Page 73 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I can’t do this anymore, I’m so tired and I’m so scared and I’m so sorry.
“You must have the wrong person,” Jess says.
Dad tromps up with an old blanket—a blanket that’s moved between three cars, a blanket that’s probably as old as Crane is—and settles it over Crane’s shoulders. Jess stares at this strange man too. She grips the truck key harder.
“I promise we’re fine,” she says again, pulling Crane closer. Her dark hair sticks to his pain-sweaty face.
Dad’s gone still, though. He’s stopped, his deep-set eyes narrowed. He hasn’t shaved in a while, and apparently he hasn’t bought a new coat in four years.
And Crane remembers. Sitting on the back porch on a warm summer night, waiting for the blink of a single firefly as Dad talked about the swarms of them he used to chase as a boy in Pennsylvania. Falling asleep on the couch as a World War II documentary murmured on TV, the back of Sophie’s head bumping Dad’s knee. Sweeping the sidewalk as Dad mowed the lawn, and playfully squabbling over leftover brownie batter, and sending each other news articles detailing the cruel aftershocks of yet another Supreme Court decision, frustrated but resigned to their fate.
Dad watches him, mouth slightly open, drinking in everything. Crane’s hair. His eyes. His tattoos, his scalded face.
Dad says, expression distorting with a thunderclap of pity and fear and heartbreak, “Oh god.”
And he begins to cry.
“It’s you,” he whimpers, putting his hands so softly against Levi’s coat. “Nicole, look. Our baby. It’s our baby.”
Who the fuck knows what Jess must be thinking in this moment: a random couple deciding that a deity has answered their twistedprayers and this silent, pregnant freak is delivering the baby just for them. An episode out of a sex-crime TV show. Even Mom’s face screws up for a moment as if she’s got no idea what her husband’s on about. They lost their daughter years ago; has the weight of grief finally shattered him? Sure, these strangers look so oddly like Sophie, but—
Crane wonders what does it for her. What Mom sees in Crane that makes her get it. Is it the exact color of his eyes? The slightly crooked tooth that slid right back into place after thousands of dollars of orthodontics?
She says, dazed, “Oh.”
“Crane,” Jess says. “Do you know these people?”
He considers lying. Shaking his head, begging her to take him inside and away from them. Let his parents think for the rest of their lives that they were mistaken, that they ran into a ghost wearing their daughter’s face.
But he can’t. The pain of labor, the sting of the cold, everything about the past, what, eight and a half months—it’s worn him down.
He wants his mom and dad.
He clumsily slumps from Jess’s embrace, clutching the blanket tight. His eyes burn and maybe it’s the biting wind, but clouds of stuttering condensation betray the hitching of his lungs. Yes, he knows them. He would know them anywhere. He’s sorry he left. He’s sorry for wasting the money they spent on all those college applications, and he’s sorry he didn’t say goodbye.
“You’re—” Dad attempts, avoiding the obvious horror of the scald. “You have tattoos.” His fingers press into the crook of Crane’s jaw, finding the tattoo nestled behind his ear. “You’re having a baby. You cut your hair.”
“Did you think you couldn’t tell us?” Mom whispers.
You weren’t bad parents, Crane wants to tell them.You were perfect.
So why did he leave? Because they didn’t read his mind? Because theybelievedtheir daughter when she said she was okay? Because theytrustedher?
Let’s rewind.
Let’s say the swarm never came, but Sophie didn’t manage to set herself on fire, either. She chickened out of the flames like she was always going to. She sat there in the back seat of the car with all her supplies, sobbing and gasping for air, and she wouldn’t trust herself to drive home; not this emotionally compromised, not with all the graduation parties happening in the neighborhood. It would be two in the morning and she’d call her parents to pick her up, and her parents would come up because they’re good parents and they love her. At home, the three of them would sit on the couch, lights turned down low, a cup of water in Sophie’s hands, and she would tell them everything.
She would tell them about the fire drill in middle school. Her obsession with hurting herself. She’d explain how tired she was all the time, how she’s terrified of college and doesn’t think she can do it, how she’s not really as smart as everyone believes she is. That she’s fooled everyone into thinking that she’s a good person. And maybe she’d even talk about the boys in the locker room. Maybe she’d talk about the dog and every awful thing she’d prayed for.
Clutching a snotty tissue in her fist, staring at the wall above the fireplace, Sophie would say she wished she was a boy. She’d say she never wants to speak again, because never once has it been worth it, and she thinks there is something very, very wrong.
Sophie’s parents would look at each other over her head and have that telepathy moment.
Dad would say, “I’m so sorry we never noticed,” and Mom would say, “Thank you for telling us.”
After that? Who knows. College would get deferred for a year,probably. Dad would help make an appointment for HRT on his son’s eighteenth birthday, and Mom would pay for a therapist who clocks Crane’s autism thirty minutes into the first session. In a few years, he’d see Aspen and Birdie again. And Levi never would have fucked him, and this baby wouldn’t be tearing him apart, and he would never know what the inside of a shattered skull looked like, and he would use a safe word if he needed it.
If Crane hadn’t been such a coward, and asked for help, he could’ve avoided it all.
