My Name Is Not Easy by Edwardson, Dahl (the red fox clan .TXT) 📕

a question in his eyes. It’s a question Donna wants to hear, a question she’s afraid to hear. She looks at the little medal, lying in the palm of his hand, wishing she knew the right answer.

“Saint Christopher,” she says, “the patron saint of travelers.”

“I’m a traveler,” he whispers. And then he drinks the rest of the vodka in one long gulp and leans over, kissing her. But this time the tenderness is gone, replaced by something else, something hard and demanding. Something darker than the river below, and burning like vodka.

Something that has nothing to do with her, nothing at all.

He isn’t kissing her anymore—that’s what she realizes all of a sudden. Th

e vodka has gotten in the way and it isn’t her

at all. It’s only his idea of her—slurred and generic—a quiet girl named Donna who’s easy to look at. And his idea is all mixed up with her own idea of a brave new Donna, doing the kinds of things the old Donna never did. And both Donnas are mashed up together into something that has nothing to do with her. Nothing at all.

She pulls away from him.

“No, baby,” he pleads. “No.”

She stands up, brushing the pine needles off of Rose’s pink sweater.

“We have to go back,” she says.

But she doesn’t go anywhere, because suddenly, there’s a 191

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

sound.

“Amiq? You here?”

It’s Luke, standing there in the clearing, looking at Donna and then at Amiq.

“Th

ey sent me to fi nd you,” Luke says.

Th

e way he says it makes Amiq sit up slowly, like he doesn’t want to but has no choice.

“What happened,” he says.

“It’s your dad,” Luke says. “Th

ey called. He took off ten

days ago. Traveling inland. Can’t fi nd him.”

“Drinking,” Amiq says, looking at Donna, dead sober now.

Luke shrugs. “Looks like it.”

Amiq glares off into the dark woods.

“You know—,” Luke starts.

“Shut up,” Amiq snaps. “Just shut the hell up.” He glares at Luke. Glares at the whole, dark world. “He’s probably sleeping it off in a cabin somewhere. My old man’s tough as a wolverine.”

Donna looks at the empty vodka bottle. Amiq looks at it, too.

Off in the distance somewhere, kids are still dancing. A door opens, and music drifts through the trees like smoke.

“Why do the birds go on singing . . . “

“My old man can survive anything,” Amiq snaps.

Anything.

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A Weak Spot or a Secret Strength

MARCH 12, 1964

LUKE

—

Luke is in the woods, lying on the sun-speckled ground, trying not to think heavy thoughts—trying not to feel the kinds of things heavy thoughts always make him feel—but it’s impossible, because thinking and feeling are roped together now, roped together with something heavy. As soon as he starts to think, the hurt rises to the surface like a dead body, and as soon as he is reminded of the hurt, he can’t help but think the kind of thoughts that make it worse.

It goes round and round like that. Like a dog chasing its tail.

He’d been boxing that morning with Sonny, and that had helped. Father Mullen had been watching, the way he always watched, and they were boxing just like Father had taught them to. No mercy. Luke’s body had been fl exed hard as a fi st, his mind focused, his feelings turned off . Th

at’s what Luke

liked best about boxing. To box well, you had to turn your feelings off .

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

Now, lying on his back in the piney woods, he takes a deep breath and tries to make himself feel, again, the cold control of a boxer. Make his mind forget everything else, even that one thing that had happened after they fi nished boxing.

He was dancing back and forth, Sonny’s movements like a shadow of his own, both of them waiting for the other to leave an opening. Both of them closed. Luke’s fi sts coiled up so tight against his face they felt spring-loaded. Sonny sway-ing back and forth like a bear.

Luke could feel the punch, simmering deep inside, his feet shifting into place, his eyes locking onto Sonny’s. Winding up. But just as his arm left his side, Sonny shoved a sudden jab. Luke hadn’t even seen it coming. Sonny was just too fast.

Luke’s return caught Sonny square in the nose, all right, but before he could fi nish it off , Sonny threw another punch.

A perfect uppercut, shoving Luke right up off the fl oor and slapping him down like a fallen tree.

Sonny was left-handed, like a polar bear. In the heat of the match, Luke had forgotten and been caught off guard. Twice.

He fell into Sonny hard, and they both went down and it was over, Sonny sitting on the fl oor, and Luke shoving himself upright, wiping blood from his nose. Both of them grinning and breathless.

It felt good. Like together they’d whipped something.

Something important. Like they’d been working together, trying to move something huge, and it had suddenly broken loose and rolled away.

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A W E A K S P O T O R A S E C R E T S T R E N G T H / L u k e

“Short match,” Father