Free On the Fence by Kasie West Page A

surprised him. “Yes. I guess your way is more natural.” There was a long pause. “You’re good at avoiding questions, but what I’m asking is why you can’t sleep.”
    He was just a disembodied voice, I told myself. I could talk to a disembodied voice. Or the moon. I could always talk to the moon. I found it in the sky, minding its own business, only half lit.
    Finally, I said, “I have nightmares.” He must’ve sensed it was better to talk as little as possible, because he just waited. “About my mom and the night she died. My brain seems to think it’s fun to give me every scenario, even impossible ones. It’s pretty much the only memory I have from when I was little . . . that night. I don’t even know if any of it is real or if my mind has made all of it up.” I had never told anyone about my nightmares, not even Gage, who knew more than most about the inner workings of my brain. It felt strangely freeing, like I was putting it out there for the moon to deal with.
    “What happens in them?”
    “Different things—rain and breaking windows and cars. And my mom, of course.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I hate it. Running equals dreamless nights.”
    “Well, that makes a lot more sense than the basketball excuse.”
    “It helps for basketball too.”
    “I’m sure.” After several minutes he said, “You learned how to ride your bike when you were four. I was so jealous because I still had training wheels.”
    I was relieved he had switched to our useless-facts game and said, “I remember your training wheels.”
    “You do? Because right after you learned how to ride your bike, I spent that entire Saturday learning how to ride without them. You shamed me into it.”
    I smiled and tried to think of something I remembered about him as a child, to match his fact. “How about in the first grade when you told your teacher that my dad was really your dad and you yelled ‘This man is trying to kidnap me’ when your father tried to take you home? Your dad was so embarrassed.”
    “Yes, that was back in the days when I was jealous you all had each other and I didn’t have any siblings.”
    “Now you’re trapped in the craziness. You’re one of us, baby, whether you want to be or . . .” I trailed off as his real intention of bringing up my bike-riding hit me. He wasn’t jumping back into the game. “Wait. I was four?”
    “Yes.”
    “So my mom was alive when I learned how to ride my bike.” I searched my memory, trying hard to picture her there, out in front of the house, watching me learn. I could clearly picture my dad holding on to the back of my bike, running along beside me. I kept telling him to let go. He wouldn’t. Was my mom watching us?
    I squeezed my eyes shut. “Just let me ride around the block,” I had said. “I’ll go with her,” Jerom offered. He had been riding circles around me. He must’ve been almost nine at the time. We went around the block, and it wasn’t until the first corner that I realized I hadn’t practiced turning without training wheels yet. Fear stopped me from trying and I ran straight into the street sign. Jerom picked me up, put me back on the bike, and pointed me in the right direction. I crashed on every single corner, but made it home with only one scraped knee.
    Had my mom taken care of it?
    No. It was my dad. I knew that. I remembered sitting on the counter as he blew on it and told me I was tough. How was it possible I could have these detailed memories and not remember different times, different events, where my mom spent time with me?
    “She looked a lot like you do now.”
    My throat constricted a little. “Yeah.” I already knew that. Aside from the wedding picture in the hall, we had a box of pictures of her. That’s how I remembered her, in still snapshots—standing next to me when I blew out three candles on a cake, looking up in surprise from where she sat on the couch reading a book, wearing a baseball cap and cheering on Jerom at