Free When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde

sun. So, is that how it is with you?”
    Nat said nothing.
    “Why won’t you speak for yourself?”
    Because you don’t listen, he thought.
    “And now what am I supposed to do? They still need help at Mick’s house, but now I don’t dare leave you alone. Because I don’t know if I can trust you. Well? Can I? Can I trust you?”
    Nat said nothing.
    “Well, it wouldn’t even matter if you said I could. It wouldn’t help. Because I’d still never know if it were true. For all I know, you might just be lying.”
    Imagine that, Nat thought. Imagine not knowing if the person you know best in the world is telling you the truth or lying to your face. But he didn’t say any of that. Of course. He said nothing.
    “Well, this is going to be a long drive,” she said.
    Nineteen hours of this and I’ll go crazy, Nat thought.
    But she continued to talk. And he continued to ignore her. He just looked out the window and watched the world go by, in case he didn’t get to see it again for a very long time. And for nineteen hours and more he said nothing.

30 September 1974   
The Man
    “I hope you don’t think I’m going to get all soft and break that promise I made to myself,” she said. “Because I’m not. I said it and I meant it. No presents until you get your grades up above failing.”
    He was lying on his back on the couch, watching TV. A show he didn’t like. And pretending to ignore her. And pretending that receiving no gifts from her did not in any way hurt. She was standing over him, partially blocking his view. Railing at him. Which is why he was watching a show he didn’t like. So it wouldn’t bother him when she made him miss it.
    He said nothing.
    “You probably think I’ll feel sorry for you tonight or in the morning. And that I’ll run out and get something. But I won’t. Because a promise is a promise.”
    Nat said nothing.
    “And I’m not restarting your allowance, either.”
    Still nothing, though Nat felt as if he were
wanting
to say something. As if communication with her was vaguely possible and yet just beyond his grasp, all at the same time. As if, on the rare occasions he attempted to say something to her, the words hit a brick wall and fell to the floor defeated.
    “You’re already looking at summer school. In three subjects.”
    He looked up at her for the first time. “What about my present from The Man?”
    She looked flustered for a moment. Then she said, “Ah. It speaks.”
    “Well? What about it?”
    “Hmm. I hadn’t thought about that. Well, you never like anything he gives you, anyway. So it’s hardly a reward. That’s between you and him, I suppose.”
    “Has it come?”
    “No. Why should it have?”
    “Well, the mail’s already been.”
    “They don’t come in the mail.”
    This was miserable news to Nat, who had been counting heavily on getting a look at the return address. But he was careful not to frown or otherwise betray his thoughts.
    “What do they come in?”
    “They just show up on the porch in the morning.”
    Which is similarly interesting, Nat thought. Because he took it to mean it would be delivered in person.
    •  •  •
     
    Nat sat up in the dark, in his room, on the padded window seat, looking out on to the street. On his lap lay the binoculars The Man had given him when he was six.
    He watched the shadows of the maple tree sway on the far wall of his room. The streetlight out front threw spooky shadows, and a good strong wind was up that night. And it gave him something to watch. Because nothing happened on their street at night. No people. No cars. No nothing.
    He could read the clock clearly, even though it was all the way over on the dresser. Its face glowed in the dark. And it ticked. The ticking had never bothered him before. But it bothered him tonight.
    It was ten thirty.
    Sometime in the next half hour he dozed off without meaning to.
    He woke to the sound of a car door.
    He jumped, and sat upright, his back stiff from the