We Are Us

Once I start to deal, he sits down across from me. “What’s your name?”

“Poppy.”

“I’m Gavin,” he says, watching my movements. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

He regards me skeptically. “You don’t look thirteen.”

I’ve always been on the shorter side of average, and while other girls my age have started filling out, I barely have even a suggestion of curves. “How old are you?”

“I’m fourteen.”

“Well, you don’t look your age either,” I shoot back. He looks older, actually.

Gavin is tall, and while I don’t see any scruff on his jaw, there is a quiet maturity in the thick ridge of his brow line and the calm sweep of his stare.

My gaze lingers too long on Gavin’s face, the first stirrings of attraction taking me by surprise. I’ve never felt this way before, jittery and tingly. A little bit breathless. Because of a boy.

My tongue is unwieldy inside my mouth as I force myself to explain the rules of the game, my fingers fumbling over the cards. Once there are seven in front of each of us, I quickly position the remaining deck down in the middle.

Removing an unwanted card from my own hand, I place it face up beside what remains of the deck, and take a new card from the top. Then I motion for Gavin to do the same. Talk, Poppy. Say something. Something besides the rules of a stupid card game. “I’ve never seen you at school before.”

“I started at West Sackett last week.”

“Oh. I’m at East. I started last month.”

This nature preserve acts as a dividing line between the two school districts within our town. Gavin must live on the other side. I haven’t been here long enough to know if there’s much of a difference between the two.

For a while, we focus on the game. But as I deal out another hand, I ask, “How are you liking it?”

He studies his cards. “School’s all right, I guess.”

There’s a reluctance to Gavin’s tone. A defensiveness, too. As if he’s used to telling people things are fine when they’re really not.

It’s a habit I recognize, because I do it too.

He looks up and our eyes catch, a tenuous line of co

Because they will.

Gavin wins our next game, gathering the cards before I do. His shuffle is awkward at first, but after a few tries, they make a waterfall noise as the bridge collapses within his hands. “How long are you allowed to stay out here?” I notice his shoulders rising up toward his ears with each word, like he’s guarding himself against disappointment if I give the wrong answer.

I glance away from him reluctantly, squinting up at the patches of sky visible through the trees. My mom works at a dentist’s office, but spends most afternoons on the couch, sipping wine and watching reality TV that’s as far from our reality as we are from the moon. As long as I’m back before dark, which is about when Sadie wanders out of her room to poke around the kitchen, they won’t even notice I’m gone. “Not for another hour or so. You?”

Gavin’s shoulders drop back down, the crease that had gathered between his brows easing. “I have time,” he says.

The relief in his tone is as comforting as a warm flame, though it also gives the impression that Gavin has even less supervision than I do. “Where did you move from?” I ask, arranging my cards. I have two pairs.

“Vermont. But before that we lived in Oklahoma and Texas. Maine for a couple of years. Then here last month.”

Co

He scratches at his neck with fingernails bitten to the quick, the tips of his ears turning pink. “No. My parents just liked to move a lot.”

There is tension between us that didn’t exist a moment ago and I hurry to erase it, offering up details I don’t usually share. “I was born in Massachusetts. Me and my sister. But my mom said she wanted a fresh start, so she moved us here two months ago.”

He makes a noncommittal grunt. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

My hand stills as I discard a Jack. “What do you mean?”

He picks it up. “My mom used to say that, too. But then we’d move to a new place and the only thing that changed was our address. After a while, it felt pretty pointless.” He glares at the cards in his hands before reluctantly meeting my eyes. “None of my parents’ fresh starts worked. They finally gave up. I don’t live with them anymore.”

My stomach twists in empathy. Years ago, a neighbor who was all too aware of just how frequently Sadie and I were left alone had called the police. A social worker showed up and took us away. For too long, before my mom got clean and moved us here, Sadie and I were shuffled back and forth between a group home and relatives we barely knew.

My mom still drinks. And our house now isn’t in great shape—the roof leaks, the water never gets above lukewarm, and the front steps look like they’re about to collapse into a pile of splintered wood. But anything is better than living with strangers, wondering if we’d ever see our mom again.

“Sometimes they come back,” I say. At least… physically. There is a part of my mom that never returned. A part I haven’t seen in so many years I’m begi

My voice is soft, gentle. But Gavin’s blue eyes cloud over anyway, his mouth pressing into a horizontal line as he shakes his head. “I’m not holding my breath.”