“It’s not about that!” I yell, squirming a
nd landing a lucky kick to his groin. “My ribs are bruised, you idiot.”
Immediately, he groans, turns pale, and falls over. Laughing, Blake lets me go, and I drop to my feet and double over myself, clutching my aching ribs.
“Bruised ribs?” Caleb asks concernedly from the living room, leaning against the bar that separates it from the kitchen.
“I had a bad run in with a set of stairs.”
He eyes me for a moment too long, his head cocked to the side as he examines me more closely.
“You fell down some stairs?” Disbelief is heavy in his voice.
“Yes,” I groan, leaning against the counter. Mom reaches into the cabinet where we keep the medicine and pulls down a bottle of painkillers. Her dog sniffs my face while I’m bent, then licks my cheek. At least one person in this house is being gentle with me. “It fuckin’ hurt, too.”
“Alex, language!” Mom says, fetching me a glass of water.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Take some medicine and then put a nickel in the swear jar.” She points to the jar almost brimming with coins on the bar. “Do they have a doctor at that fancy school? Did you get looked at?”
I feel myself squirming where I stand. I’m not used to this. This isn’t the first time I’ve ended up with a nasty set of bruised something-or-others. In a house like mine, it’s kind of … inevitable.
“They have a nurse.” I straighten and pop the ibuprofen she offers. Having lost interest, Blake and Mason begin wrestling with each other behind me. “But she’s really good.”
“Did she find out?” Spencer asks nonchalantly. He gets his own glass of water and sips it as he watches Blake and Mason.
“About what?”
“About your being a fake boy,” Caleb laughs.
“Yeah. But she’s not gonna tell. Woman solidarity and all that.” I make a mock cross sign over my chest before shooting a look across at my father, who’s drifted into the kitchen to give Mom a peck on the cheek. “You guys really aren’t bothered by this?” I ask them, gesturing to my hair.
Dad shrugs, but Mom says, “Honestly, it worried me at first. I thought we may have five sons instead of four sons and a daughter.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father pale and scurry out of the kitchen so quickly.
I make sure to raise my tone so he can still hear me over the sound of the rising volume on the television.
“Oh. No, I’m just pretending for school,” I say.
“Well, I’ll love you no matter what,” she says warmly, patting my hair. “Now go take a shower. You smell like an airplane.”
This unexpected twist has left me feeling lost in my own house.
I thought that eventually revealing the truth about my life at Bleakwood would be a huge weight off my shoulders, that getting this huge weight off my shoulders would help me shed the trauma I’ve faced there and help me separate it from who I really am.
But this casual way my family found out, the fact that it was never really a secret from them in the first place, it’s left me feeling more vulnerable than ever somehow.
The upstairs of the house has four bedrooms; one for Mom and Dad, one for Spencer and Caleb, one for Blake and Mason, and one for me.
My room is the smallest. Sure, I got mad about it some when I was younger, but it makes sense—I get my own room while my brothers have to share.
I’ve only been gone for a few months, but I feel like decades have passed since I put all the stickers on my bedroom door. I feel nervous somehow. It’s like a stranger’s room. My eyes pass over the different band stickers, the “no boys allowed” sign I made when I was twelve.
Just a few short years ago, I wouldn’t have let Alex from Bleakwood into this room.
Now I am Alex from Bleakwood.