Free Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

crying.”
    “He doesn’t need a doctor,” my grandmother said firmly. “I’ll be right back.”
    There was more giggling in the hall and then a knock on the door.
    “Go away!” I shouted. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to crowd around and laugh more. Why would they do that? Why? It wasn’t funny. It hurt .
    “It’s just me, Drew,” came a soft voice.
    My stomach flipped over in a way that had nothing to do with my digestive issues. It was Anna, the elder cousin. She slid through a crack in the door and sat beside me. Her pale green dress was the same color as the leaves on the willow branches outside. I breathed her in, with my nose, my eyes, my everything—that long dark hair, that earthy warmth that smelled like digging flower beds in the spring with Siobhan, that syrupy way she melted into the blankets. My heart rate slowed. Suddenly I didn’t care that I had nothing on but a pair of pajama pants. I just wanted to crawl into her lap and stay there.
    She rubbed my back. “I’m sorry you don’t feel good.”
    I curled closer.
    My grandmother swooped in then. “Sit up, Andrew.”
    I wouldn’t let any moans of pain escape me, not in Anna’s presence. I was brave. I propped myself into sitting and ignored the fire raging in my midsection. Let my skinny legs dangle over the side of the bed. My grandmother jabbed at my gut with dry hands. I stiffened and resisted the urge to bite her.
    “Does anything else hurt?” she asked.
    I shook my head.
    “This wouldn’t happen if you ate the food I made instead of sneaking downstairs at night and gorging yourself on junk.”
    Oh, great. She knew. I looked away.
    Smack! Her hand came out too quickly for me to register, ringing me with a sharp slap across the face.
    “Pay attention when I talk to you!”
    My lip curled. I wasn’t scared. Or hurt. Something awful came alive inside of me. A million images rushed into my head. Images of bad things. Very bad things. Things I could do.
    “I’ll give him that, Gram,” Anna said quickly, taking the spoon and jar of medicine out of her hand. “He’s just embarrassed to have us all looking at him.”
    “Mmm.”
    After she’d left, Anna touched my face but said nothing.
    “She’s so mean!”
    “Don’t hold it against her,” Anna said.
    “Well, I don’t like her. I don’t have to like her!”
    “No, you don’t. But you do have to listen to her.”
    I pouted. “Why? She hates me. And she loves everyone else.”
    “She loves us all.”
    “Then why doesn’t she act like it?”
    “Because love doesn’t always look nice.”
    I folded my arms even tighter. Did Anna think I deserved to be slapped? Because I was bad? That’s what it sounded like. My chest swelled with bubbles of shame. Maybe I was bad. All those mean thoughts in my mind, wanting to hurt people. My grandmother knew about Soren, maybe she knew other things. The kinds of pictures I liked to look at on the computer. The kinds of things I liked to read.
    “Take this.” Anna waved a spoonful of frothy liquid before me.
    I twisted my head. “It looks gross.”
    “It’s milk of magnesia. And you definitely want to take it because if you don’t, Gram’ll come back in here and do something worse.”
    “Like what?”
    Anna grinned wide, the happiest I’d seen her. She rubbed her nose against mine. Eskimo kissing, we called it at school, but I never let anyone do it to me because I hated being touched. But Anna was different. Her skin was very soft, like the velvety folds of Pilot’s ears. The shame bubbles popped and my heart went all tingly. Anna was better than my mom. Maybe I loved her.
    “I don’t know,” she said teasingly. “She might give you an enema or something. Wouldn’t that be awful?”
    The tingling stopped and black dots danced in front of my eyes. I definitely did not want that. I opened my mouth wide. Anna stuck the spoon in.
    *   *   *
    Later, when I felt better and lighter, a thunderstorm washed across the