Dead to You by Lisa McMann

I’m getting frustrated now. “I look at pictures, and people tell me stories, and sometimes I think I can remember things. Little bits of things. But so far, that’s not very much.”
    “How old were you?”
    “A little older than you.”
    “I would remember everybody,” she says, and I have nothing to defend myself with. Gracie tilts her head and looks at me. “Does your head still hurt?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s not cool.”
    I laugh. “No. It’s not. I think if we stop talking, it will feel better.”
    She shrugs, and as the snowy, late-afternoon light turns dusky, she leans up against me and links her arm with mine, and I smile at her. Later, she crawls into my lap and we just sit like that, like I’ve got this little warm, fuzzy-headed package in my arms, and we watch TV until the marathon ends.

CHAPTER 23
     
    In bed at night, Blake and I don’t talk, we just listen to Mama and Dad arguing in their room next door. Sometimes I catch words. They’re talking about money, and adding a bedroom. And about me and school. Mama’s in my court all the way.
    “Good job,” Blake says. The sarcasm is obvious.
    “What?”
    “You did it again, and you’ve only been here, what, ten days?”
    “What are you talking about?” I don’t like this. Blake’s been too quiet lately. He hid out in the bedroom all day today. Playing depressing music.
    “Got them fighting again. Like after you left.”
    I roll over and stare at the wall in the dark. This room is so tiny, I’m feeling claustrophobic. I can’t stand being in here with him baiting me like that.
    I try to like him, try to be nice, but he’s got such a huge chip on his shoulder about me. I start to wonder if he’ll ever get over it.
    “You were four years old,” I say. “How can you even remember the fighting?”
    “You were seven. How can you not remember being abducted?”
    “Lay off.”
    “You.”
    I clench my jaw, fuming silently. He can’t stand not having the last word. I let him have it. This time.
    Mama and Dad’s arguing fades, and I fall into one of those hard sleeps where, when you wake up, you don’t know where you are.
    In the morning they go to church, but Mama lets me stay home. “My head still hurts,” I say. That excuse won’t work much longer. But I’m worried. Worried they’re going to try to make me go to school tomorrow. I end up wandering the house, listening for where the floorboards creak.
    It’s nice having the house to myself. I snoop around, looking at things without somebody watching me. I like that. I do. It’s the most at home I ever feel here. And it’s cool that they trust me not to take anything. I wouldn’t do that. Nothing like that.
    After a while I get bored, so I go downstairs and picture where my bed will be once I get a new bedroom. There’s no way I’m staying with Blake. I’d rather sleep on the floor down here than do that.
    When they get home from church, Dad tells me to get my coat. We’re going to the lumberyard to get wood for my new room. Way to go, Mama, or church, or whatever it was that convinced him. Probably church, since he wasn’t budging with Mama last night. Go, Jesus.
    It’s sort of cool to be out with Dad, just him and me. I never had a dad. I mean, not that I can remember. We grab lunch first, and we talk. About sports and the news, which I know nothing about, and about what I want to be, what I want to do when I get out of high school.
    That stops me. I haven’t spent much time thinking about what I want to be. More like who I am. I’m stuck in the past, trying to figure out who I am, what I came from, before I can know what I want to be. But Dad gets me thinking. We don’t discuss school, but I know that’s why he’s asking. And I realize I have no interests. I’m a chameleon, just blending in. No goals but survival.
    We haul the lumber into the garage, move a ton of junk around in the basement to clear the space, and then we build the frame. I have no idea how to