Skinny • Book 1 In The Reality Series

Katy

We were gone for three days.

It didn't seem like a long enough stretch of time for anything to happen, let alone for everything to fall apart.

Mom had told me on the plane, waiting until we were in the air, my seatbelt keeping me safely in place before daring to tell me.

I'd cried, but I don't know why, it didn't seem real. Realization didn't sink in fully until I ran past her into the house calling out for my favorite person in the world, and he didn't come.

I searched every nook and cranny of the house. Every room, behind and in every box, around every corner, beneath every dusty piece of furniture, I jogged up and down the street until I felt sick, I nearly ripped up every bush in the backward, and when I'd finished, it finally hit me in earnest.

Sam was gone.

Mom said that when the police had come to the house they'd taken one look at the piles of clutter and plucked Sam up.

She gave me other details, but I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear anything. A dull muted ringing filled my ears and pounded in my temples. It bounced around my head, squeezing my brain and clawing at my throat. It forced tears from my eyes and loud pathetic whimpers, the kind you stop making when you grew up and learn to cry silently, from my throat.

My eyes blurry with the salty moisture dropping from them like a tap, I stumbled through the piles of clutter to Sam's room.

Closing and locking the door behind me so as not to be disturbed I crossed over to his bed, or the crib with the removed front bars, where he slept.

Not bothering to kick off my shoes I lay down atop his Toy Story sheets, curling into a ball to fit in the small space. Pulling his duvet up to my chin, leaving my feet to poke out the other side I pulled his snot, tear and food stained teddy bear against my chest.

It smelled like him. Like little kid soap, and fresh diapers, and the faint scent of formula.

The book I had read him before bed the day before I'd left was still lying on the floor. I hadn't finished it. He'd fallen asleep. I'd sat with him after that, just watching him sleep, making sure he was really out and wouldn't pop up like a prairie dog the moment I left the room.

I wish he knew that. How much I loved him, and how all I ever wanted to do was sit and hold him while he was still small enough for me to do so, but he didn't. The last time I'd seen him I had hurt him. I'd yelled at him, shocked him, terrified him.

I wondered where he was; probably alone, scared and sad. He didn't like the dark, he couldn't sleep without a book, his bear, and cup of water. But maybe he wasn't. Maybe he wasn't alone, but instead with someone who treated him far better than I ever had.

Perhaps three days was just long enough for him to forget about me and attach himself to this new, mystery caregiver.

I wanted him to be happy, but I didn't want that. I just wanted him back, I needed him back. And with those thoughts fluttering through my mind like a swarm of bats, I cried myself into a nightmare filled slumber.