“Every home needs a kettle. Take it.” The seven-foot wall with narrowed eyes and a growly voice thrusts the kettle at me.
“Yes. Yes, I love it. Thank you!” I clutch the box and back away.
My new landlord is scaryandgenerous, and I don’t know what to do. It’s like finding out that the bully you were running from in middle school was chasing after you to make sure you had your lunchbox and bus fare.
“Good lad.” He smiles suddenly, and I smile back.
This time, he stalks off, gets in his car, and drives away, leaving me with muffins, keys, and a kettle.
Well. I guess Pine Ridge is home now.
OCTOBER 3RD, 2025
Eagle Arch (unincorporated), Alaska
“Your classes are over. Why are you still on that damn device?”
I look up at Father nervously. “I have to do the work for the classes, or I can’t stay in them. It’s free to attend, so I at least need to do the work.”
“Stupid university. What kind of fools run that place?”
“Barton, let her do the work. It keeps her busy, and it’s state-funded. Not by our state, by those godless New Yorkers, so what does it matter?”
My stepmother is far nicer than my father, which is odd, because all the books I’ve read say that stepmothers are wicked. But I don’t really have anything to compare to. My classmates talk a lot when we do our breakout sessions online, and they have lots of different families... None of them sounds like mine.
All of them are in New York, which is so far from Alaska, and that’s why Sarah (my stepmother) says that they can go places and see people. Father also points out that they’re not freaks like me with bony growths on my head and birth defects that left mewith a weird growth on my spine and skin the color of bubble gum.
But then there’s Cary, who is so funny and so brave. Half of his face looks like it melted. He was a soldier and stepped on a bomb, and even with one arm, one eye, and all his twisted skin, he has a wife and two sons, and he does something called stand-up comedy. He makes us all laugh with his wit and the little one-line replies he tosses to each of us like he’s doling out candy.
I don’t think I would like him better with perfect skin.
And then there is Vince, who has metal growths all over his eyes and ears that he calls piercings, and his face is covered in blue. They’re called tattoos, and no one talks about them, no one at all!
I tried telling Sarah about it, but she says if I bring it up to Father, he will just take my classes away, and I’ll just have to stay inside and do nothing.
There’s no work in Eagle Arch unless you work on the oil rigs or fishing boats, and Father says they don’t take women. I think they should make an exception and take me, because I don’t mind the cold. My skin is so thick that Father gave up trying to beat sense into me when I was just a little thing, because I don’t even bruise.
Right now, he glares, huffs, and says he’s going back to bed. He has to leave early tomorrow with the launch boat, and he won’t be back for a couple of weeks.
Maybe when he’s gone, I can ask Sarah about the books we’re reading. One is set in Alaska, and there are lots of people in it. Lots of towns. People with friends and family, people who travel and fly to other places.
And in another book, there’s a man like Father, who keeps his children locked up in their apartment, but it’s in Chicago, and it’s called a “project,” and he has guns and cocaine under his bed. But he keeps them from going to school and keeps themin their rooms when people come over, and shouts at them and calls them worthless. The story is uplifting, though, because the eldest sister gets her three siblings to safety one night, and they end up with a nice family from Arlington Heights and start a foster care organization in the 1970s.
All of the stories are true because the class is called “America, Ourselves,” and we’re reading nonfiction from a huge list of options. I have to read the options that are available free online from the school’s library, but that’s okay.
My parents don’t know it, but I’m allowed to take out up to fifty books at a time, and I don’t seem to need as much sleep as they say. I’ve been reading every day since the end of August.
Reading makes me happy.
And sad.
And concerned.
My classes make me happy, too, and they keep me quiet and busy, which I heard my father tell Sarah would be harder and harder to do since I’m “an adult.” They still treat me like a child. I know that now.
Today, my classes made me miserable, though. In Psychology 101, Sofia wasn’t in our breakout room. Lesha said that Sofia had to leave and go to a women’s shelter because her partner put her hands on her. That the partner is emotionally and physically abusive, and Lesha finally convinced Sofia to go before shecan’tgo.
And now... hours later, I’m hoping Lesha won’t mind that I’m using the class messaging app that’s only supposed to be for group work to contact her. The syllabus says any violation of that will result in expulsion from the class, and maybe even the college program.
