I’m almost six years old and I want to die. Or maybe I’m dead already.
My head hurts so bad, and there’s a weird, thick taste in my mouth. Crud. Not dead. I’m lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Again. Every part of me wants to cry, but they’ll hurt me more if I do. I learned that a while ago.
If I keep my eyes closed long enough, the people won’t kick me down the stairs anymore today. I decide to peek one eye half open. The foster daddy man, Mister Butch, and all of his friends are laughing. They point at me and say stuff to each other in words I don’t know, and then they give each other money. The money thing makes no sense to me, but they do it whenever they kick me down the stairs. The one time I fell asleep after I hit the last step, they gave each other a lot of money after I finally woke up and started moving. Somehow the money is connected to my waking up, but I’m not sure how.
With one eye barely open and my cheek pressed to the cold, hard floor, I see dirt and dust everywhere. A pair of heavy work boots Mister Butch dropped by the front door are all muddy, and some of the mud is stuck to the wall. A bug crawls in through the space under the door. I close my eye again.
A lighter clicks. Happy sounding words float by. A few moments go by and a sweet, sort of stinky smelling smoke fills the room. It’s a little bit like cigarette smoke, but it’s kind of like fruit that went bad and someone set it on fire. I don’t know why, but slowly I start to feel dreamy and relaxed. I still hurt all over, but the smell of the smoke makes me not care about the pain.
Crud! I need to sneeze. They’ll figure out I’m awake, but I can’t help it. The sneeze hurts everywhere. For some reason, Mister Butch and his friends cheer when I sneeze. More money changes hands, and they turn their backs to me and click the lighter again. I take a long, deep breath that hurts so bad. But it seems like everything painful is finally over for today.
A board creaks from the top of the stairs, and I turn to find my big sister Danielle peeking around the hall corner. She says nothing, but she doesn’t have to. Her face is all splotchy, but she is happy to see that I’m awake. She stretches her neck to make sure the grown-ups are busy, and she tiptoes down the stairs to me. With her mouth shut tight, she stares hard at me as she reaches under my back to lift me up. I squeeze my eyes because it hurts all over, holding my breath to keep from crying out.
My sister is a lot taller than me, so she puts me up onto her back. Trying not to make any noise, she carries me upstairs and into our room. She has found my stuffed elephant and my green lovey blanket in the closet and put them on my pillow for me. A sharp pain makes me jump a little as I lie back on the bed, and it takes a minute to lie all the way down. A wet washcloth is on the dresser by my bed, and Danielle lays it across my forehead once I’m still. A tear tries to come out of my eye, but I wipe it away, mad that I’m crying. Grabbing my lovey, I start to think again about what just happened, what always happens on the weekend in this house, but something breaks into my thinking.
“Danny, you don’t have to take that anymore.” A man’s voice speaks to me. He talks nice, but he sounds strong. It hurts to open my eyes again, so I don’t.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Who are you?”
“My name is Garrison,” he answers like a friend. “I’m here to help you so you don’t have to feel the hurt anymore.”
“Are you finding me a new family?”
“No, I can’t do that,” he says sadly. “But I have someplace you can go in your mind when they’re mean to you.”
Sharp fire shoots through my back, and I can’t help but make noise under my breath as I turn onto my side toward the sound of Garrison’s voice and open my eyes. I see a huge army soldier sitting on my floor with his legs crossed, looking right at me. He’s dressed in a camouflage military jacket, matching pants, and heavy black boots. With his size, I bet he could toss my bed with one hand and beat up Mister Butch with the other hand at the same time. He should be scary, but somehow he’s not.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Danielle’s chair squeaks as she turns toward me. “Who are you talking to?”
Garrison puts one finger up to his lips and holds it there as he shakes his head side to side. Looking over my shoulder at Danielle, then back at the army guy, my eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. “You don’t see an army man sitting here by me?”
In the middle of a yawn, Danielle rolls her eyes. “No, stupid! There’s nobody in here but me and you. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep.”
I turn back to Garrison. He says, “I’m not here for her. I’m here for you if you’ll let me stay. She can’t see me. Only you can see and hear me. This goes for everyone else, too. I’m your friend, Danny. I’m nobody else’s friend.” He scoots a little closer to me, and he reaches a ginormous hand to lay it gently over mine. “So you can’t talk about me to anyone else because they’ll call you crazy. Do you understand?”
Crazy. That’s what they call my real mother Gypsy. “Crazy has a name,” they say, then they laugh about her. I really don’t want to be called crazy.
Garrison puts his hands together in his lap. As I look at him, his lips don’t move, but his voice is loud and clear in my head. “It’s our secret, Danny. Can you do that? Can you keep me a secret?”
I start to answer out loud, but I close my mouth and think of my words in my mind. “Why are you helping me?”
He smiles and answers, without moving his mouth. “Someone has to protect you from what those people are doing. I help people. That’s my job, if you want.”
“How do you...” I say aloud, and Garrison holds a finger to his lips again. I glance back at Danielle. She’s bent over in her chair asleep with her head resting on her homework. Turning to look at him again, I start over in my head. “How do you do that? Help me, I mean.”
He stands up to come and sit on the edge of my bed near my feet. “When they start to get mean, you just think about saying my name in your head. I’ll let you take a nap at that point, and I’ll take it from there. Then you’ll just wake up when it’s over. It’s your choice if you want to think about me or not.”
“That sounds easy,” I say in my head. “I would like that.”
Deep tiredness begins to take over, and I start losing the fight to keep my eyes open. Garrison makes me feel safer than I ever felt before.
I ask with my mind, “Will you stay here in case they come in while I’m sleeping?”
He stands up and takes a few big steps to the door, then he turns on one heel and gets straight and stiff, facing me. With his shoulders back, his chest out, and his jaw set, I think he looks like a real-life G.I. Joe. I want Garrison to be with me always.
I can sleep now. I am safe.