Page 20 of My Return to the Walter Boys
Isaac didn’t say anything as I moved toward the front door, but I could feel his eyes on me as I stepped inside and let the screen door slam shut. All his little digs may have been unwarranted, but there was one thing he’d been right about—Cole and I were lucky his parents hadn’t caught us.
***
It was the same nightmare I always had, the one about my family’s accident.
Mom and Dad were in the front seat, while Lucy and I shared a pair of earbuds so we didn’t have to listen to whatever boring conversation our parents were having.
Based on the scenery, we were somewhere in upstate New York, possibly Lake George? The sky was clear, and the trees had a light green dusting of new growth. These were the details I dwelled on every time I woke, because they weren’t accurate. My family died in the winter, but here it was spring, and the crash happened in the city, not on a twisting, scenic road. Strange how dreams could distort reality but feel so real at the same time.
When the song ended, I knew what was coming next.
My seat belt slid off like it usually did, but I didn’t bother to click it back into place. No matter how many times I tried, it always came undone. Then, between one blink and the next, I was standing on the pavement. The trees withered and died, and the sky turned black and stormy.
Our car would speed by next, and I’d catch one final glimpse of my family before the road gaped open like a canyon and they disappeared over the edge, leaving me behind forever.
But this time it wasn’t my dad’s shiny BMW rocketing past me. It was an ancient minivan with a peeling PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT bumper sticker and a dent in the back panel. Panic shot through my chest at the sight of all the familiar faces inside: Katherine and Nathan and Parker and Alex and—
I lurched awake, chest heaving.
What thehellwas that?
***
To say the dream freaked me out would be an understatement. I tossed and turned for the rest of the night but I wasn’t able to get the image out of my head—Katherine’s van loaded with all the Walters, racing toward the same terrifying end as my family. It was a twisted version of the torture my subconscious subjected me to on a regular basis, so when morning arrived, filling my room with the soft, purple light of daybreak, I was thankful. I hopped out of bed as soon as my alarm went off, yanked on my workout clothes, and hurried downstairs with an eagerness usually missing from my morning routine.
Running and I had a love-hate relationship; the first fifteen to twenty minutes were always absolute hell, and I loathe feeling sweaty, but it was my catharsis. What started out as a method to stay in shapetransformed into an outlet, a way for me to channel and burn off all my anxious energy. Nothing left me feeling calm and clearheaded like a long, grueling run did.
As I waited for Nathan to join me, I stretched on the porch and watched as more light crept over the horizon and spilled across the ranch. At quarter past our usual start time, I figured Nathan was another no-show and left without him. His absence was concerning, but that was a problem future me could deal with. Instead, I set off down our usual path and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
I didn’t stop until I reached the top of the hill on the far side of the property where I collapsed in the long grass to catch my breath. This spot was where Cole and I watched the sunset on horseback during my trying first weeks with the Walters. The memory made me smile. I shouldn’t have let him kiss me last night, but from the moment we met, Cole had a talent for sweeping me off my feet; yesterday was no exception. My plan to apologize for ignoring him all summer, then gently let him down had gone up in smoke the moment he appeared at the block party. Allowing myself to be whisked away and everything that followed was one more mistake I’d have to apologize for.
If the previous night taught me one thing, it was that we both cared for each other. But those feelings were just another reason why it didn’t feel right pursuing a relationship with Cole. Anything more than friendship might hurt him. I may have finally opened myself up to the grieving process, but there was so much healing I had yet to do. One summer wasn’t near enough.
***
“That’s not possible,” Parker exclaimed, shaking her head as she stared at the screen. Her mouth was slack-jawed, and she dropped her gaze to the controller in her hand as if it was somehow responsible for her loss.
I held up a finger gun and blew away the smoke. “Better start believing, P-Walt.”
During breakfast, the younger Walters conned me into a pool day since they weren’t allowed in the water without an adult or one of their older siblings supervising. Isaac, Alex, and Lee vanished from the kitchen the moment Zack mentioned swimming, but I naively fell for his dimpled smile. What followed was a single enjoyable hour relaxing in the sun as he, Benny, and Parker played Marco Polo, followed by a vexing four more as I tried every trick in the book to get them out of the pool.
At one point, I could hear Isaac laughing as he watched me struggle from his bedroom window. Alex was nice enough to bring me a sandwich in the early afternoon, but the nice gesture was ruined when he asked if I’d learned my lesson. Not even Katherine or George came out to rescue me from their children. Parker finally agreed to convince the terror twins to go play on the swing set, but only if I playedMario Kartwith her.
I took my revenge by crushing her in five consecutive races.
“I don’t understand,” she repeated for the third time. “You’re terrible at this game.”
“I’m a Rainbow Road veteran, Parker. I was never bad.” I hoisted myself out of the beanbag chair to put my controller away. “The only reason you beat me before was because I let you win.”
This shocked her more than my multiple victories. “But…why?”
Her question was genuine; Parker truly couldn’t comprehend why anyone would willingly lose. Based on our past conversations and the interactions I’d witnessed between her and her brothers, I suspected Parker felt like being the only girl in the family meant she needed to prove herself. She couldn’t just exist. She had to be the fastest, the toughest, the smartest, and that didn’t leave room for losing. As a recovering perfectionist, I understood that logic even though I knew it was flawed. Hadn’t I spent years emulating my father in order to make my parents proud? I’d only recently learned that trying to live up to perceived expectations was an impossible task. Hopefully, in time, I could show Parker that the only person she needed to be was herself.
“I wanted us to be friends,” I confessed, because lead by example and all that.
“Oookay.” Her tone implied that my answer was stupid. “Does that mean you don’t care about being friends anymore?”
“Exactly.” I let a slow grin spread across my face. “As the elder sister, I’ve decided it’s more important to teach my younger counterpart some much needed humility.”
