I parked and was halfway up the steps when I heard the screech-screech sound of the twins’ swing set next door, cutting into the night’s silence. I paused and waited for it to stop, but it didn’t. There was no way anyone inside could hear it, but to me, it was all I heard.
I pushed through the back gate, my front-door key still clutched in my fist in case the swing set was being used by a serial killer or something, but it was only Oliver. He was way too big for the swing, of course, his shoes dragging in the grass underneath the seat as he moved back and forth. His shirt was undone at the neck, the sleeves rolled up, looking more blue than checked in the muted backyard light.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Hey,” he said back, using his feet to stop himself. “What are you doing here?”
I pointed up to where the swing’s chains met the bar. “I heard you,” I said. “I just got home from Caro’s.” I sat down in the swing next to his, setting my keys in the sand. “We had a super important TV interview to watch, you know.”
Oliver huffed out a breath before he started to sway back and forth again. The movement was so small that his feet barely moved, looking like he was balanced on his toes. “Oh,” he said. “That.”
“And we did our nails, too,” I added, holding up my hand. “Don’t be jealous.”
Oliver smiled and examined the blue dots. “You look diseased.”
“You’re really good with compliments.”
“Don’t let the secret get out.”
I smiled and rested my head against the plastic chain of the swings. “What, should I tell Colleen Whitcomb? Give her the exclusive?” I held up an imaginary microphone, still giggling to myself even as I tried to do my best faux-newscaster voice. “So, Oliver, how does it feel to finally . . . be home?”
He smiled, but I realized later that it wasn’t turned up as much at the corners, that it didn’t reach his eyes the way it should. “Well, Colleen,” he said, playing along and speaking into my fist, “I’ll tell you the truth. Can you handle an exclusive?”
“Yes,” I said. “Our viewers”—I winked into an imaginary camera—“want to know.”
Oliver looked up at me, his face solemn and pained, and I realized with a terrible rush that we weren’t playing anymore. “Colleen,” he said, “coming home feels like being kidnapped all over again.”
I looked at him, waiting for the laugh or the “Just kidding!” something that wouldn’t make my heart feel like it was free-falling. “What?” I said. My hand dropped to my side, the imaginary microphone plummeting into the grass.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—” Oliver blew out a slow breath and leaned back in the swing, still holding on tight to the chains. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Did you mean it?” I asked. Both of our houses were dark, the closed blinds letting out no cracks of light.
He bit his lip and looked away, then right back at me. “Yes,” he said. “I meant it.”
“Then you should say it,” I whispered. “I don’t want you to lie to me. You never lied to me before. Don’t start now.”
“It’s just, it just feels the same.” He shrugged, tipping his head to the sky like the stars had advice to offer him. “I got taken away from everything I knew, my friends, my dad, our apartment, homeschooling, and now I’m in a new house with sisters—I have sisters, Emmy, I don’t even know what to say about that—and a mom I don’t know and a stepdad I’ve never known, new friends, new school. And this house just feels so small, like the walls are touching sometimes when I sleep, and this town . . .” He trailed off, glancing toward the street like he could see a way out. “I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how Drew does it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had never thought of my town as small before, but Oliver had been all over the country. He had been living in New York. Suburbia must have felt like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
“And I can’t talk to my dad because I don’t know where he is,” he continued. “I can’t ask him where he went, why he did this, just like I couldn’t ask my mom where she went, why she left us.”
“But she didn’t leave you, Oliver, she—”
“I know that!” he said, sharper than usual, but his voice still sounded sad. “Sorry. I know that. But knowing something and feeling something are two totally different things. I barely even remember you, Emmy. Sorry, but it’s true. I don’t.”
I didn’t realize my eyes were filling with tears until he reached out to blot them with his thumb. “Shit,” he sighed. “See? This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew it would hurt you. This is why I don’t tell anyone.”
I pushed his hand away, though, shaking my head and wiping my own eyes. “You don’t have to protect me,” I said. “I told you, I don’t want you to lie to me.”
“But it’s hurting you.”
“It’s hurting you, too.” I dragged my wrist cuff across my eyes. “That’s not fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair,” he said. We were both resting our heads against the swing chains now, swinging opposite each other in tiny arcs. More like rocking than swinging, really. “If this was fair, I wouldn’t have left.”