The bathroom was two doors down on the left. The light switch was just inside on the right wall. My room was brown with a green border. My bed was beside the closet. The stairs had exactly twelve steps.
It was the house I had lived in my entire life. It was the last place I had been with Dad before he went to heaven.
I didn’t like West Virginia. I didn’t like the house we live in now that I don’t recognize.
Here the bathroom is beside mine and it confuses me. My room is blue not brown. And there are fourteen steps. I hate counting them. Because it isn’t right.
It makes me anxious.
My mom tells me to stop being silly. She says that this is a fresh start. I don’t understand what that means.
I start rubbing my hands back and forth. Back and forth. Down my hands and back up again. Running over the smooth skin. Over and over again.
I lie there until I can’t take the feel of the sheets anymore. I rip them off my bed and throw them out the window. That makes me feel better.
My mother comes in to see what the noise is. When she sees my window wide open and the sheets and blankets gone, she gets me some new ones and makes up the bed again.
These sheets feel much better.
But I still can’t sleep.
So I lie there rubbing my hands. Over and over.
Until the sun comes up.
Wellsburg High School is much bigger than my last one. There were people everywhere.
“Stop rubbing your hands, Flynn,” my mother said as she pulls into the parking lot of my new school.
Telling me to stop only makes me rub them harder.
Up and down. Over and over again.
My mother reaches out to take my hand but I pull away. I hate when she touches me. She usually didn’t. I don’t like it.
“Flynn, please try and make an effort to get along with the other kids. Let’s make this time different,” she said with a sound in her voice I didn’t understand.
Her eyes are wet and I frown. Why was she crying?
I rub my hands a little harder.
My mother let out a breath and got out of the car. She opens my door and I slowly get out, making sure not to touch the rough fabric of the seat with my bare skin.
I follow her up the steps to the front door of the school.
I keep my eyes down. I don’t want to look at anyone.
I rub my hands again.
It is really noisy. Too much noise. And the lights are bright. Too bright.
It was better once we are in the office. It is quieter and I stop rubbing my hands.
My mom fills out some paperwork and I wait, not looking at anyone, though I can’t take my eyes off the tiny statue of a pyramid on the secretary’s desk. I reach out and poke it with my finger. It doesn’t look like the pictures I have seen in my books. It isn’t right.
I like looking at pictures of different places and then drawing them. I like the details.
“It has a crack in it. And the color is all wrong,” I said to the woman I haven’t looked at yet.
