I hide in the shallow ditch between the deep front yard and the blacktop that cuts through the neighborhood. Where Ashley lives two streets over, a girl I’m friends with while we’re here, and past Bart’s house, a skinny boy in a muscle tee who once kissed me in his backyard. A neighborhood where I will sell fundraiser chocolate bars on Christmas break before I return to my real home with my mother and sister. Unlike at home, here, there are two people in charge, my father and my stepmother with jet black hair. My sister and I are here four weeks a year. Our shared bedroom is empty except for an oak bed and dresser set. My stepbrother is one year younger than me, one year older than my sister, and has a room with Star Wars figures, baseball trophies, and a Close Encounters poster taped to its wall. A room where he once talked in his sleep and his mother answered, also asleep, from three rooms away. My father tells me this. Tells me he’s never met his real father.
It’s early July, almost my ninth birthday. My sister counts, head on arm at the basketball goal at the end of the driveway, flashlight in hand. I lie still and quiet. My skin is bright pink, smells of white vinegar, burns where it presses into the St. Augustine. She calls, Ready or not and the flashlight sweeps the Sweet Gum and Tulip Poplars across the street and back toward the loblolly pines that border the woods at the property line. She turns at the far corner of the house for the backyard, where many more trees provide plenty of places to hide. My stepbrother, also watching her, jumps from behind a short brick wall and runs, grabs the metal post and yells, home free. Light bounces from the backyard toward the basketball goal. She cannot yet see me running, running, running, barefoot toward the driveway to the base where he already stands, one hand wrapped around the pole, the house’s corner floodlight, the only real light, making him into the perfect, smaller silhouette of my father.
