Prologue

The world is all color and sound, and it’s terrifying. Garrett rests his head against the floor in the trailer’s living room. The coffee table’s his ceiling, and the carpet’s the softness he can’t see when he opens his eyes. His mother’s bare feet scare him. Why doesn’t she wear shoes, or socks maybe? Why does the subfloor squeak painfully every time she takes a step?

His favorite time is the alone time when his mother’s in her bedroom and his sister’s out somewhere, maybe with that girl with all the dark hair. He likes that girl—at least her hair, and how long it is, and the way the wind takes turns playing with it. His sister’s hair is like the head of a mop. He doesn’t like that either.

Sometimes in his alone time, his mother crawls up under her covers—all of them, even when it’s not wintertime cold—and she moans like nobody’s listening. I’m listening, Garrett says in his head because that’s the only way he can say things. Her pain is musical, and he finds himself swaying to it slowly, thinking about the things that make him happy like the TV. The TV is color and sound, but the TV is color and sound he’s come to expect and can even control. There’s a button that turns everything off.

But right now, there is no alone time, so he studies the underbody of the coffee table and wonders at the sticky disks of color above his head. Gum. His mother and sister don’t chew it enough. He loves gum but can only chew it if he finds it and keeps it to himself like a secret.

They’re mad at him—at least his mother is. They threw him a birthday party and had some strange hope in their hearts that he would enjoy it. He did not. It was outside on the playground near their trailer, the one his mother calls “the park.” They had decorated everything with streamers in the stinging cold, even the swings and the slide even though he never uses either of them. But it was the principle of the thing. Why cover everything up, all that shiny metal in the sun so nobody could enjoy anything now? 

He wanted to play in the wood chips. He wanted to build his piles and create his fort around him. He wanted to be the only one and everyone else to be turned away to the outside, keeping watch. 

The only saving grace was that the girl with the dark hair was there.

When it was finally over and he came inside, the heater was on, making his cold body hot. He stripped off his clothes, so the carpet feels even softer. 

His mother’s down on his level now. Her body’s soft with bigness, and he’s so much smaller than her. She gets really close sometimes like she feels it’s the thing she needs to do, but it’s too much. The feelings are overwhelming, and it’s worse than all the colors and sounds put together. And as angry and as mad as it makes him, he also gets lost in his deep well of sadness. Something’s not right, he says in his brain but can never say to her.

“Come on, Garrett. I got you the fish sticks.” He likes fish sticks. The birthday party was cake and pizza, and he didn’t like the way the cake looked slightly lopsided on the picnic bench or the pizza that looked like bleeding skin. He likes the fish sticks, and how straight they are, and how easy it is to hold them. But he shakes his head back and forth real fast, his eyes tight. No thank you. Not right now, he says in his head.

“Please, Garrett,” she says again, and her eyes are so close and moist. He keeps shaking and squinting and grunts out his words—Oh, no thank you. I don’t really want any right now—but this only makes her cry. She gets up and slams the package into the freezer and goes to her room. She shoves the door closed, but its sound isn’t as damaging. It’s soft and pleasant like the carpet. 

When he realizes this is it, that he’s all alone, he rolls out from under the coffee table. He climbs onto the couch that is the color of stale coffee, and it’s not soft but scratchy on his naked skin. He likes sitting here though because he can look out at the world without the world looking at him.

And then he sees it—a bird. It pecks at nothing on the roof of the trailer next to them where that dark-haired girl lives. He watches it, wholly enthralled in the way the bird walks and pecks and walks and pecks. It stops near the edge of the roof. It spreads out its black wings, so shiny they almost look wet. And before time and space have the opportunity to make the next call, the bird looks at him, looks at Garrett. And Garrett suddenly knows how it feels to have all the sad fly away.