Chapter Text
She's a hollow shell, the place between her ribcage filled with yawning emptiness instead of a pumping heart, her veins containing no moving blood. She's a disastrous thing, pieced together by trembling hands and whispered voices that belong to the creatures in the trees or ARE the trees--she's never been quite sure which one. Her brain can only register the faintest of memories and thoughts outside of the moments she lives in, and fear remains her constant companion and adversary. Sometimes she thinks that there was nothing before the fear.
But that's not true. Because before she became a pretty, empty carcass, before she was tucked into the center of Cabeswater and the Greywaren's inscrutable dreams--she was more. She'd had a name, and it hadn't been Orphan Girl. She'd had a story, albeit not a pleasant one.
She had been more.
And now she is nothing.
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Born and bred in Henrietta. It was a nasty phrase, something that got lodged in her throat and stuck in her teeth when it finally managed to claw its way out. To be born in Henrietta was to become Henrietta, and the thought always pained her more than anything else. She didn't want to belong to a town so full of hidden monsters. It felt like she would catch that monstrosity if she gazed too long at her surroundings, if she let it seep into her blood like she knew it would eventually. Or maybe it was already in her blood, lying dormant.
As a small child, she'd had an insurmountable amount of hope that things would get better, that one day she would claw her way out of the weed-choked yard of her trailer park home and walk away, unscathed and stronger. Oh, how she had hoped. But hope was a very hard thing to cling to when at age seven, you were given your first bloody lip for walking in on your dad shooting up. Hope was a very foreign thing to a little girl who had to wear long sleeves in the summer to hide the bruises that never completely faded.
There was only darkness, for a while, until one day she took her rusted, hand-me-down bike and pedaled hard and fast away from her home, fear pounding inside of her in time with her heartbeat. It was a different kind of fear, the fear that makes you run for all you're worth even though you know the consequences will be much worse when you return to what you were running from. That terror consumed her until she could barely breathe, gasping against the handle bars as her white blonde hair beat her in the face, a stinging reprimand. She was on the other side of the trailer park, then, a place she had never been allowed to go.
There was a thick barbed wire fence to her right, nearly obscured by tall brown weeds, and to her left were three trailers practically stacked on one another. They were newer model double-wides, and beside the first two, there were newer cars, their paint glittering. Her dad's car had looked like that once before he wrecked it in a drunken stupor.
She slowed her bike and looked at the last house, which was shaded by a huge oak tree that seemed almost reluctant to do its job--the porch was out of its protection by only a few inches. And on the porch sat a boy.
He was a tan thing, with peeling skin and knobbly knees connected to long legs and a thin, angular torso almost as elegant as his face. He had a fine-boned Henrietta face, the kind she herself had, but it was odd to see it reflected back at her. Not because she hadn't seen one like it--she did at school and in her own mirror--but the boy's face was much like her own because it held the same ache she had deep within her, an ache she couldn't even put a name to. The boy had a wariness about him, his shoulders hunched forward and his pale blue eyes trained and steady. His bare torso was peppered with green and yellow bruises, and beneath his flop of hair-- hair the same color as the weeds by the barb wire fence-- she saw a deep cut on his eyebrow that was already turning purple.
He was a pitiful sight, too skinny and too unhappy for a child no more than eight years old. She came to a complete halt and climbed off of her bike in a daze, letting it fall to the ground with a solid noise that made her flinch. The boy continued to stare at her, his legs crossed in front of him and a sweating glass of ice water clutched firmly in his hands like it held the key to his fate.
She wet her lips and matched his stare, trying to let him know that they were one and the same, cut from the same rough-hewn, grubby cloth. Born and bred in Henrietta. The thought made her stomach curdle, and instead of offering the boy a greeting, she bent over and threw up in a patch of dandelions.
Mortification made her cheeks heat up instantly. When she looked up again, the boy was standing in front of her, his suspicion turning to concern. "Are you--are you alright?" The words were gentle, a timid question delivered with urgency.
"I will be if you help me hide," she replied hoarsely, because it was the first thing she could think to choke out.
His fair eyebrows furrowed, and he worried his bottom lip between his teeth for a few seconds. But then he held out a hand to her, a solemn look replacing his uncertainty. "Okay."
She grabbed his hand gratefully and tried to ignore whatever was trickling down her face. She thought it may be sweat, but after the boy hoisted her to her feet, he said in that same quiet, measured voice: "Your nose is bleeding." She wiped it hastily, on the cusp of embarrassment yet again. The boy didn't seem to mind. "My name is Adam."
It was an ordinary name for a not-so-ordinary boy. She felt like maybe no one else realized it, but Adam was special. Maybe even he didn't know it. But she had been gifted with intuition that let her know when people were going to make something of themselves. What Adam would do in the future was a mystery to her, however.
"I'm Aurelia," she told him with her nose plugged, trying to staunch the bleeding. "Aurelia Jean. Only my mama says the whole thing, though, when I'm in trouble." She cast a nervous look around. She was expecting her father to show up at any minute. "Most people call me A.J."
Adam picked up her bike without prompt and began to push it forward, cutting a path through the dirt. She moved alongside him, her old green dress scratchy and sweaty against her skin. Adam's eyes, the same washed-out blue as the sky, regarded her thoughtfully as the two marched along down the dirt path, her bike a barrier between them. "I like Aurelia better," Adam finally said with a small, shy smile.
She blinked at him owlishly, pleasantly surprised. She like Aurelia better than A.J. too, but unfortunately the nickname had stuck to her like a chewed gum to the bottom of a shoe.
Adam had a very nice smile, one that accentuated the smattering of freckles across his cheekbones and gave homage to the dimple on his left cheek. She felt honored to have seen the smile, because something told her he didn't wear one very often.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked after a pause. Her hands were smeared with red red red and dirt caked her ratty sandals and was gritty between her toes. She and Adam had been walking at a quick pace to get nowhere, by the looks of it. All she saw ahead of her was the dirt path and further on, trees.
Adam pointed in the general direction of the Nowhere and said: "There." Which maybe in his mind was an answer, but she didn't feel like it was a very acceptable one.
Nevertheless, she continued to walk, her pace only quickening when she thought of her father, purple-faced and screaming about how she was a waste of space, useless, as she ran out the door. When the trees started to shade them because of their proximity, she figured that they were what Adam had been pointing at all along.
She surged forward, grateful for the welcoming coolness of the shade, but Adam latched onto her wrist before she could make it more than a few steps. She winced at the sudden pressure, and he immediately let go, mollified by her reaction. It was clear that he didn't want to be the cause of anyone's pain, ever. She was familiar with the feeling. "Sorry. Sorry, I just--you gotta watch your step in here...there are snakes and things..." His accent slipped out, elongating with vowels. It made every word he said sound like an apology.
She let him lead after that, making sure she tread carefully, stepping gingerly over fallen logs and brush. There was a boulder she had to climb a few yards ahead, and she couldn't help but feel dubious about her ability to scale the huge rock. Adam was already climbing, though, looking at ease as his fingers and feet found purchase in nooks that she couldn't see. Adam didn't offer to help her, but her watched her with quiet scrutiny. He seemed like he trusted her to make it up the side of the rock, believed in her ability to haul herself to the top. Her doubt shriveled up and vanished, and gritting her teeth, she clambered up the boulder, her arms burning as she held the weight of her whole body.
She knew if she happened to lose her grip, Adam would have caught her, but assisting her otherwise wasn't what he had in mind. He wanted her to realize her potential.
She wasn't as useless as her father said.
Together, the two children slid down the other side of the massive rock, eyes alight. Adam was grinning, not just smiling, and for a moment, she thought she had never seen such pure happiness. It radiated off of him and lapped at her own exterior, until she too was grinning uncontrollably. This deep in the woods, they were out of their fathers' reach, away from the yelling and the anxiety that normally coiled in their bellies like a snake, always ready to strike. Their houses had never felt like home--the trailers creaked with derision and their parents snarled with contempt. But the woods were home. The woods were dark and inviting, dangerous in a way that was predatory to all and didn't single them out. Dangerous in a way that didn't make them fear, not really.
Aurelia had never known a joy like this, in her seven years of life. She spun around in a circle, giggling as she tilted her head back and watched the leaves of the trees above whirl around in a mesh of greens and yellows. She only stopped spinning when Adam let out a peal of laughter, doubling over like the siund couldn't be contained in his battered, skinny frame. She was breathing heavily, happiness clawing at her heart like a rabid, foreign thing. Maybe...maybe they couldn't contain it within them. Maybe their hearts weren't big enough to hold it yet. One day, she thought. One day.
Adam stopped laughing and pointed behind her. "There's your hidin' place, Aurelia." Curious, she looked over her shoulder to see what he was gesturing at. Behind her was a tree like she had never seen before. It was huge and gnarled, its roots snaking out in all directions, overlapping in spots and fighting for space. The branches were too numerous to count, but each leafy bough was strewn with moss and vines, a sure sign of its vitality and age. She craned her head back to just glimpse at the top of the monstrous tree, and then her eyes trailed back down to its center. The center was ripped right open, revealing a gaping hole that seemed to spill light instead of drink it in.
She looked over at Adam, speechless. It was a wonderful thing, ancient but ageless, and she felt like it had always been there and always would be. Something about it was fantastical and odd, almost like it didn't belong in a place so devoid of other wonders.
"It's so pretty," she breathed, because when words escaped her she tended to state the obvious. "Can we go inside?"
Adam's smile became wry, but he nodded anyway and walked by her, his shoes crunching withered fallen leaves and twigs alike as he made his way to the tree. She made her way after him, caution thrown to the wind and replaced by a deep sense of wonder. Adam looked like he could have been made of this wood, carved out by rough hands. She smiled at the thought and climbed into the cool shelter of the trunk, eyes widening when she realized that she and Adam weren't the only things inside.
There were books upon books scattered around--books with faded covers and books with stickers that declared them property of the local library and books with no covers at all, their pages frayed and yellowed. She quirked a brow and Adam's face went pink. He studied his hands. "My dad throws them, sometimes," he admitted. "So I bring them here. To keep them safe."
"It's your own library," she remarked, trying to quell Adam's embarrassment. She understood it too well. Fondness welled up inside of her as she glanced around again. She let her hand--which was still smeared with tacky blood from her nose--rest against the inside of the tree subconsciously. She wasn't happy to see the blood cling to something so lovely, but there was nothing she could do to wipe it off. "Can you read something to me?" she asked suddenly, because Adam was staring at her again and the weight of his gaze made her feel like she needed to speak. "Please?"
Adam was hesitant for a moment, but then he nodded and patted the spot beside him. She sank to her knees, grateful for his acceptance. She wanted to hug him. Instead, she bumped her shoulder against his as a thanks and rested her head against the tree, watching as Adam picked up a book she was familiar with. The Bridge to Terabithia?
Adam made a couple of engine noises, looking pleased with himself, and then he began to read: "'Good. His dad had gotten the pickup going. He could get up now. Jess slid out of his bed and into his overalls. He didn't worry about a shirt because as soon as he began running he would be as hot as popping grease...'" Aurelia listened intently as Adam's voice became a gentle lull, his vowels long and full and weighty.
Her eyelids became heavy, and finally, she drifted off to sleep, her head resting on Adam's shoulder as he continued to read about a boy and girl who created a whole new world for themselves.
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When she went home, she wasn't as afraid as she had been before. She had Adam to thank for that small victory.
But her father had snarled, "Stay away from that Parrish boy!", and that had been the end of it.
She never spoke to Adam Parrish again.