Free Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

you something? There are a lot of empty boxes in your head, Sam.”
    I looked at him, quizzical. Again, it was a strange enough concept to hold my attention.
    â€œThere are a lot of empty boxes in there, and you can put things in them.” Beck handed me another tissue for the other side of my face.
    My trust of Beck at that point was not yet complete; I remember thinking that he was making a very bad joke that I wasn’t getting. My voice sounded wary, even to me. “What kinds of things?”
    â€œSad things,” Beck said. “Do you have a lot of sad things in your head?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    Beck sucked in his lower lip and released it slowly. “Well, I do.”
    This was shocking. I didn’t ask a question, but I tilted toward him.
    â€œAnd these things would make me cry,” Beck continued. “They used to make me cry all day long.”
    I remembered thinking this was probably a lie. I could not imagine Beck crying. He was a rock. Even then, his fingers braced against the floor, he looked poised, sure, immutable.
    â€œYou don’t believe me? Ask Ulrik. He had to deal with it,” Beck said. “And so you know what I did with those sad things? I put them in boxes. I put the sad things in the boxes in my head, and I closed them up and I put tape on them and I stacked them up in the corner and threw a blanket over them.”
    â€œ Brain tape?” I suggested, with a little smirk. I was eight, after all.
    Beck smiled, a weird private smile that, at the time, I didn’t understand. Now I knew it was relief at eliciting a joke from me, no matter how pitiful the joke was. “Yes, brain tape. And a brain blanket over the top. Now I don’t have to look at those sad things anymore. I couldopen those boxes sometime, I guess, if I wanted to, but mostly I just leave them sealed up.”
    â€œHow did you use the brain tape?”
    â€œYou have to imagine it. Imagine putting those sad things in the boxes and imagine taping it up with the brain tape. And imagine pushing them into the side of your brain, where you won’t trip over them when you’re thinking normally, and then toss a blanket over the top. Do you have sad things, Sam?”
    I could see the dusty corner of my brain where the boxes sat. They were all wardrobe boxes, because those were the most interesting sort of boxes — tall enough to make houses with — and there were rolls and rolls of brain tape stacked on top. There were razors lying beside them, waiting to cut the boxes and me back open.
    â€œMom,” I whispered.
    I wasn’t looking at Beck, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him swallow.
    â€œWhat else?” he asked, barely loud enough for me to hear.
    â€œThe water,” I said. I closed my eyes. I could see it, right there, and I had to force out the next word. “My …”
    My fingers were on my scars.
    Beck reached out a hand toward my shoulder, hesitant. When I didn’t move away, he put an arm around my back and I leaned against his chest, feeling small and eight and broken.
    â€œMe,” I said.
    Beck was silent for a long moment, hugging me. With my eyes closed, it seemed like his heartbeat through his wool sweater was the only thing in the world — and then he said, “Put everything in boxes but you, Sam. You we want to keep. Promise me you’ll stay out here with us.”
    We sat like that for a long while, and when we stood up, all my sad things were in boxes, and Beck was my father.
    Now, I went outside to the wide, ancient stump in the backyard, and I lay down on it so I could see the stars above me. Then I closed my eyes and slowly put my worries into boxes, one by one, sealing them up. Cole’s self-destruction in one, Tom Culpeper in another. Even Isabel’s voice got a box, because I just couldn’t deal with it right now.
    With each box, I felt a little lighter, a little more able to breathe.
    The one