Well…I can tell you because of him.
I can tell you every day from the day I came into this world because that very same night—or it might’ve been the night before—my father cut off his finger. I can retell every night we ran and every night we swam. I can tell you every moment until right now while I sit in my room typing this paper.
I know I’m not following the fiction-writing rules by breaking the fourth wall and talking to you as if you here beside me, but it helps this way. It helps trick me into thinking once I tell you the truth, it will be forgotten the same way I’ve forgotten so many precious things. It helps pretending I’m not writing this down, so there is no permanent scar on the secrets I promised to keep.
So with child amnesia and adulthood slowly stealing my past, how can I sit here confidently and tell you my tale?
I’ll tell you again.
It’s because of my favourite thing of all.
The thing I’d beg for, the thing I’d do anything he asked for, the cherished time of day that no one could steal.
A story.
A bedtime story meant to lull a frightened babe to sleep but turned into something so precious and coveted, I’d get goosebumps whenever he agreed.
You see, he was my only form of TV, book, radio, internet, or cartoon.
Without him, I would know nothing; I wouldn’t have grown through the adventures he gave me. I’d still be a child born to monsters.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I share his bedtime stories, I first need to introduce him.
The Boy.
That was my first word, you know.
He said it was because as a baby I would’ve heard my parents calling him Boy. They never used his name—probably never knew it. And because I was their little monster, unchanged yet by what he would make me become, I called him what they called him.
Boy.
A thing not a someone.
A possession.
I don’t remember, but apparently the first night I called him that, he’d left me in a hurry. He’d stalked the forest on his own until his famous temper cooled, and he returned to me in the tent he’d stolen and the sleeping bag we shared.
I hadn’t been sleeping, waiting for him to return with tears in my eyes and my ribbon wrapped around my fingers so tight they’d turned blue to match the satin.
He’d sat cross-legged in front of me, glowered with his endless dark eyes, and thudded his chest with his fist. “Ren,” he’d told me. “Ren, not Boy.”
It didn’t occur to me until much later why he didn’t have a last name. That night, he wouldn’t let me sleep until I’d wrapped my infant tongue around those three little letters.
Apparently, once I’d mastered it, I never shut up.
I said it all the time, to the point he’d slap his hand over my mouth to stop me.
Even without his bedtime stories filling in the blanks and painting pictures I’ve forgotten, I can honestly say Ren is my favourite word.
I love every history attached to it.
I love every pain lashed to it.
I love the boy it belongs to.
I don’t know if Ren looked the same when he was ten as he did when I started to remember him, but I can say his hair never changed from its tangled mess of sable and sun. Dark brown in winter and copper bronze in summer, his hair touched his shoulders one year then cut short the year after. But the tangled mess was always the same, shoved out of his coal-coloured eyes with nine fingers not ten, his nose slightly crooked from being broken, his cheekbones so sharp they were cruel.
Even as a boy, he was beautiful.
Too beautiful to carry the depth of suspicion and guardedness he never fully shed.
Too beautiful to be responsible for the wake of misdeeds left in his path.
Too beautiful to be normal.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
REN
* * * * * *
2001
FOR FIVE MONTHS, we lived in that tent.
We walked to new campsites when we wanted a change or if I felt we’d overstayed. We never settled too close to civilization, and I always ensured we had enough supplies to last two weeks completely self-sufficient.
Della grew every day, to the point where she was too heavy to carry along with my backpack for long distances, and had to trot awkwardly beside me for short lengths.
The longer we chose trees to house us and stayed alive by hunting and foraging, the less fit for society I became.
I adored the open air, freedom, and ability to do whatever I wanted whenever I pleased.
I loved jumping in the river naked. I loved napping under a bush with the sun kissing my skin. I loved being quiet and not having to fight to survive.
Life away from people was the easiest path I’d ever chosen, and I wouldn’t give that up.