. We’ll be careful.”

“Just wait until he puts you in classes.”

“I don’t want classes. I want you to teach me, Elise.” Well, shit, I felt special when he said that. “Swimming is freedom, and I want to feel it.”

Aston was persuasive when he wanted to be. He had these puppy eyes that melted me into submission. So I started teaching him again. Over and over again because Aston wouldn’t take no for an answer. His fear never stopped him from trying, from excelling, from perfecting. We snuck our lessons until he was better than me in the water, and his confidence skyrocketed.

“See! You did it all on your own!” I hollered excitedly when he did his first lap around me.

He grinned, filled with pride. “I wouldn’t have done it without you.”

*

We stayed up at night around the campfire, listening to Dad’s fabricated stories of giants and monsters, and I clutched Aston’s hand when it got too scary. Then we’d munch on our S’mores until it was bedtime. I’d sneak into his tent with my flashlight after the parents fell asleep. It was a flashlight with star and planet patterns in the light that we used to shine in the top of our tent, getting lost in the fake constellation while we chatted in hushed tones.

“Do you really think there are monsters?” I asked him once, my fear evident in my voice as I reflected on the images of tonight’s hair-raising tale.

He turned his head and stared at me, inches away from my face, enough for me to feel his breaths against my skin and have tingles from it. “Not the kind you think about,” he answered quietly.

I turned my head and looked back at him. “What kind are out there?”

The features on his face hardened. “The kind you can see in plain sight.”

I purposely didn’t answer him. That was the end of our conversation. He fell asleep shortly after and I admired his face for some time before I pushed closer against his body, reflecting on his words. I knew what he was talking about. The monsters that he lived with. The monster that was his father rotting in jail for the rest of his days.

If I thought Daddy’s profession aged me faster, I was wrong. It was Aston that really drove the nail in the coffin. The way he looked at the world, the words he used when he spoke; he was old in spirit and young in age. He influenced my way of thinking, he made me see things in a different light. I loved him for it. For being here. For filling a space I never knew was empty.

I hated to think it, but his abhorrent upbringing had brought him to us, and in a way I was glad for it. I don’t know what kind of girl I’d have grown up to be without him there. It scared me often, that thought. I thanked whatever divine being, or just pure chance – whatever it was – for bringing him to us. And then I felt horribly guilty for it. Because he had a family too once upon a time, and they were buried beneath the earth and that pain must have been indescribable. He never opened up about it and he never spoke of them. Never. And I would never ask.