Sam's Theory Read online

  SAM’S THEORY

  Sarah Mendivel

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were derived from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SAM’S THEORY. Copyright © 2017 by Sarah Mendivel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, expect in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address [email protected].

  Cover photo iStock/Eerik

  Cover design by Sarah Mendivel

  ISBN-13: 9781977568502

  ISBN-10: 1977568505

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017917832

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Dedicated to every kid that has a story.

  And to Elaine, for listening to mine.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Orphan’s Manifesto

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  Run!

  Faster, Sam, faster!

  I could feel branches breaking under the weight of my panic and the crack of ice split around my shoes as I sprinted over the ground.

  But the breathing! Whose was it? Was it mine? Or was it His?

  Faster, Sam, hurry!

  I heard my own voice slam against the walls of my head and pulse into my temples as I picked up speed, dodging trees and jumping over moss-stained rocks. It was freezing outside. I could feel the winter air razor through my lungs. A faint and unforgiving mixture of pine trees and blood swirled past my nose. Was He behind me?

  Keep running, Sam! Please!

  I bolted in desperation between a labyrinth of ferns and fallen logs. The cold began to clench my stomach and all I wanted to do was sit and cry, but it wasn’t safe yet. My shoulder throbbed where He had hit me and I could still feel the sting of His chokehold around my neck. I grit my teeth and moved faster.

  Run, Sam.

  I didn’t recognize this patch of forest. Had I gone far enough? Maybe a little further, just in case.

  A canopy of trees suddenly stretched their arms above me, as if to hide me from the sky. My thighs ached and the moisture of dusk’s rainfall drenched my face, blending with the earlier sweat of terror.

  Snap! My foot caught itself on a root, betraying the rest of my body and sending me slamming into the ground.

  Ouch.

  As if I needed to be knocked around anymore.

  Eeerk!

  What was that?! I spun around and looked through the cover of branches that seemed to be swaying more widely the darker it grew. I listened to the sporadic drips and creeks of the woods, wondering if each noise was Him hiding in the bushes, waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack me again. I could never tell what the noises in the forest were, and it always ended up terrifying me.

  I listened intently to the atmosphere surrounding me, but the only thing I could hear for sure now was my heartbeat struggling to slow down. It pounded like an avalanche in my head.

  Maybe I was okay now? Maybe the noises were just the rain or a squirrel running around. The Washington state mountains were usually thick with wildlife; it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were just a critter. It was something I could hope for, at least. I had been running off and on for hours, there was no way He could have kept up with me.

  I took a deep breath and buried myself in a bed of roots, zipping up my hoodie just enough to stop the wind that continued to run past me. I wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve, almost forgetting that my nose had been bleeding earlier. I watched the blood brown over on the cuff of my sleeve and listened breathlessly to see if I had been followed.

  Random screams and flashes of violence suddenly surged through my brain. Sometimes it was hard to tell where I was and if the scary things were still happening to me. I shook my head, determined to instead focus on what was right in front of me.

  Silence.

  Trees.

  Cold.

  Where was I?

  My breathing calmed and I caught sight of a butterfly chrysalis suspended in front of me. I looked it over briefly, noting how tiny and protected it was from the elements.

  It’s okay Sam. I think we’re safe now, I told myself.

  I closed my eyes, but still couldn’t cry. I wanted to. I wanted to feel something, but the run had tired me out. Instead, hundreds of questions began to circle my brain. They were the same questions I had been asking myself since I was a kid. The ones no one could ever answer, mostly because they were too dangerous to ask.

  Why does He do all that stuff to me? Doesn’t He love me? Why doesn’t She ever protect me from Him? Why does She hurt me too? Don’t They care about me at all? Isn’t family supposed to take care of you? Why can’t I have a family? Was He going to go after my sister, now that I had escaped? Why doesn’t anybody ever come to save us? Why was I born?

  But before I could finish the script of heartbreak I had memorized years ago, I fell asleep.

  “You have the most beautiful eyes,” said Anna.

  I closed them bashfully. People had been telling me that my entire life, but it wasn’t until James and Anna said it to me that it I finally believed it.

  James laughed. “You’re embarrassing her Anna, stop.” I smiled at James, grateful for his intuitive sense of my eleven-year-old shyness.

  “Well she does; they change color with her mood! Sam, your eyes are such a deep olive green right now. But when we picked you up after class yesterday they looked gray! I think it’s fun. You’re lucky to have such telling eyes. It evens out how quiet you are.” She winked at me, making sure I knew she was only teasing me.

  James and Anna were my junior high school teachers. Anna taught history and James worked his magic in science class. They had met one another a few years prior at a staff meeting and recently married. They didn’t have kids yet, but I was secretly hoping I would be enough for them.

  I knew immediately how special they were, and they seemed to see the same in me. I wasn’t sure how I had gotten so lucky, but I wasn’t going to do anything to jinx it.

  “Sam, come help me pass out these tests for tomorrow,” beckoned James. Without missing a beat, I popped up beside him and extended my hand eagerly.

  I liked helping him and Anna with tasks. I liked being around them. They felt safe. And safety then was as rare as meals had been at home.

  I was starving again now. Fo
ur years later and hundreds of miles away, I wondered what color my eyes were now, and if they would recognize James and Anna after all this time.

  I had been walking without direction for two days. I had no clue where I was going, but knew I had to stay lost enough for Him to not find me again. The trees began to blend together as my climb into the mountains steepened. I suddenly wished I had gone camping more as a kid, because the nervous reality of being stuck in the woods indefinitely was beginning to intensify as much as the cold around me.

  My legs felt like they were filled with sand and a bruise poked at my shoulder. I slumped through the timberland trying to be mindful of the maze of vegetation surrounding me. Fallen branches and mud patches almost dared my ankles to give out.

  After hours of weakening ambition and a surrender to hunger pains, my hands slid over a wispy reach of fiddlehead ferns. They stretched and curled into swirls that resembled green lollipops.

  Not that they’d taste anything like candy, I thought.

  I recognized their feathery whirls from a wilderness picture book I had found in the library one day. I loved the library. The presence of books soothed me and were often my secret escape from the violent alternative at home.

  No one at school really knew how much I read. I had moved schools and cities so many times that it was hard enough to fit in. People knew that I was quiet, had a decent sense of humor, and wore hoodies on most days. They would compliment me on the drawings that often distracted me from class and call me “nice.” But reading reference books for fun? Or knowing that I did so to mentally escape the darkness that tortured me at home? No way. Flaunting my repertoire of reads would have likely torn the cool card I barely held onto right out of my hand.

  But here and now, in the middle of nowhere, I would gladly have traded my cool card in for a snack. I plowed my hands into soil the rain had softened and yanked a stem straight out of its berth.

  As I brushed the dirt from the root, something sharp glinted in the corner of my vision. My eyes darted around, suddenly fearing that He had found me somehow. I instantly crouched onto the forest floor, fixing my eyes on the horizon. I held my breath, afraid that the steam of it would climb into the air and give me away.

  I waited, but nothing happened. Maybe it was a raindrop catching the last of the evening sun.

  My eyes relaxed back onto my meal. While washing off my first bite, I saw it again – a splinter of light shooting through the trees.

  Standing up slowly, I allowed my curiosity to overcome my fear. The taller I stood, the more vivid the light became. What was that?

  Tilting my head, I could see that the light was now turning a glowing blue. I could feel my eyebrows furrow and my hunger dissipate.

  The beam of blue was amplified by a rising fog that enticed me to move toward it. Pushing my bangs to the side and tightening my ponytail, I stepped cautiously toward the ray of light.

  My mind quickly flipped through the possibilities. Was this a search party coming to take me back to Him? Was it a campsite? Maybe it was the reflection of a waterfall nearby. Whatever it was, I thought, I was going to figure it out.

  I stepped carefully over twigs and pine cones, splitting my attention evenly between the beam of light and my footing. After several steps, I noticed the beam melting into a cool lavender color. Keeping this hue for only a moment, it then glazed over into a bright lime.

  I stopped to see if it would change again and, to my bemusement, it did. The lime heated into an orange, and then a red. Moments later, a flicker of yellow came through, then back to blue. Purple, green, yellow, orange. The rainbow continued in this spectacular rhythm for what seemed like an eternity. In spite of the cold, these mysterious colors warmed my heart in a way I had not felt for years.

  My feathered footing turned into a purposeful stride. My eyes were now locked on this iridescent phenomenon before me. The closer I ventured, the more intense it became.

  Whatever this is, it has to be cool, right?

  And safe?

  Please be safe.

  It was hard to trust things that felt good. Growing up, I seemed to collect disappointment the way other kids collected comic books or friendship bracelets.

  Hope had lied to me before, but there was a hunger in me that would not be satisfied by simply giving into the scars and secrets that had brought me here. I didn’t know what my options were, but I knew I wasn’t going to sit around waiting to get hurt again. Whatever this light was had to be better than all of that, right?

  Nightfall was dropping darkness into the trees. I was less careful about my steps now, hoping to make it to the source of light before the night ascended fully.

  The light deepened as night fell, continuing to change colors. Suddenly a delicious scent of jasmine and citrus wafted through the air. It wrapped itself around me, drawing me closer to the beam I had been walking toward since sunset.

  I closed my eyes momentarily and took a deep breath. Rich floral notes rushed through my nose, giving me energy to continue.

  “Wow,” I let slip out loud.

  As I opened my eyes, I startled at a growing swarm of fireflies weaving their way around me. They glowed and popped like tiny strobe lights, filling the space like a suspended game of connect-the-dots. I laughed and stretched my hand out to touch one. It flickered off, and then appeared again a few inches over. I smiled as a few fireflies landed on my hoodie.

  “Hello,” I said, quietly laughing.

  They continued to float around me, playing hide-and-seek between the cedars. My hands tangoed between them, sometimes touching a curious bug in flight.

  The fluttering cluster of visitors had distracted me from chasing the mysterious light so much that I barely noticed that I had happened upon its source.

  My hands fell to my sides and my laughter dissolved into a quiet wonderment. Peering through the dance of fireflies I saw what appeared to be a massive tree house sitting in the midst of the trees.

  The house towered high above the forest floor, and looked like an enormous glass cocoon. The walls were thick and nearly transparent, twisted into place by branches hundreds of years old. It swallowed several spruces and was hanging three or four stories high above me. Beards of moss dripped around it like curtains.

  Between the twist of branches were oddly shaped glass windows of every color imaginable. They sparkled with the same radiance as the light I had been following. Blues, purples, oranges and yellows blazed through the shadows.

  Where did this house come from? How long had it been here? Was someone inside?

  My eyes traced the largest branch holding the house to the trunk. Creeping quietly beneath the belly of the house, I set a hand on the tree trunk and was surprised at how sturdy it felt. There was a ladder of smaller branches spiraling upwards from where I was standing.

  The debate between climbing up to the house to see who or what lived here and sleeping another cold night on the ground was a fleeting one. I took hold of a branch and secured my foot on another to hoist myself up. Resting my chest and elbows on a fan of spruce needles, I caught my breath and realized how tired I was from being without food or clean water for two days. A drop of rain splashed against my cheek and I snapped back into action.

  As I climbed higher, the smell of jasmine returned and I could make out a small ledge leading to what I hoped was an entrance. The giant branch I had spied before was now inches from my unsteady feet. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed.

  How did I get up here? What was I doing, exactly? Should I crawl back down?

  Before doubt took over completely, I heard a rustle in the ferns below me. My eyes darted down and I gripped the nearest branch. I leaned into the tree to blend in from whatever was below. I waited nervously, hearing something softly tread over the same broken twigs I had stepped on to get to the tree. It was too dark to make out what was lurking beneath me. The hairs on my neck stood on edge and I knew that there was only one option.

  I hopped onto the deck of the house and planted
my hands along the ridges of the wall for balance. The glass was cold and hard to see through in the dark. My feet found safety on the planks of the house before I heard rustling again below me. Too afraid to knock, but terrified of whatever was below, I crouched to my knees and tried to calm my mind enough to decide what to do.

  Maybe I can just sleep on the porch tonight. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s home.

  As if my thoughts were broadcast for the whole forest to hear, a wave of light flickered from a stained glass window and then disappeared. I stood up slowly, trying to look through the small, circular window. I pulled my hoodie cuff down and used it to wipe the colored glass clean. I squinted to try and make out what was inside.

  Knock, said a faint voice on the wind. I looked around to make sure I was still alone. Stepping back from the window, I made out a wooden door frame and reached my hand out to feel for the knob. The door seemed just as immense as the house itself. It was heavy and, surprisingly, warm.

  Wanting desperately to be warm again, I placed two flat hands on the door and bowed my head. “It’s okay, Sam. Let’s just knock and see what happens. Even if something goes wrong, we’ll figure it out. Everything will always be all right.”

  I had once watched James recite a mantra of “everything will always be all right” to himself when he was having a hard day. Earlier that morning, shortly after I had arrived to school, he and Anna had been arguing about something through the window of the classroom. It bugged me to see them argue, although it never turned violent like the arguments at home did, and I learned to trust that they would work it out eventually.

  For the rest of that day, though, James had seemed frustrated. I remember pretending to work on my assignment so that I could stay close to him, to make sure he was all right. I watched him muddle over paperwork at his desk, hearing him scoff occasionally. Although his upset mood was clear to me, it never got ugly like His did.

  James seemed to know his limits and made room for them. I would watch him sigh deeply, shake his head, then mumble. “It’s okay James. Everything will always be all right.” It was a patient truism that both confused and intrigued me. In my house, if someone was frustrated, there was no telling what would occur. Something, or someone, would usually start getting knocked around.