I smelled the swampy mix of dirt and grass—the kind of air that felt peaceful until you breathed too hard and had to scrunch your nose. There I was, sitting among the dry patches far past the entrance, deep enough that no one could see me, but not so far that I couldn't hear my name if someone called. Eyes closed, lungs expanding and collapsing, I kept perfectly still, locked in concentration.
I stayed like that for five minutes, pushing harder. Finally, the strange formless energy stirred after so long without use. I'd worried it had disappeared. I guided it up my shoulders, down my arms, into my fists—and held it there. I was in the creek behind my Aunt Natalie's house, alone.
For now, I had all the time in the world. I fought to condense it, to keep it from slipping back to wherever it came from inside me. Sweat traced down my spine, dripped from my forehead, pooling along my jaw. A mosquito landed on my knuckle and I didn't move. Then, as if something clicked, it sank into the skin and bone of my hand. I felt it—deep. I was close. So close I could taste it.
Come on. Come on, I screamed in my head, forcing it to keep going, pushing past what I thought I could do, adrenaline spiking now that the finish line was in sight.
Unfortunately, I was cut off right before the last step."Ben!" The call threaded through the dense grass and trees, past the grove of green, across the shallow creek that separated me and Gwen—who, I might add, had truly terrible timing.
The sound scraped along my focus. The energy wobbled, bulged against my skin like a breath trapped in a balloon. I clenched my jaw and tried to ignore her.
"Ben! I can see your shoes."
Of course she could. My heel stuck out from the snag of sawgrass like a flag of surrender. I pulled it back with a slow scrape of mud that felt, to me, like a thunderclap. The pressure in my palm pulsed. My fingertips tingled. If I let the energy go now, it would slosh back into the empty place in my chest and I'd need another ten minutes to coax it out. Ten minutes I didn't have, apparently.
"Gwen," I hissed, not opening my eyes. "Not now."
"Now is all I've got." Closer. Branches tapped one another as she pushed through. "Aunt Natalie sent me. You've been gone for—like—a while."
I kept my breathing even. In. Out. "Tell her I'm—"
The energy bucked. I swallowed the rest of the sentence and pressed my thumb to my forefinger, thumb to middle finger, like I could pinch it tighter. The buzzing inside my hand sharpened, and for a heartbeat the creek, the trees, the whole mosquito-stitched afternoon seemed to lean toward me.
What are you? I thought at it—not words, exactly, but the shape of a question.
Heat, it answered—or I decided that was what the answer felt like: a warm thread pulling taut from somewhere behind my ribs, through my shoulder blade, spiraling into my palm. Not heat that burned; heat that belonged.
Gwen's sneakers slid in the gravel on the opposite bank. "Why are you hiding in the bug kingdom?" she asked, and I could hear the eye roll.
"Focusing," I said. It came out through my teeth.
"Cool, cool. Aunt Nat's got this look on her face like she's going to enjoy learning how to ground you."
"She can try," I muttered, mostly to the energy, not to Gwen. The thread tightened. My hand felt heavier than the rest of me, like my bones had filled with something denser than marrow.
"Ben…"
Her voice wasn't loud now. It was careful. I didn't have to see her to picture the way she bit the inside of her cheek when she was about to say something real. The way she softened around bad news.
"What?" I asked, and with that one word, some part of me loosened. The energy strained at its boundary.
"I don't know why, but my mom really needs you," she said, a bit desperate. I sighed. If it had been anyone else…
I let go of my focus. The energy loosened as I opened my eyes. My hands held a dull green glow that thinned fast, fading like breath on glass. I waited for it to vanish, then pushed myself up from the damp grass. I turned and headed for the clearing, brushing dirt from my clothes as I went.
The second I reached the dirty water of the creek, I searched for the rocks I'd used earlier as a bridge between this side and the other. There they were. I stepped onto the first and hopped—more hop than jump, honestly—from one to the next, while Gwen grew larger across the bank, filling my field of vision.
I hit the last rock and stepped onto the bank. Gwen was right there, hands on hips like she'd been trying to decide between yanking me across or letting me drown for being dramatic.
"Okay," I said, breath a little high. "What's going on?"
She spun on her heel. "Come on. She's in the kitchen. She didn't want to shout the whole story across mosquito country."
We pushed through the grove, leaves whispering along our sleeves. The back steps were warm and splintered under my shoes. Aunt Natalie's screen door complained when Gwen yanked it; I caught it with my palm out of habit, and the last of the green glow felt like static as the screen door bounced back. I looked at my hand and touched the screen door again. Nothing happened. I however did notice a small tear in the screen where my fingers had grazed. Interesting.
Inside smelled like coffee and lemon cleaner and something sugary burned ten minutes ago. Aunt Natalie paced between the phone on the counter and a notepad that had suffered enough under a ballpoint pen during our therapy sessions, and let alone many other sessions she had with other clients, to the point every time she got home I swear she had a new notepad with her, just more to add to the crime scene. She looked up the second she heard us step inside.
"There you are." Not angry—relieved, but stretched thin around the edges. "Ben, lunch is ready, and a new rule, if you want to go out at least let someone know first, instead of just leaving a sticky note."
I lifted my hands and signed, Come on, I wasn't far.
After the most personal—and worst—session, my first with Aunt Natalie, I discovered I was, for some reason, comfortable talking to Gwen using my real voice. Sometimes I could even talk to my other cousins, but not for long, and only if Gwen was there. Everyone else still got my silence and jazz hands.
Gwen had been shocked and ecstatic when she found out, which earned me another confusing kiss on the cheek—confusing because I liked it. I shoved whatever that feeling was back down where it wouldn't trip me.
"Young man, you may only be living with us for another couple of weeks, but while you are, I'm your parent." Aunt Natalie's tone was quick, careful, and laced with sass. "And, Ben, regardless of how old you act and feel at times, you're still only five. I make the rules. And that is now a rule. Understand?"
I rolled my eyes, didn't bother to sign, just nodded, and went to the table with Gwen. My aunt sighed and bent over the stack of paperwork again.
I leaned toward Gwen as we pulled our chairs out and whispered in her ear, "I thought you said it was important."
"I said she needed you, not that it was important," she said, rolling her eyes right back. "Besides—lunch is important."
I stared at her, disbelieving, as she took a bite of the sandwich Aunt Natalie had made for us.
I slid into my chair. The plate in front of me held a triangle-cut sandwich, an apple with one bruise like a continent, and three potato chips already surrendering to the humidity.
Gwen sat across and kicked my ankle lightly under the table. "Eat," she mouthed, like I didn't know how.
Aunt Natalie set down her pen with a click that meant business and came over with a pitcher of lemonade. She poured like she was measuring a dose. "Turkey on wheat. No mustard," she said, because she remembered things I hadn't told her out loud. "Gwen, yours is the mistake I made when I tried to make mine healthier."
Gwen inspected her sandwich. "Mom, you put sprouts on it. They look like hair."
"Eat your hair," Aunt Natalie said, deadpan. She slid into the seat at the head of the table, but she didn't relax into it; she perched, ready to spring back to the notepads at any second.
I picked up half my sandwich. The bread stuck a little to my fingers, and for a blink, the skin on my palm felt… deeper again, like the world had another layer I could almost see. I set the sandwich down, rubbed my hands against my shorts, and the feeling thinned.
"So," Aunt Natalie said, as if we'd been mid-conversation, "what were you doing out there?"
I lifted my hands and signed, Practicing breathing.
Gwen barked a laugh that turned into a cough when Aunt Natalie looked at her.
I added, And thinking. I didn't sign and not thinking, which was also true.
Aunt Natalie took a lemon-seeded sip. "Next time, you think within shouting distance. We've got snakes." She pointed her chin toward the back door, where the screen sagged a little at the corner. "And a screen that was fine this morning."
I glanced automatically at my hand. Gwen followed my eyes and arched an eyebrow. I didn't give her anything.
Aunt Natalie reached for the bowl of chips and then thought better of it and pushed it toward us instead. "Okay. Check-ins," she said, therapist voice sneaking into mom voice. "Gwen?"
"Absolutely thriving," Gwen said around a mouthful of not-hair. "I rescued a frog from the driveway and gave him a pep talk about cars."
"Good. Keep rescuing frogs." Aunt Natalie's gaze slid to me. "Ben?"
I signed, I slept. I ate. I breathed. Then, after a second, because she was waiting for more, I wrote a page in the notebook like you asked.
"That true?" She didn't say it like she doubted me; she said it like the world often lied to people and she was checking if the world had tried it again.
I nodded. Gwen wiggled her fingers like jazz hands and whispered, "He did. I saw."
"Good," Aunt Natalie said, softer. "You don't have to show me. Just keep doing it."
We ate. The kitchen settled into the kind of quiet that wasn't empty—just full of small noises. The fridge hummed. The AC kicked on with a breathy whoof that stirred the napkins. Outside, something thumped against the porch—probably the wind, probably not a snake, but I didn't look to check.
Gwen dangled her apple over my plate. "Trade?"
I shook my head. Yours has fewer continents, I signed.
She grinned and took an enormous bite out of mine anyway. "Diplomacy," she said, mouth full. Bits of apple clung to her lip, and she wiped them with the back of her wrist, which only made it worse. I slid a napkin across. She took it like she was accepting a medal.
Aunt Natalie's phone buzzed against the counter. All three of us looked at it like it might grow legs. She didn't get up. Not yet. "After lunch, chores," she said, eyes still on the screen. "Gwen, dishwasher. Ben, you can help me fix the screen."
My stomach did a tiny flip. I nodded like it was no big deal.
Gwen leaned back on two chair legs until Aunt Natalie gave her a look and she dropped them with a thunk. "What happened to the screen anyway?" she asked, all innocence.
"Age," Aunt Natalie said. "And life. And boys who think doors are suggestions."
I signed, It snagged on my fingers, which was true, if not the whole truth.
Aunt Natalie's mouth twitched like she appreciated the honesty ratio. "Then your fingers can un-snag it."
We finished the sandwiches. The lemonade had a pulp raft floating on top now. I ate the apple around the bruise and left the bruise for last, then, because Gwen was watching, ate the bruise too. She saluted me with a chip crumb.
When the plates were mostly crumbs and rind, Aunt Natalie collected them and set them by the sink. "Ben, with me," she said, already crossing to the back door. She took a small toolbox from the utility closet—the kind with a handle and a drawer that never opened all the way. She handed me a flat-head screwdriver and a roll of screen repair tape.
We stepped onto the porch. Heat climbed my shins like a cat. Up close, the tear was smaller than it had felt—an oval pucker, no bigger than my thumbnail, right where my hand had bounced.
"Easy fix," Aunt Natalie said. "We'll patch it and then you can pretend it never happened."
"I can also," Gwen said from the sink where she was very loudly rinsing plates, "not run into it at full speed again."
"You are both hazards," Aunt Natalie called back, and then to me, quieter, "Here."
She held the screen steady while I peeled the backing off the patch. The adhesive tugged at my fingertips. That deep feeling rose again, unasked, like a tide finding a dock. The thread ran its familiar path—from behind my ribs, through my shoulder, into my palm—and thrummed, just once. I pressed the patch down. The mesh prickled my skin. For a heartbeat, the weave of it seemed to line up with something in me, like two patterns briefly in phase.
The patch held. The hum faded.
Aunt Natalie watched my face like she was reading weather. "You okay?"
I nodded. Then, because she'd earned more than a nod, I signed, Sometimes it feels bigger than me. Then it doesn't.
She thought about that, then squeezed the frame. "Most things worth learning do."
We went back in. Gwen had turned the chore of rinsing into a competitive sport against an imaginary opponent and was losing. Soap suds clung to her elbows.
"Dishwasher," Aunt Natalie reminded.
"I know, I know," Gwen said, loading plates in backward on purpose until she caught my look and fixed them. "Ben, silverware is a democracy. Forks and spoons can mingle. Knives are the weird loners."
I sorted anyway because chaos in machines felt like a personal attack. When my hand brushed the metal basket, the thread gave a shy little tug and then let go. I exhaled. The air smelled like lemon and heat and the last ghost of burned sugar.
Aunt Natalie wiped the table with a practiced swipe. "Okay, troops," she said. "After this—quiet time. Half an hour. Books, naps, plotting your frog speeches. Then I have to make a couple calls."
Gwen snapped a towel at me; I caught it and snapped it back with surgical precision. She yelped, then laughed. The sound bounced off the cabinets and made the kitchen feel a size bigger.
I stacked the last glass upside down on the rack. Water ran in a thin sheet, beading at the rim. My hand hovered over it, just to see. Nothing happened. Good. Or disappointing. Or both.
The dishwasher door shut with a padded thump. Aunt Natalie pressed the start button, and the machine thought about its life choices for a second before it began to churn.
"Thank you," she said, and even though it was a normal thank-you, it felt like it covered more than dishes and screens.
Gwen stretched, arms overhead, shirt riding up just enough to show a sliver of skin and a bruise the exact shape of a countertop edge. "Quiet time?" she said, like a challenge.
"Quiet time," Aunt Natalie confirmed. "No screens. Human or mesh."
Gwen groaned theatrically and trudged down the hall. I followed slower. The house had that post-lunch lull where everything wanted to nap. In the doorway to the hall, I glanced back. Aunt Natalie was already reaching for her phone, shoulders set in that way that meant she was going to wrestle the afternoon into behaving.
My room—borrowed, but trying to be mine—was cool and dim. A fan ticked in the corner. I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling until the dots in the paint made constellations. The thread settled quiet as a resting pulse.
From the kitchen, the dishwasher hummed, steady as a far-off creek.
And for a while, we were all very good at being quiet.
My head wasn't however.
Not with plans, and new things to try taking over every thought. Not with thoughts of vengeance clouding my mind in thunder.