Free If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson

coming slow and shaky. We were walking along a cobblestone path, and I tried to let the old women slip from my mind. But they were there, their pinched faces scowling at us.
    Miah glanced at me, then looked away and shook his head. “My dad pays. He doesn’t say much as long as he knows I’m going every day. Just asks how it’s going and blase blase. They separated—my parents did. Whatever.”
    “That’s too bad. I mean—I guess it’s too bad, right?”
    He shrugged. “It’s whatever. Your parents together?”
    I nodded, embarrassed. At Jefferson, there were only a few of us whose parents hadn’t divorced yet. “They’ll be together forever. No one else could take either of them.”
    “Oh—it’s that kind of gig?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I guess that’s cool.”
    “I guess. I mean—my father is—my father’s great. You like your dad?”
    “Sometimes,” he said, frowning.
    “Here is good,” I said, stopping at a wide patch of grass underneath a maple tree.
    The air around us seemed thick suddenly, hot and stifling. When I looked over at Miah, he was still frowning.
    “Yeah,” Miah said. “This is cool. You want to sit on my jacket?”
    I shook my head and spread my own jacket beneath me.
    Miah sat down next to me, so close I could see the tiny hairs growing above his top lip. They were very black—like his hair—and fine. It felt strange having him so close to me. Strange in a good way.
    He unzipped his knapsack and started rummaging through it. After a moment, he came up with a Snickers bar. He searched through it some more and came up with a Swiss Army knife and cut the Snickers bar down the middle, handed half to me and put the knife back in his knapsack.
    “Thanks, Miah,” I said, really meaning it. I pulled the wrapping away and took a small bite. The chocolate was starting to melt already. It tasted sweet and warm.
    “My father gave me that knife. He said we’d go camping soon. That was about four years ago and we haven’t gone camping yet. But I carry that knife everywhere.” He smiled and looked at me. “Never know when he’s gonna pop up and say, ‘Hey, Miah—let’s take that camping trip we been talking about.’ ”
    “You think he ever will?”
    Miah shook his head. “No. I’m too old now. And everything’s changed since he gave it to me. I guess I just hold on to it.”
    “Hoping.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “Hoping.”
    “When I was little ...” I said slowly. My voice felt shaky. “Marion used to leave us. We’d wake up and she’d be gone.” It felt strange hearing myself say this to Miah—hearing that she left us.
    “Who’s Marion?”
    “My mother.” I pulled my hair out of my face and smiled. “I call her that. She hates it, but she won’t call me Ellie so I call her Marion.”
    Miah nodded without taking his eyes away from mine. He looked older when he was listening, grown-up and serious.
    “I didn’t think she was ever coming back.”
    “Did she?”
    “Yeah. Both times. But after the second time, it was different. I was the only kid still living at home and I was scared around her—careful. After a couple of months, things kind of went back to normal. But I don’t think it was ever the same again. It was like ... like she had introduced this idea of leaving to me and I’d never even thought about it before.”
    I ate my half of the Snickers bar slowly, thinking about the day Marion returned. It had snowed that morning—a heavy wet snow. My father helped me into my coat and hat and our neighbor came to take me to the park. We built a snowman. It was the first time I’d ever built one. When I got home, wet and cold and ready for my father to make me some hot chocolate, Marion was sitting there, at the kitchen table, her hands folded like a schoolgirl. I stared at her a long time waiting for her to hug me, to start bawling and talking about how much she missed me. But when she reached out her arms, it was me who started bawling.
    “We never thought