Vida's head lays on my shoulder, the tv going in front of it and I stare at it mindlessly as we stay up late into the night. I'm worn out, exhausted but I don't want to sleep. I don't want to be met with what haunts my dreams.
"Holt?" Vida's voice comes from softly beside me.
"Hmm?" I answer, my head recounting the parole hearing, the chill of Austin's voice as he spewed lies to the board.
"Can I ask you something?" She hasn't moved, her hand still laying gently on my forearm where she had let it rest when she sat down. Her head still on my shoulder, nothing has changed about our physicality but I can hear the hesitation in her voice. A certain carefulness I'm not used to Vida having.
It heightens everything for me, instantly. "Yes."
It takes her a moment, a long moment where I feel anxiety start to eat at me, fear for her question, fear for my answers, fear for what they might change. I start to count my breaths in my head just in case, a preventative measure.
"What actually happened to you?"
My eyes snap shut, a dumb thing to do. In the first initial seconds monsters come for me and then it ebbs away to the moments that hurt. Finding out that Drew was gone, finding Blue curled up and passed away on his bed.
"It's a long story." I answer, taking a deep breath to steady myself.
Vida has never asked. I know she knows a bit of it though. She knows who Austin is, she knows to some degree what he did to me. She knows I was in juvy, why I was in juvy. But she has never asked me for the whole story.
"But I'll tell you, if you want."
Dr. Aldrich and I have talked at length, diving into my past, uncovering things I hadn't thought about in years because of Austin, because I couldn't think past Austin.
"Please." She's bold, she always has been and it's one of my favorite things about her.
Most people would probably back out, tell me I don't have to, if I don't want to. I'd take it every time too. It's easier to not speak of it, to not bring up the old memories in my mind, they frequent me more often than I'd prefer on their own. But sometimes I wished they'd just ask one more time. I remember when I first came to live with my parents. My mom was always asking if I was okay and sometimes I prayed she'd just ask once more. Just once more and the scales would tip and I'd give up trying to hold in all my secrets. But that was back when she was still trying to earn my trust, a flighty thing to obtain.
I clear my throat, both of us still having not repositioned for the retelling of my life. "My mom died when I was one. Her death record said the cause was an unknown heart problem. But I went to live with her parents, my grandparents.
I don't remember much of them. My grandma though used to sing as she worked, she seemed like she was always singing. And we used to have mint chocolate chip ice cream after dinner as we watched movies."
These memories have long faded, the sound of my grandma's voice no longer a present thing in my mind that I can recall. The film scratchy and faded but I can still see it well enough as she'd glide through the small kitchen, gray hair worn short and her lips moving as she cooked or cleaned or whatever it was that she would do.
"She died in her sleep when I was three."
"I'm sorry." Vida says and I tell her "me too".
And then I swallow down the edgy feeling that wants to creep through my veins and continue.
"After my grandma died it was just my grandpa. He was fine, not overly affectionate but I was fed and clean and had a place to sleep. Everything was fine for a few years but then things started to change with my grandpa. He'd get angry."
