Page 50 of Second Story

That should be that, right?

Discussion over.

I can’t help following him across the playground and into the woods, where I catch up with him outside the school chapel. I don’t know why hooking a hand around his elbow seems like a good plan. All I know is that I yank him around to face me.

My ears ring with a surprise blast from the past. Mrs. Obasi might as well be right beside me.

Don’t let anyone see you’re scared.Find your lion, Isaac.

Find it?

Out of nowhere, I roar, “I am fine.” I mean this so much my fists clench. “Iam.” I take a breath and growl, “I’ve always been strong for Len. I don’t have any plans to stop anytime soon. It doesn’t matter that Joe saw…”

I blink away a flashback of me picking my way through the wreckage of a home Mum once filled with stories. Joe saw me at my worst that night. Had to guide me past police tape when I couldn’t even breathe, let alone think or function. He saw me when I was weak. Now I’m as grim as when I saw all of that fingerprint powder.

“He wasn’t anything to do with what happened.”

“Of course he wasn’t,” Luke says easily. He waves off the padre, who must have heard my roar from inside the chapel. Hisrapid approach is as surprising as realising how tightly my fists have curled.

Fuck.

I try to unclench them in a hurry and reel back a few steps. “Sorry, sorry. I?—”

“No need,” Luke promises as if I didn’t just front up to him like a boxer. He still doesn’t back off. If anything, he makes excuses for my fists refusing to loosen. “Fight is a typical trauma response.” He adds more as I quickly add some more stumbling distance between us. “So is flight.”

I don’t know why him holding a hand out to me stops me in my tracks. I’m drawn back almost to the same spot, only my feet refuse to take the last step between us. “And here comes freeze,” he says so gently that I have to close my eyes from what his face shows me.

I still hear his compassion.

“This is what I meant, Isaac.”

He tells me what I’ve read to Lenny so often that I don’t even need a book to see the words float on the air between us.

“Trauma responses aren’t a sign of weakness. They signpost old scars, that’s all. Ones that need light and air to heal instead of staying hidden to fester. Children play their way through that process, given the chance. Sometimes the process takes having someone to share with. Maybe Joe is that person for you like he once was for your brother. Perhaps he isn’t, but there is one more trauma response you might want to look into before you decide, and as soon as our school counsellor is back in a few weeks, you could talk it over with him. I’m in no rush for you to tell me. All I’m asking is that you put yourself first for once.”

I open my eyes at Luke’s next suggestion.

“Think of it this way. If a plane depressurises and the oxygen masks fall, what are the instructions?”

“For parents to help themselves instead of helping their kids first.”

“Yes.” He smiles as if I just made some kind of breakthrough. “To give themselves the breathing space they need to care for those more vulnerable than themselves. That’s all I want you to think about. Will having Joe here give you more oxygen or less? More air to help you through what is still coming for both you and Lenny?”

I nod. Joe’s already done that for me in a bathroom.

“Or will his presence suck up what you need to arm yourself with for the future? Because if you think Joe staying on-site will get in the way of any of that, I’ll decline to even hear his full proposal.”

Despite all this talk of air, I can barely wheeze out, “He won’t get in the way.”

Thank fuck Luke doesn’t ask me to explain what makes me so certain. I’d have no clue how to answer. All I know is that choking this out feels truthful. “He only ever helped us.”

“That was my first impression.” Luke’s hand lands on my shoulder again before he backs off to join the padre where he makes a last suggestion. “You’ll see him this evening?”

I nod.

“Well, if my first impression is right, I think Joe will ask you similar questions about him extending any future visit here. Maybe bear that in mind. Think about it overnight, then let me know. How about in the morning? Lenny is coming to Sealife School down in the village?”

“He wants to. Tor told him he goes every Saturday and invited him along.”

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