Every day until Sam’s birthday felt like three. I couldn’t help but watch the clock every period, counting them down until Sunday when Sam would turn eighteen. My leg would bounce up and down as I counted in my head how many hours were left. Rain and Carter made fun of me, making whipping sounds and jerking their hands as they’d walk by me in the halls.
I didn’t even defend myself. I was whipped.
And I didn’t mind in the least.
Saturday was the worst day of all. Dad must have anticipated this, as he put me to work in the yard all day. First we cleaned out the chicken coop. Next we started prepping our half-acre garden to be planted in a few weeks. After that he had me help him build a nice and sturdy staircase for Sam to get up to the motorhome. Lastly he had me mow the lawn, even though it was barely starting to grow with it only being the end of March.
I was grateful for all the work Dad made me do. I collapsed into bed that night and didn’t wake up until Mom pounded on my door at eight the next morning, yelling at me to get dressed so we could make the 8:50 ferry.
Mom and Dad put Jordan in charge of the other kids for the day. Normally Jordan would have complained, but she was nearly as excited as I was about Sam coming home.
Home.
The drive to the ferry felt like it took forever. I cursed the forty mile-per-hour roads as we wove between the towering evergreens. Not that it would have mattered if we could have driven faster. The ferry would still leave at 8:50 either way.
We finally loaded on the boat and headed up to the passenger deck. It was pretty quiet, though picking up a bit from the dead of winter. I spotted a few tourists, taking pictures out the windows at the shoreline of Orcas and the marina just off from the ferry dock.
Leaving Mom and Dad to sit and talk at a table, I wandered out onto the deck that wrapped around the boat. Resting my elbows on the painted green railing, I took in my surroundings.
Living in a place like Orcas for so long, you eventually stopped seeing the beauty that was always around you. There weren’t many places like this in the world that had as many miles of shoreline and ocean view. You couldn’t drive long anywhere on the island and not see ocean. Ancient trees hung out over the water, some threatening to cave into the ocean, others blown that way by the wind into permanent position. There had to be at least five hundred trees to every person on the island.
Hearing the engines kick up, the boat pulled away from the dock and started out across the water toward Shaw Island. Dozens of small islands fell behind us as the ferry moved slowly through the water. Blakely, Lopez, Decatur. It suddenly seemed a shame I had never been to more of the small islands. There were only four islands in the San Juan Islands that had ferry service, but you could always take a small boat or kayak to the smaller ones, and there were hundreds of them.
I decided that summer that I’d take Sam camping on one of them. We’d load up two of Carter’s kayaks and just take off.
There was a reason people paid crazy amounts for property, groceries, and ferry rides to be out on the islands. There were few places on the Earth that were more beautiful.
The ferry ride to Anacortes went surprisingly fast. I actually had to run down to the van since I wasn’t paying attention and hadn’t realized we were suddenly docked.
And then my parents and I were headed to Auburn and toward Sam.
Was I supposed to have some sort of romantic reunion planned? Suddenly I wondered if I was supposed to have thought of all kinds of cheesy things to say, or rather write. But I hadn’t thought of anything. All I had gotten her for her birthday was a framed picture of the two of us, the one I had snapped on my birthday. It didn’t seem like near enough. But I’d had too many bigger things on my mind to come up with anything better.
There were three words I wanted to say to her as a present, three words I’d wanted to say to her for forever.
Would she ever let me say them?
After two hours of driving, the GPS on Mom’s phone said we were only half a mile away. I started getting a little worried as we pulled into the neighborhood. It was mostly trailer homes, lawns filled with broken down cars, broken outdoor furniture, and mangy looking dogs lying on porches. This was where Sam had been living the last six weeks?
“Oh my,” Mom breathed as she took it all in.
Crap.
And then we pulled in front of the address Sam had given me. It was one of the smaller trailers, looking dirty and half broken down. The porch sagged and looked ready to cave in. The lawn was filled with winter-dead weeds, a dozen or so empty cans and beer bottles lying in front of it.
Crap.
Dad put the van in park and I hopped out as soon as it stopped moving. My heart was hammering as I walked up to the front door. Just as I was about to knock, the door swung open and there was Sam.
Her eyes locked with mine and the both of us froze, just standing there looking at each other.
I’d hoped that Sam might gain some weight, living with an adult who should be putting food on the table every day, but Sam looked skinner than ever. Her eyes looked sunken, like she hadn’t slept since she left the island.
A single tear slipped down her face before she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around my neck. Her entire frame trembled. I wrapped my arms around her and never wanted to have to let go.
“I want to go home,” she said, her voice cracking. I felt her tears slip down her face onto my chest.
I backed away just a bit, pressing my lips to hers, everything inside of me hurting.
The whole situation just felt ten times worse when her lips didn’t taste like anything.
Where is your dad? I signed as she took half a step away, wiping her tears from her cheeks.
Her face went hard and angry as she stepped to the side, letting me see into the trailer. And I saw him there, lying on a couch, totally passed out, three beer bottles resting on the floor.
“He’s been wasted since yesterday,” she said, her voice hard. “He probably won’t even remember that I was ever here when he comes to. If he wakes up.”
“Come on, Samantha,” Mom said as she and Dad walked up to the porch. “Jake and Johnson will get your things.”
Sam just nodded, pointing to a small pile of things by the front door. She walked back to the van, Mom’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. Sam wrapped her arms around Mom’s waist, leaning her head on Mom’s shoulder.
“Crap,” Dad said in a low voice as we stepped inside and started picking up Sam’s things. “What a dump.”
A dump was right. There was garbage everywhere, stains on the carpet, on the walls, on the ceiling. The place just needed to be burned to the ground. It had to be a health hazard.
“Think we should wake him and let him know we’re taking Sam home?” Dad asked, hesitating before leaving.
I glanced at Mr. Garren. There was a line of drool coming out of the left side of his mouth onto the couch. He snored softly.
I shook my head and walked back out to the van.
Dad and I put Sam’s three small bags in the back of the van. I climbed in the first row of passenger seats next to Sam and slid the door closed behind me. None of us said anything as we pulled away from the curb and made our way back to the freeway. After a few minutes, Sam laid her head in my lap and closed her eyes like she was trying to hold something bad and breakable in.
I didn’t know what to say and it didn’t feel right to say anything in front of my parents. So I just ran one of my hands over her hair, and held one of her hands securely in my other.
As my dad pulled the van into Costco in Burlington, I signed to Sam, You okay?
She just stared vacantly out the window as we parked.
We all piled out of the van and grabbed two shopping carts on our way inside. Sam held my hand as we followed my parents through the aisles. If Sam wasn’t acting so out of it, she might have seen my parents whispering to each other, grabbing a few articles of clothes for her, and grabbing other things like shampoo, girl
things, and a whole extra stock pile of food just for her.
Sam may not have had parents to take care of her for the last eight months, but she had them now.
By the time we all got to the ferry at six that night, Sam seemed to be feeling better. She had livened up a bit and talked to Mom the whole ferry ride home about prom dresses, hair and make-up. They made plans to go off-island again with Jordan in two weeks to go shopping.
I couldn’t help but smile as I watched the two of them together. Sam really was family.
We backed the van into the driveway and Dad honked the horn for everyone to get outside and help haul things in. Sam nearly got mauled to death by everyone when they saw her. I saw how tears pooled in her eyes as she hugged them all back.
And when we walked into the house, we found the entire place decorated with pink, orange, and white balloons and streamers. All the younger siblings had spent most of the day getting ready for Sam. Jordan and Jamie had baked a cake and Joshua had organized a bunch of birthday games. Tears really did stream down Sam’s cheeks when she saw it all.
But around nine, Mom gave the knowing smile, and gave me the “go ahead” nod to take Sam out to see her big surprise.
I shouldered two of Sam’s bags, and we crossed the yard hand in hand.
“You have no idea how good it feels to be back on the island,” she said as we slowly crossed the damp grass. She let her eyes slide closed, her face upturned slightly. “I never would have guessed I’d miss it so much.”
I pressed a kiss to her temple as we hesitated outside the door to the motorhome.
I never would have guessed how much I could miss you.
“Home sweet home,” she chuckled as she opened her eyes. She got a huge smile when she saw the stairs Dad and I had built. “Such handy boys,” she teased. I just shrugged and gave a smile.
It seemed like it took her forever, but she finally opened the door to the motorhome and stepped inside.
“Oh my…” she trailed off when she flipped the light on and took everything in. Her face was filled with pure wonder, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open just slightly. “What…?”
Mom, I signed.
“This…” she struggled to put how she was feeling into words. “This is amazing. It looks totally different. Everything feels so… clean!”
I gave a silent laugh, feeling like I might burst from how happy I felt for her. I knew it wasn’t enough to erase all the bad she’d experienced over the last six weeks. Heck, over the last year, but I hoped it was enough to give her something to look forward to in the weeks and months to come.
Mom worked her butt off fixing it up, I wrote on our notebook. It felt so good to have it out again. Dad too. It should be tight as a tin can by now.
“This is so amazing,” she said again, wandering back toward her room. “This looks like an actual bedroom now, not just a frumpy closet.”
I followed her back, wrapping my arms around her from behind as she took it in. Resting my chin on her shoulder, she placed her palm against my cheek.
“Jake,” she said, her voice filling with emotion. “You and your family have been amazing to me. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She turned in my arms then, her chocolate eyes meeting mine. There were a million emotions behind her eyes, but none of them were the sadness or anger that had been there earlier that day.
There was just hope, joy, appreciation, and I hoped… love.
She pressed her lips to mine, slowly melting into me, and me into her.
It was perfect moments like that that made all the bad ones worth living through.
And you’re the best thing that has ever or ever will happen to me.
23 hours since Sam came home
Sam threw a rock out into the water, her hair blowing all around her face. Since we’d gotten home I hadn’t pressured her into talking about what had happened while she was with Mike, but I sensed that Sam had something to get off of her chest.
She threw one more rock out into the ocean and turned and walked back to where I sat on the rocky beach. She sank next to me, resting her forearms on her knees.
Without any prompting from me, she answered the question I was silently asking.
“It was pretty bad,” she said, her eyes staying glued in the direction of the water, though they looked glazed over, like she was seeing the past six weeks again. “That trailer was disgusting. Everything was filthy, not much of anything worked. I didn’t think it could get much worse after living in the motorhome for so long, but this was so bad. You got nothing more than a drizzle out of the kitchen sink. The toilet plugged every time you tried to flush it. You could get hot water for maybe three minutes. And there was mold everywhere.”
She took a big sigh, shaking her head as her jaw clenched. “I slept on this sleeping bag in the tiny dining area, I was too afraid of that disgusting couch. There wasn’t anywhere else for me. It was dirty and smelly. But it would have been bearable if it hadn’t have been for Mike.”
I didn’t want to hear the rest, to have all those blanks filled in. I’d wondered every second Sam was gone what was happening to her, but suddenly I didn’t want to know.
“I don’t think he was sober more than twenty-four hours while I was there.” Her eyes fell to the rocks beneath us. She picked up a handful of small stones and threw them out into the water. They fell with a soft plink, sending endless ripples out to mix with the waves. “We had no food in the house, but there were always more than enough six packs around.
“He’d come back to the trailer from the bar with a different girl almost every night. His bedroom was only across the eight foot living room from where I slept.” Sam gave an obvious shutter. “It was…” she trailed off, her eyes sliding closed. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders as she shook her head. “Sickening. And it was every night.”
My fingers balled into fists.
“And he wanted me to be his little slave. He yelled at me all hours of the day to clean this, cook that up. I could only get homework done after he’d pass out or when he was at the bar. One time I tried telling him that I had an essay to finish and he slapped me and told me not to talk back to him. Flat out slapped me.”
Call the police! I signed, rage and revenge filling me.
“No, Jake,” she said with a sign, shaking her head. “I don’t want to have to deal with him anymore. I just want to be done with him. And it was only the once, about four days before you came to get me. I thought it would be easier to wait the last few days out than to stir up an investigation. I just wanted to come home.”
I looked at Sam, she finally meeting my eyes with her last few words. I brought my fingers up, tracing the very last shadows of a bruise on her cheek. I leaned forward, pressing my lips to hers.
I didn’t ever want to have to let her go again. I never wanted to not be there to fight guys like Mike off.
“I just had to keep reminding myself that six weeks wasn’t forever,” she said quietly. “And I just kept telling myself that you were going to be there when that six weeks was over. You kept me sane.”
This time it was Sam who leaned in and pressed her lips to mine.
“I dropped my History textbook on his nuts the night after he hit me,” Sam said with a chuckle as she backed away. “While he was passed out. He couldn’t walk straight for a day and a half later and had no idea what had happened.”
A silent laugh rumbled around my chest. Soon I was laughing so hard I was on my back, hugging Sam into my side.
2 days since everything fell into place
Sam might not have been the most popular girl in school but neither of us could have guessed how much she was missed while she was gone. She was mauled when we got back to school. I thought almost everyone in the school came up to her, hugged her and said welcome back. Well, everyone except Norah. Sam was practically glowing as she walked down the halls at school.
We easily fell back into our routine over the next three we
eks. Classes went about as usual. Sam worked harder than ever to keep her grades perfect. She was still on track to be Valedictorian. We continued to work at sign language. I was actually getting better at it than Sam was. Guess all my hours with Kali were finally paying off. Kali had moved back out just two weeks after Sam’s return.
And Sam was just like another one of the family, just one that lived outside and I made out with. She ate every meal with us, spent her evenings studying with the rest of the kids at the dining table or lounged out on the living room floor.
One day we both got a big envelope from the University of Washington, both saying we had been accepted. Sam got her full ride scholarship. We’d spent hours online looking at student housing. That picture I’d had of the two of us down the road in college was looking a little more solid.
The day came at the end of May that I was instructed not to go upstairs as Sam and Jordan got ready for prom with Mom’s help. I hung out on the couch downstairs, prepping myself for at least an hour of hanging out in my tux while the girls got ready.
A knock on the door a half hour later brought me to my feet and I opened it to find Rain.
“Hey man!” he said, clasping my one hand and pounding me on the back with the other. “You look sharp Hayes!”
I lifted my chin at him as I stepped away. You too.
“Thanks! So I’m assuming the ladies are upstairs prepping for the night?” he said as he closed the door behind him and flopped down on a couch.
I nodded and grabbed a notebook from the coffee table. I’ve been exiled from setting foot on those stairs.
“Best to heed their warning,” Rain said, his face suddenly serious. “River just about clawed my eyes out for trying to use the bathroom while she was doing her hair just before I left the house.”
Who’s she going with?
“Just a group of girls boycotting having to go with a date,” he said, rolling his eyes. I wondered if he knew River’s secret yet. He had to have his suspicions.
Carter finally gave up then?