You Can’t Outrun Where You Came From

The Miller house had never been quiet on New Year’s Eve.

By eleven forty-five, it sounded like the whole damn neighborhood had decided to squeeze itself into our living room. The television was turned up loud enough for everyone to hear the countdown later, even though nobody actually knew whether the thing was going to matter. Shawn had been running around with a plastic sword for the last hour. Ellie was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, carefully arranging pieces of candy she’d been given like they were worth something. Joshua had fallen asleep against Deon’s shoulder despite all the noise.

Somebody was arguing in the kitchen.

Somebody else was laughing.

The stairs creaked every few seconds from people going up and down, and every time the front door opened, cold December air rushed through the house before disappearing beneath the smell of cigarettes, cheap food, and whatever Deon had managed to burn in the oven.

Y2K.

Everybody kept talking about it like midnight was going to split the world in half.

Computers were supposed to stop working. Banks were supposed to lose everything. Planes were supposed to fall out of the sky. The lights might go out. Nobody really knew what was true anymore, but that didn’t stop people from talking.

I didn’t care.

I just needed air.

So I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me.

The cold hit me immediately.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans and stood on the porch, letting the noise from inside fade into something distant and muffled. For the first time all night, nobody was asking me anything. Nobody needed me to settle a fight, find something, watch somebody, or pretend I was having a good time.

I could breathe.

I looked down the street.

Most of the houses were lit up. Some had Christmas lights still hanging from their gutters, blinking red and green against the snow. Cars were parked along both sides of the road. Somewhere in the distance, someone set off a firework even though midnight was still fifteen minutes away.

I almost smiled.

Then I saw her.

For a second, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

A girl standing at the edge of our driveway.

She had her hands tucked into the sleeves of her coat, her hair moving slightly in the cold wind. She wasn’t looking at the house.

She was looking at me.

My stomach dropped.

No.

There were certain people you could recognize without seeing their face.

Four years could pass.

You could grow taller. Change your hair. Change your clothes. Change almost everything about yourself.

It didn’t matter.

I knew her.

Katie.

My first reaction wasn’t happiness.

It wasn’t relief.

It wasn’t even sadness.

It was anger.

Four years of it, apparently, because the second I saw her standing there, every unanswered question I’d spent years trying not to think about came rushing back at once.

Where the hell had she been?

Why did she leave?

Why didn’t she say goodbye?

Why was she here now?

And, somehow worse than all of those—

Why did some part of me still want to walk toward her?

Katie started up the porch steps.

I didn’t move.

She stopped a few feet away from me.

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Then she looked at me the way she used to.

Like she already knew me.

Like four years hadn’t happened.

-Hi, Nico.

And just like that, I was six years old again.

I met Katie in 1989. I was six years old.

I don’t remember the first thing the teacher said that morning.

I remember my knuckles.

They were still red from the fight I’d gotten into before class, the skin split across two of them and already beginning to sting whenever I curled my fingers into a fist. There was a fresh bruise along my cheek too, darkening beneath a thin cut that hadn’t completely dried yet.

I’d been told to go to the nurse.

I hadn’t.

I never liked the nurse.

She always asked questions.

Who hit you?

Why did you hit him?

What happened?

I didn’t know how to explain that, most of the time, I didn’t need a reason.

I was angry.

That was reason enough.

I sat at the back of the classroom with my arms folded across my chest, staring at the paper in front of me without understanding much of it. I’d already fallen behind in school. Being six didn’t stop the teachers from expecting me to keep up, and I wasn’t.

I’d failed enough that they’d moved me into a class with kids a year younger. I hated that more than I hated school. It made me feel stupid. I wasn’t stupid. At least, I didn’t think I was. I just didn’t care about most of what they wanted me to care about.

Numbers didn’t make sense when there were more important things to think about. Reading was fine when I wanted to do it, but being told what to read made me want to throw the book across the room. And sitting still for an entire class felt impossible when there was always something else happening somewhere.

A chair scraping.

Someone whispering.

A kid laughing.

A teacher talking too much.

I noticed everything.

I just didn’t know what to do with any of it.

The girl beside me was different.

She’d been smiling since the moment she sat down.

I didn’t understand why.

Nobody had given her a reason to smile.

She was just doing it.

She had soft blond hair that kept falling over her shoulder whenever she leaned down to write, and she kept pushing it back with the same hand every few minutes. Her notebook was covered in little drawings in the corners of the pages. Flowers. Stars. A crooked-looking cat.

I thought it was stupid.

Then she looked at me.

Her eyes settled on the bruise along my cheek.

It was probably more noticeable than I thought. A dark patch had already started spreading beneath the small cut, and there was still a faint smear of dried blood near the edge of it.

She stared at it for a moment.

I stared back at her.

I didn’t understand what she was looking at.

Then she lifted her hand.

It happened slowly, almost without thought, her little fingers reaching toward my face as if she wanted to see if it hurt.

I pulled away before she could touch me.

My eyebrows pulled together.

What?

She stopped with her hand still halfway between us.

For a second, she looked almost embarrassed.

Then she pointed toward my cheek.

What’s that?

I touched the spot with my fingertips.

Nothing.

She looked at me like she didn’t believe me.

That doesn’t look like nothing.

I shrugged.

I couldn’t understand why she cared.

She’d been sitting beside me for maybe five minutes. She didn’t know me. I didn’t know her. She didn’t even know my name, but somehow she was already looking at my face like she was supposed to worry about what happened to me.

I looked back down at my paper.

It’s just a scratch.

She was quiet.

I could feel her still looking at me.

Then her eyes dropped to my hands.

The redness around my knuckles hadn’t gone away either.

She looked at them, then back at my cheek.

Did somebody hurt you?

I shrugged again.

I’m fine.

She didn’t answer right away.

She just looked at me with those wide eyes, like she was trying to decide whether she believed me.

She probably didn’t.

But instead of asking again, she gave me a small smile.

It wasn’t the same big smile she’d had when she first sat down.

This one was softer.

Worried.

Okay.

I glanced at her.

She smiled again and finally looked back down at her paper.

I didn’t understand her.

I didn’t understand why she’d reached for my face.

I didn’t understand why she cared about a bruise that had nothing to do with her.

And I definitely didn’t understand why, after only a few minutes beside me, she seemed more concerned about me than most people I already knew.

I thought that was the end of it.

A few minutes later, she looked over again.

What’s your name?

I hesitated.

Nobody at school usually cared enough to ask.

Nico.

Her smile returned.

I’m Katie.

I nodded once.

Okay.

The bell rang.

I shoved my pencil into my bag and stood up immediately.

I wanted out.

I was halfway across the classroom before I heard her footsteps behind me.

Nico.

I kept walking.

Nico.

I walked faster.

You forgot your paper.I don’t want it.Oh.

She caught up anyway.

Then she started talking.

She told me her favorite color was yellow because it looked like sunlight. She told me she hated peas. She told me she had a cat that scratched everybody except her. She told me her mom said she talked too much.

I thought her mom was probably right.

I didn’t say that.

I just kept walking.

She kept following.

By the time we reached the end of the hallway, she was telling me about a dream she’d had the night before where her house had turned into a castle.

I didn’t understand how someone could talk that much without getting tired.

She didn’t seem to notice that I wasn’t answering.

Or maybe she did.

Maybe she just didn’t care.

The next morning, she sat beside me again.

Hi, Nico.

I looked at her.

Hi.

It was the first word I’d said to her.

Her smile got bigger.

And somehow, that became a routine.

Every morning, Katie talked.

I listened.

She told me things I didn’t ask about. She told me about her parents. Her favorite cartoons. Something her neighbor had done. A bird she’d seen outside. What she wanted to be when she grew up, which changed every few days.

She wanted to be a teacher.

Then a veterinarian.

Then an artist.

Then a princess.

I never told her that princess wasn’t a real job.

I didn’t want to ruin it.

After class, I’d leave.

She’d follow.

I’d walk faster.

She’d walk faster.

I’d turn a corner without warning.

She’d somehow still be behind me.

For a while, it annoyed me.

Then it didn’t.

I never told her that.

I didn’t tell anybody much.

Talking had never seemed useful to me. Words didn’t stop people from hitting you. Words didn’t make your father sober. Words didn’t make the house quieter or the bills disappear or your little brother stop crying at two in the morning.

Words were just words.

But Katie never seemed to run out of them.

For almost a month, she followed me everywhere.

And somewhere during that month, something changed.

I started listening for her footsteps.

I started noticing when she wasn’t there.

The first time I smiled because of something she said, I didn’t even realize I’d done it.

She was telling me some ridiculous story about how she’d tried to teach her cat to sit and the cat had apparently decided that biting her hand was a better response.

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

It surprised me enough that I stopped walking.

Katie stopped too.

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

What?You laughed.No, I didn’t.You did.I didn’t.

She grinned.

You did.

I looked away.

Whatever.

She laughed too, and we kept walking.

Neither of us realized we’d been walking for almost twenty-five minutes.

By the time I looked up, we were standing in front of my house.

The Miller house looked worse than it usually did.

The paint around the porch was peeling. One of the windows upstairs had a crack running through it. There were toys scattered near the steps that probably belonged to Andrew, and somewhere inside, I could hear the television turned up too loud.

I stopped.

Katie looked at the house.

That’s your house?Yeah.

She smiled.

Can I come in?

I looked through the window.

Dad was probably drunk.

Deon was probably doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

Elias was five, so he was probably running around butt naked.

Andrew was two, which meant somebody was probably going to be crying within the next ten minutes.

I shook my head.

Not today.

Katie didn’t look offended.

Okay.

She stood there for another moment.

Then we started walking again. I didn’t know where she lived. I didn’t ask.

We’d been walking for another few minutes when I noticed the man.

He passed us going the other direction. He looked at Katie. Not the way normal people looked at someone. His eyes stayed on her too long.

I stopped walking. Katie took another step before realizing I wasn’t beside her.

What—

I grabbed her wrist.

She turned toward me, confused.

I pulled her closer without thinking.

My eyes stayed on the man until he disappeared farther down the street.

He hadn’t done anything.

Not really.

But I didn’t like the way he’d looked at her.

I didn’t know what the feeling was.

I only knew it felt familiar.

Danger.

Come on.

Katie looked at my hand around her wrist, then up at me.

Where?I’m walking you home.

She smiled.

You are?Yeah.Why?

I stared at her.

Just because.

She didn’t argue. She walked beside me. For most of the way, she talked. I barely answered.

But I didn’t walk ahead of her anymore.

And when we reached her house, she turned toward me with that same smile she’d had the first day we’d met.

See you tomorrow, Nico.

I nodded.

Yeah.

She went inside.

I stood there for a moment before turning around.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like fighting anybody.

I just went home.

For the next two weeks, Katie never came inside my house.

I didn’t invite her.

She never asked again.

That was one of the first things I noticed about her. She could talk for hours without getting tired, but she somehow knew when to stop. She never pushed when I told her no. She just accepted it, smiled, and showed up the next morning like nothing had happened.

And somehow, that made me trust her.

We started walking home together every day.

Sometimes she talked the entire way.

Sometimes I answered.

Sometimes I didn’t.

She never seemed to mind any of it.

She started learning things about me without asking directly. She figured out that I hated being touched without warning. She learned that I didn’t like people standing too close behind me. She learned that if I was quiet for too long, it usually meant I was angry, tired, or thinking about something I didn’t want to talk about.

I learned things about her too.

She always picked the yellow crayon first.

She hated when people raised their voices.

She cried at movies and then pretended she had something in her eye.

She liked sitting on the front steps when the weather was warm.

She was terrified of thunderstorms but insisted she wasn’t.

And she laughed at almost everything.

Even things that weren’t funny.

Especially things that weren’t funny.

One afternoon, she was telling me about something her cat had done when I interrupted her.

You talk too much.

She stopped walking.

I kept going for another step before realizing she wasn’t beside me anymore.

I turned around.

She was staring at me.

What?

I shrugged.

Nothing.

She narrowed her eyes.

-You said I talk too much.

You do.

She crossed her arms.

Do you want me to stop?

I opened my mouth.

Then closed it.

I looked at the sidewalk.

No.

Her face changed immediately.

The little frown disappeared.

Oh.

She smiled.

Okay.

Then she started talking again.

I shook my head, but I was smiling.

I didn’t realize it until she pointed it out.

You’re smiling.No, I’m not.You are.Shut up.

She laughed.

I laughed too.

That was probably the first time I realized I actually liked having her around.

Not because she was useful.

Not because she could fight.

Not because she could make anything disappear.

Just because she was Katie.

And somehow, that was enough.

Two weeks after I’d walked her home for the first time, we were sitting on the curb outside her house.

She was drawing something in the dirt with a stick.

I watched her for a while.

What are you drawing?

She looked down.

A house.It looks terrible.

She gasped.

It does not.It does.

She hit my arm with the stick.

You’re mean.

I laughed.

She smiled.

Then she looked at me.

Can I come to your house?

I shrugged.

Maybe.

She stared at me.

That means yes?Maybe.That means yes.

I rolled my eyes.

The next day, she came with me.

Not to my house.

Just halfway down the street.

Then we stopped.

I looked toward my block.

She looked at me.

You said maybe.I know.So?

I shoved my hands into my pockets.

For some reason, my stomach felt strange.

It was just my house.

She’d already seen it from outside.

She’d already seen the broken window, the peeling paint, the toys on the steps.

But letting her inside felt different.

It meant letting her see everything I usually kept separate from the rest of the world.

The noise.

The mess.

My brothers.

My father.

The parts of me I didn’t know how to explain.

I looked at her.

She was waiting.

Not pushing.

Just waiting.

You can come over.

Her face lit up.

Really?

I nodded.

Yeah.

She grabbed my hand.

I immediately looked down at it.

She noticed.

Sorry.

She let go.

I stared at her for a second.

Then I reached over and grabbed her hand again.

It’s fine.

She smiled.

And that was how Katie Sullivan first walked into the Miller house.

She stood in the doorway for a second, looking around.

The house looked exactly like it always did.

Old.

Crowded.

Loud.

There were shoes piled beside the door, toys scattered across the floor, dishes sitting in the sink, and something in the kitchen smelled like it had been burning for a while.

Andrew was sitting on the living-room floor with a toy truck between his legs.

He was two years old and unusually quiet, watching everything around him with those serious little eyes of his. He didn’t say much. He rarely did.

He looked at Katie.

Then at me.

Then back at Katie.

He pointed at her.

Who?Katie.

Andrew kept staring.

Katie crouched down so she was closer to him.

Hi.

Andrew didn’t answer.

He pushed his toy truck toward her.

Katie smiled.

Is that yours?

Andrew nodded.

Can I see?

He handed it to her.

I looked at him.

He didn’t usually let people touch his things.

Katie didn’t seem to realize that.

She rolled the truck across the floor.

Andrew watched her carefully.

Then, slowly, he smiled.

That was Andrew.

He noticed everything.

He just didn’t always say what he noticed.

A loud voice suddenly came from upstairs.

Nico!

Deon.

I looked toward the stairs.

What?Did you take my—

He stopped when he saw Katie.

Deon leaned over the railing, twelve years old and already carrying himself like he was older than everybody else in the house. He had the same tired look he always seemed to have, but unlike me, he could still joke about almost anything.

His eyes moved from me to Katie.

A grin appeared.

Who’s that?Katie.Your girlfriend?

My face immediately got hot.

Shut up.

Deon laughed.

Katie’s cheeks turned pink.

We’re just friends.

Deon pointed at me.

He likes you.Deon!

He laughed harder.

Katie covered her mouth, trying not to laugh.

I wanted to disappear.

Instead, I shoved Deon’s shoulder when he came downstairs.

He stumbled dramatically.

Ow.You’re annoying.You love me.No, I don’t.See? He’s mean to everybody.

Katie laughed.

And somehow, within ten minutes, she was sitting on the floor with Andrew while Deon told her stories I absolutely did not want him telling.

She stayed for an hour.

Then two.

She played with Andrew.

She listened to Deon.

She asked me questions.

She laughed when I made fun of my brother.

And when she finally left, Andrew cried.

Actually cried.

He stood by the door with his little hands pressed against it, looking up at me like I’d done something terrible.

Katie.

I looked down at him.

She’ll be back.

He didn’t understand.

Neither did I.

But she came back the next day.

And the day after that.

Soon, she didn’t need me to invite her.

She just showed up.

Sometimes she’d knock.

Sometimes she’d yell my name from the porch.

Sometimes Deon would let her in before I even knew she was there.

Sometimes she’d just walk in like she’s been living here forever.

She started learning where everything was.

She knew which cabinet had the cereal.

She knew which floorboard creaked on the stairs.

She knew Andrew liked the blue cup better than the red one.

She knew Deon hated when people touched his stuff.

She knew Elias was impossible to keep quiet.

Elias was five and somehow had enough energy for ten people. He was always running through the house, shouting about something, making up games, laughing at his own jokes and dragging everybody else into whatever trouble he’d invented that day.

Katie loved him.

Everybody did.

Even when he was annoying.

Especially when he was annoying.

She knew exactly which bedroom was mine too.

Eventually, she stopped feeling like a guest.

She became part of the noise.

Part of the mess.

Part of us.

I changed too.

It didn’t happen all at once.

For the first year, I was still angry most of the time.

I still got into fights.

I still came home with bruises.

I still shut myself in my room when things got too loud.

But Katie was there.

And slowly, without either of us really noticing, I started becoming somebody else around her.

I joked more.

I smiled more.

I started making fun of my brothers instead of fighting them.

I learned how to make Katie laugh so hard she’d have to hold her stomach.

I discovered that I was actually funny when I wasn’t trying to be.

Or maybe I had always been funny.

Maybe anger had just taken up so much space inside me that there hadn’t been room for anything else.

Katie made room.

She never told me to change.

She never told me I was angry.

She never told me I needed to be nicer.

She just stayed long enough for me to remember that I could be.

And somewhere in that first year, something else started happening.

I wanted her around even when I didn’t need her.

I started looking for her when I walked into a room.

I noticed when she wasn’t at school.

I remembered little things she’d said weeks earlier.

I knew which jokes would make her laugh.

I knew when she was upset before she’d say anything.

I wanted to be the person she came to first.

I didn’t know what that meant.

I was seven.

I didn’t know what love was supposed to feel like.

Nobody had ever explained it to me.

So I called it friendship.

That was the easiest word.

Katie was my best friend.

That was all.

At least, that’s what I thought.

By the time we were seven and six, people at school had stopped asking where one of us was when they saw the other.

We were just together.

If Katie was there, I was probably nearby.

If I was there, she wasn’t far away.

We did everything together.

Homework.

Walks.

Bike rides.

Fights over stupid things.

Making up five minutes later.

She became the first person I looked for when something funny happened.

The first person I wanted to tell when I was excited.

The first person I wanted beside me when I was angry.

And eventually, the first person I trusted with the things I didn’t say out loud.

She knew when Dad had been drinking before I said anything.

She knew when Deon was stressed.

She knew when Andrew was watching something too closely.

She knew when I was pretending I was fine.

She never called me out on it.

She’d just sit beside me.

Sometimes that was enough.

Then, Shawn was born.

I was seven.

Katie was six.

Mom had been gone for most of the pregnancy, the same way she often disappeared when things became difficult. But when Shawn was born, she came back.

For a little while, the house changed.

There were bags by the door.

Baby clothes folded on the couch.

People speaking more quietly.

Then Shawn arrived and immediately made sure nobody stayed quiet for long.

He cried constantly.

Not the occasional cry Andrew had made as a baby.

Shawn screamed.

He screamed when he was hungry.

He screamed when he was tired.

He screamed when somebody picked him up.

He screamed when somebody put him down.

He seemed personally offended by the existence of silence.

He almost never smiled.

Mom would hold him against her chest, exhausted, rocking him back and forth while he screamed directly into her shoulder.

Deon would stand nearby looking like he was already trying to figure out how to fix something he hadn’t broken.

Elias thought the crying was hilarious at first.

Andrew watched from across the room, silent as always.

Katie would cover her ears and look at me.

Is he always going to do that?

I looked at Shawn.

Probably.

She frowned.

I don’t like him.

I laughed.

You don’t mean that.

She looked at the baby screaming in Diane’s arms.

I mean it a little.

Mom laughed despite how tired she looked.

That was Shawn.

He arrived angry at the world and never really stopped being angry at it.

As he got older, the crying turned into screaming, and the screaming turned into running.

He was everywhere.

If Deon turned around, Shawn was already climbing something.

If somebody left a door open, Shawn was gone.

If there was a glass on the table, Shawn found it.

If there was something breakable in the house, he somehow knew exactly where it was.

He broke plates.

He tore books.

He spilled drinks.

He stole cigarettes.

He stole beer.

He once took Deon’s shoes and threw them into the bathtub just because he thought it was funny.

He lit things on fire.

That became a problem.

A very serious problem.

I still remember Deon standing in the backyard one afternoon, staring at a pile of burned cardboard while Shawn stood behind him looking completely unbothered.

Shawn.

Shawn looked up.

What?Did you do this?

Shawn shrugged.

Maybe.

Deon closed his eyes.

I’m going to kill you.

Katie covered her mouth, trying not to laugh.

I looked at her.

Don’t.

She whispered.

I’m not laughing.

She was absolutely laughing.

Shawn ran.

Deon chased him.

Elias immediately joined in because, naturally, he thought it was hilarious.

Andrew stayed on the porch, watching all of them with the same quiet expression he always wore.

I stood beside Katie.

She looked at me.

Your family is crazy.

I nodded.

I know.

She smiled.

I like it.

I looked at her.

That was the thing about Katie.

She saw the chaos and never treated it like something shameful.

She just stepped into it.

Then, in 1991, Ellie was born.

I was eleven.

Katie was ten.

Mom came back again.

And this time, something about the house felt different before we’d even seen the baby.

We knew it was a girl.

The first girl.

The first daughter in the Miller family.

For once, nobody was talking about what could go wrong.

Even Deon looked different.

He was older now, almost seventeen, and he had already spent years acting like another parent in the house. But when Diane brought Ellie home, he stood in the doorway of the living room staring down at her like he couldn’t believe she was real.

She was tiny.

Her hair was almost impossibly light, soft blond curls that barely covered her head.

Her eyes were bright blue.

She barely made a sound.

That alone made her feel like she belonged to another world.

The boys gathered around her crib.

Deon was closest.

Then Elias.

Then me.

Andrew stood beside us, quiet and observant.

Shawn was there too, somehow managing to stay still for almost thirty seconds.

Katie stood behind us.

We all ended up kneeling around the crib.

Nobody said much.

We just stared.

Ellie slept beneath the thin blanket, one tiny hand curled beside her cheek.

Elias whispered.

She’s really small.

Deon looked at him.

Obviously.I know. I’m just saying.

Shawn leaned closer.

Can she talk?

I looked at him.

She’s a baby.So?

Andrew finally spoke.

She’s asleep.

Everyone looked at him.

He shrugged.

You’re loud.

Elias laughed.

I smiled.

Even Deon did.

Then Ellie moved.

Her little fingers curled around the blanket.

All of us went quiet again.

I don’t know what it was about her.

Maybe because she was the first girl.

Maybe because she was so small.

Maybe because we were all boys who had spent our entire lives learning how to survive noise, and suddenly there was this tiny person who looked like she needed the whole world to be gentle with her.

Whatever it was, something changed that day.

She was ours.

And every one of us knew it.

Katie stepped closer to the crib.

Her expression softened immediately.

She’s beautiful.

I looked at Katie.

Then Ellie.

Then back at Katie.

There was something about the way she looked at my sister that made my chest feel strange.

Katie had always been part of us.

But watching her with Ellie made it feel even more permanent.

Mom stayed for a while after Ellie was born.

She held her.

Fed her.

Slept beside her.

For those few weeks, the house almost felt like the family it was supposed to be.

Then mom left again.

And life went back to normal.

Except Ellie was there now.

And somehow, all of us became protective of her.

Deon was the worst.

Nobody was allowed to touch her without him knowing. Nobody was allowed to wake her up. Nobody was allowed to swear around her. If she cried, Deon was there. If she fell, Deon was there. If one of us made her upset, Deon wanted to know why.

I wasn’t much better.

I carried her around the house. I let her fall asleep against my chest. I learned how to make her laugh. And if somebody outside the family ever made her cry, they had a problem with me.

The rest of the boys were protective too.

Even Shawn.

He’d steal half the food off everybody else’s plate, but if somebody tried taking Ellie’s, he’d yell at them.

Elias would make her laugh until she couldn’t breathe.

Andrew would quietly move things out of her way before she could trip over them.

And Katie?

Katie became her sister.

Not officially.

Nobody ever needed to say it.

Ellie chose her.

She followed Katie everywhere.

If Katie sat on the couch, Ellie climbed beside her.

If Katie went upstairs, Ellie followed.

If Katie went outside, Ellie wanted to go too.

If Katie left the room, Ellie asked where she went.

The first word she said that sounded even remotely like Katie’s name was enough to make Katie cry.

K-Katie.

Katie froze.

What?

Ellie smiled.

Katie.

Katie crouched down and opened her arms.

Ellie ran into them.

Katie hugged her tightly.

I watched from the doorway.

Katie looked up at me, smiling through wet eyes.

She said my name.

I smiled.

I heard.You did?Yeah.

She laughed and hugged Ellie again.

From then on, it was Katie and Ellie.

They had their own little world.

Katie brushed Ellie’s hair.

She taught her how to draw.

She let Ellie sit on her lap while she did homework.

She made up stories for her.

She let Ellie paint her nails even when they came out terrible.

She listened to every ridiculous thing Ellie wanted to tell her.

And Ellie trusted her completely.

Sometimes I’d walk into a room and find them curled up together on the couch, Katie reading while Ellie leaned against her shoulder.

Sometimes they’d be on the floor playing with dolls.

Sometimes they’d just be talking.

I never knew what they talked about.

I didn’t ask.

I liked seeing them together.

Around that same time, Elias and I became closer too.

He was only a year younger than me, and unlike the rest of my brothers, he seemed to understand my sense of humor without me having to explain it.

He was loud.

Ridiculous.

Always ready to turn something stupid into a joke.

I could be sitting in my room angry about something, and he’d walk in wearing some stupid expression and say something so completely idiotic that I’d end up laughing against my will.

He became the closest thing I had to a guy best friend. But he was just my brother.

Katie, Elias, and I started becoming our own little group.

By the time Elias and Katie were ten and I was eleven, we were almost always together.

We’d walk around the neighborhood.

Sit on the porch.

Ride bikes.

Play basketball.

Make fun of each other.

Elias and Katie would argue over something stupid while I sat between them pretending I wasn’t listening.

You’re cheating.

Katie pointed at Elias.

I’m not cheating.How?Because you’re losing.

I laughed.

Elias looked at me.

Whose side are you on?

I shrugged.

Katie’s.Traitor.

Katie grinned.

See?

Elias threw a pillow at both of us.

I caught it.

Katie laughed.

That was what my childhood started feeling like.

Katie on one side.

Elias on the other.

And me somewhere in the middle.

For the first time in my life, I had people I didn’t have to be angry around.

People I could just be myself with.

Then, when I turned twelve, I met Matt.

His name was Matthew Hayes.

Everyone called him Matt.

He was my age, and within about ten minutes of meeting him, I realized he was either going to become my best friend or the biggest problem I’d ever had.

He was funny.

Not normal funny.

Not makes-you-smile funny.

He was the kind of funny that made teachers regret giving him permission to speak.

We met because he made some stupid comment during lunch, and I laughed.

That was it.

He looked at me.

You good?

I nodded.

Yep.

He smiled.

Alright.

The next day, he sat beside me again. Then the day after that. Pretty soon, we were inseparable.

Matt and I were almost exactly alike.

When we were angry, everybody knew it.

When we were in a good mood, everybody suffered because we wouldn’t shut up.

We could turn almost anything into a joke.

We could spend hours talking about nothing.

We could also sit beside each other without saying a word.

He became my best friend almost as quickly as Katie had.

Just differently.

Katie knew the parts of me that existed before I understood myself.

Matt knew the version of me that was growing up.

Elias knew both.

Somehow, the three of them became the people I trusted most.

And Katie remained different from all of them.

She always had been.

I still didn’t know what to call it.

I was twelve.

Then thirteen.

Then fourteen.

And every year, it became harder to pretend I didn’t feel something different when she smiled at me.

It wasn’t just that I wanted her around.

I wanted to protect her.

I wanted to make her laugh.

I wanted to be the person she trusted.

When she was upset, I felt restless until I knew why.

When she was happy, I wanted to be close enough to see it.

When some boy at school started talking to her too much, I hated it.

I didn’t understand why.

Matt noticed before I did.

One afternoon, he caught me staring across the schoolyard at Katie talking to another boy.

He looked at me.

Then at her.

Then back at me.

You like her.

I frowned.

She’s my best friend.I know.So?

Matt grinned.

Nothing.

I shoved him.

He laughed.

Shut up.I’m just saying.Don’t.

He laughed harder.

I walked away.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe there had always been something there.

Maybe it had started when I was six and she reached toward the bruise on my cheek.

Maybe it had grown every time she walked into the Miller house and made it feel warmer.

Maybe it was in every memory I had that somehow included her.

I didn’t know.

I only knew that by fifteen, Katie wasn’t just someone I loved having around.

She was woven into everything.

Into the house.

Into my brothers.

Into Elias.

Into Matt.

Into me.

By then, Ellie was four, and her bond with Katie was stronger than ever.

She’d sit beside Katie while she did her hair.

She’d crawl into Katie’s bed when she had nightmares.

She’d wait by the window for Katie to come over.

And whenever Katie arrived, Ellie would run.

I watched it happen so many times that eventually I stopped thinking of Katie as a guest.

She was family.

She’d been family for almost as long as I could remember.

And maybe that was why the thought of ever losing her scared me more than I understood.

I didn’t know what love was supposed to feel like.

I just knew that when Katie wasn’t around, something felt missing.

I was fifteen.

Katie was fourteen.

Elias was fourteen.

Matt was fifteen.

Ellie was four.

Shawn was eight and already had enough energy to destroy the entire house before breakfast.

Andrew was ten and still quiet enough to notice things the rest of us missed.

Deon was twenty-one and carrying more of the family than anyone should have had to carry.

And somehow, after all those years, the Miller house was still loud.

Still broken.

Still crowded.

Still ours.

Katie was still there.

Elias was still making everybody laugh.

Matt was still getting me into trouble.

Ellie was still following Katie around.

Shawn was still finding new ways to make Deon lose his mind.

Andrew was still watching.

And I was still pretending that Katie was just my best friend.

Maybe I believed it.

Maybe I needed to.

Because I was fifteen.

And sometimes you can spend years loving someone before you understand that what you’ve been calling friendship was something much bigger.

Not long after I turned fifteen, Katie left.

There was no goodbye.

No explanation.

No warning.

One day she was there.

The next, she wasn’t.

I didn’t know where she went. Nobody told me. I asked questions and got nothing back.

And eventually, I stopped asking.

Four years passed.

Then, on December 31, 1999, she was standing on my porch.

Four years later, she was back.

And I had no idea why.