This is how I win.

Caleb ordered me to appear before him to inspect whatever change he had heard rumblings of and I dutifully obeyed, though this time I'm pretty sure he knew that PJ was standing on the other side of the kitchen door with his hand on the lever. Some days are like that.

I stepped out into the heavy wet snowfall in unzipped Docs and a long black sweater with my leggings making my legs little splindly black toothpicks and figured Caleb would harp on my outfit first but no. He knew damn well I have red hair now because I bet a million dollars and change that Loch told him two days ago.

What have you done. It's not a question, therefore I provide no answer. Your hair was such a beautiful color. 

Like Jacob's. 

No, like Bridget's. What is this, some effort to align yourself with Pyro for all the world to see? A cheap parlor trick if I ever saw one. 

No, it was an effort to do something radical before the white takes over. I don't know if you've noticed but I'm getting old. 

You will never get old in my eyes. 

Always twelve, huh?

No, Princess. Always twenty-three and rolling around in money in Vegas, smiling and drinking champagne with me. Always turning every head in the room when you entered. Always concentrating, learning everything you could about mutual funds and capital gains in order to keep up. Always refusing to abandon my brother because you wanted to believe in him so badly. Where's the spitfire who does things her own way and stays stubborn? 

She died when Cole died and Jake flew. I roll my eyes. This is not news.

No, she was silenced, choked off by the past she isn't allowed to forget because her fairweather boyfriend is so inadequate at helping her move on with her life. 

What life? I have no life. 

Exactly what I mean.

But you have to admit, I make a stunning redhead. 

Yes, surprisingly enough I am completely taken aback at how incredible your eyes look now.

A penny (for your thoughts).

Skyped with Druncan (I did not give him the nickname but it fits) tonight for a long confusing time before I realized how lit he was. He was all filth and bullshit from the minute he saw me until I pushed away from the table and left his view, frustrated. Loch took over with his soothing Scottish lilt that he uses when he's really mad but using it as a Teaching Moment. Duncan got all sorts of made-up curses hurled his way and then was told to pick himself up and pull himself together so sweetly I almost wished I was the one in trouble.

But I'm not because I dyed my hair red and made a last minute save.

Or rather, Daniel dyed my hair for me because the appalling nature of the gold and silver was beginning to tip more toward silver in the sunlight but milky-dishwater under harsh fluorescents and I stood in front of a mirror in a Target store for twenty minutes yesterday imploring the boys to look at me and tell me how they let me out of the house looking like this.


For the record, they all deferred nicely and insisted they don't notice it at all because their wee little minds still see Bridget at the tender age of eight forever and ever but I still went sprinting back down the centre of the store to buy a box of something or other and Daniel did the dirty work and now I look human at least but still like a total stranger in the mirror as always. In order to look like myself I need the torn-out braids and the enlarged sugar-pupils and the lips stained pink with cotton candy and total glorious fear written all over my face from riding the octopus one too many times.

Oh, and in a clean t-shirt because Loch insisted on it.  *rolls eyes*.

For the record, he LOVES my hair. It's lighter than his by miles thanks to the February aspect of things and all the time indoors this winter thus far. And it makes my eyes explode in a sea of green. I would love to keep it but my hair always makes up it's own damn mind and begins the easy fade back into silver and gold despite protests, always. Even when it was blue. Or green. Or pink. Two weeks tops and it will look like it always looks. That's why I don't bother with it very often.

I feel tired still today but the pain is sort of easing up again. I'm still dividing my time between a couch or a bathtub mostly and I refuse to apologize for either. I think I have mono again or total mental exhaustion. The vapors, maybe. Something. PJ's death-plague cold. Schuyler's ennui. Sam's overwrought concern.

(No, wait. I don't have that, that's his albatross, not mine.)

In any case, I have two days left to enjoy my couch because after that the Olympics will be over for another four years in which I will be closer to Lochlan's age now than I will be to my own and that will be strange. Ruth will be eighteen and Henry sixteen by then and by then my hair will probably be completely white and I'll have had my precious lombotomy that will make me not care so much about all the stupid little things that I worry about but will never be able to change like the color of my hair or the condition of my outfit in the middle of a Midway in July or the amount that Duncan drinks when he's lonely.

Pumpkin.

Once I realized I couldn't think anymore, let alone type, the tequila party for one ended as quickly as it began. I'm a lightweight and an easy drunk and a bit of stick in the mud too so instead of dulling the pain any way possible they humored me with my new plan which isn't new at all, it's from two weeks ago. I'll lie on the bricks in the driveway and someone can drive over my arm until it parts ways with the remainder of my body. I can be the one-armed princess. It's not like I'm a good swimmer or able to wrap both arms completely around any of the huge men in this house for a hug so I won't miss it at all. I'll sweeten the pot and throw my useless ears in on offer as well.

When my blood ran red again Lochlan made some tea and toast and I resumed speaking (and typing) English, which was perfect timing because Ben came home and wasn't thrilled that I was still in pain nor was he thrilled with the others' attempts to fix it with alcohol. I don't think that's what it started out as but I don't think I'll be doing it again any time soon either.

!aw shit

Matt and Lochl are plying me withetequila today because it distracts me from the hurty part of my arm that keeps getting joltde and bumped to the point where I'm biting my tongue repeatedly just to avoid seeing the guys with the looks of soul-crushing pity that they sometimes throw me that make mefeel paper-thin and ruinous and..drunkent

Tequila is a special treat reserved only for random Wednesdays in Febryarywe no more than once a decaed, Wish me luckt!

A saw, a pair of scissors and a very loud cheer from me.

I don't want you to police my need to keep certain things the way they-

I wish you would let the past remain there and come forward with me-

We both started talking at the same time and then stopped. This is an impasse for sure but not one we can't bury in routine. He smiled kind of shyly and I reached out for him with both hands. 

I'm a jerk. I don't mean to seem like he is more important than you because he isn't but that doesn't mean his things aren't incredibly important to me. Can you accept that?

Maybe. I don't mean to seem like I'm trying to rush you through, I just don't want you to hurt anymore, Bridgie, there's been so much. I want you to be happy, don't you see?

So we stand nodding at each other with flooded eyes and hearts that won't start and pain drawn with needles on our arms, words meant to soothe and to ignite. I trace the tattoos on Lochlan's arm and ask him if he'll make some lunch with me but he smiles wider and asks me if I would rather he take me to...

I'm thinking some restaurant will be suggested but no, do I want to go get my cast off? (The hospital called while I was being difficult, apparently.)

Is the sky blue? HELL YES. 

Off we go. And after an inexplicably long wait in what seemed to be an empty department I am free (!) to take a completely-submerged-save-for-my-nose piping-hot bubblebath without my arm sticking up out of the water like a limby periscope. 

Which I am off to do right now because it hurts like I've been hugging a cinderblock since Christmas and my poor little arm looks like a bendy straw.

Airport extreme.

Duncan left this morning for a ten-week stint overseas. We're not worried about this run for him, the guys he'll be working for are all in the program now and long past their crazy years.

Gotta pay the bills, Princess, and he laughed. I think he feels old. I think he feels the pull of our family, wanting to stay home and just hang out forever when he really does need to take a couple of gigs a year to break even. 

What about your future? I ask him when he says he's turned things down. 

Beloved honorary hunkle and bouncer, affection meat lump for the princess? I think I have my hands full right here, he laughs and I stamp my feet in frustration. 

Go! Have a life! Get the girls! Bag it and tag it, Poet! Christ! Don't sit around here and watch me mope around and start shit. 

Well, at least you admit it now, but that's not what I do here.

What do you do then?

I sit around and molest you in my mind. 

Oh, well that's classy and wrong and completely wonderful.

Not the way I play it out in my imagination, it's not.

So today was sort of comforting in that he's taken a job and not comforting in that the balance tips against me in the house from where Lochlan and I seek people who agree with us so that our arguments are evenly matched. 

I'll bring you back some souvenirs, Duncan tells me. He's stalling. Last-minute regrets. 

Bring back yourself. D&D free, no babies. 

Yes, Mom. 

Don't call me Mom. 

Don't tell me not to go out into the world and get everyone pregnant. 

How will you support them all if you have a crowd of kids by Christmastime?

I'll sell my poems. Holiday-themed ones.

Oh, Jesus. You are flighty, Dunk. 

Not as much as you. 

I'm not out there planting seeds everywhere. 

God, you're crass for such a pretty little thing. 

I live with your friends. 

I need to talk to them about this. The 'lady' part of you is waning.

Good! I hope I grow a penis. 

Why?

So I can write my name in the snow! It's on my bucket list! Don't you ever pay attention?

Phew. I thought you were going to say something alot worse. 

Shhhhh. We won't speak of the other things I'll do. See you when you get home, Poet. 

If I come back and you've already grown a penis, don't ever tell me, okay?

Promise. Besides, I wouldn't tell you, I'd SHOW you. But I only want the penis, not the balls because balls are gross. 

They're less gross than vaginas. 

Nuh-uh. Vaginas are fun. 

You win again! See you before your birthday.

Don't be late. We're having a party.

Don't grow a penis! He yelled and then he was gone through the gate and I realized departures was full of people staring at me. 

Ha. Idiot. Sam scanned ALL THE LETTERS. Remember?

No?

Well, he did and he put them in a cloud so delete away. They'll still be safe from you.

Saturday it happened and we can't change it now.

I'll tell you about the Evan Peters thing. We started watching American Horror Story to fill in the gaps while we wait for Season 3 of Game of Thrones to show up on Apple TV and wow, is it ever bizarre and tense.

But then the character of Tate moved to the forefront, who's all a hundred and eighty miles an hour of white-hot teenage-boy sexy angst (oh, shut up) and he reminds me of someone I know at that same age, also with curly hair and determined stubbornness and almost-teary eyes when he gets so frustrated at things.

Yeah.

Totally a trip down memory lane except for the obvious living, breathing and non-psychopathic parts (knock on wood).

Lochlan was not at all impressed when I pointed out all the glaring similarities that I could see and he spent the entire second half of that episode staring at me. Not angrily, just curiously, as if I were some great riddle he was studying. Then he begged off the next one entirely, saying he'd catch up on it later, perhaps.

I went up after it was over and he was outside, sitting in the dark deep down into one of the Adirondack chairs, arms crossed over his chest, staring into the flames shooting up from the giant copper firebowl. He pulled me down into his lap when he saw me and buried his face in my hair, saying he was sorry. He kept saying it. Over and over and finally I pulled away and asked him what he was sorry for, leaving me to watch a television show? Yelling about some stupid offhand comment that may or may not be obvious to others but was just something I found interesting? For all the things since 1983 that didn't exactly go as planned so meticulously once upon a time?

No, Peanut. No, this is a big thing I did. Just now. Look at the fire. I'm sorry but I'm not sorry at all. In fact, I'm relieved and I wish I had done this years ago.

I look at the fire and after a minute I see why he's sorry because I see what he's burning. Jacob's letters. All of them, still stacked and folded in small white bricks in packs of fifty, tied with gold and silver ribbons because that's what I did to keep myself from swimming in ashes or from slitting my wrists after he flew. I folded each one carefully and made groups of them and then tied them like presents with the prettiest ribbons I could find.

And now they're gone.

The yelling by the others started almost immediately. They said he's brainwashed me, that he always has, they say I don't think for myself when he's around, that I revert, that I regress but maybe he's taking those risks by doing what needs to be done, even if it's an unpopular or horrifically shocking decision.

Even if he's right.

I wasn't curious but I am now. What if all the answers were there and I'll never know? What if everything would have been better had I read them?

I pushed away from Ben and Sam and ran back out into the dark where Lochlan sat, still in the chair, still watching the flames now with an audience of detractors and dissent.

I flew down the steps and he stood up and I smashed into him with an alarming violence. He caught me and he looked scared to death.

Did you read them? At least some of them?

Yeah. I did and I wish I hadn't.

I'm not talking about Valentine's day or my weird crush on Evan Peters until tomorrow.

I put the letter that I was carrying back. I was masterfully persuaded safely the other way. Spend the morning with one hypnotist and the afternoon with another and watch me fling myself back and forth within my own loyalties. In the end I wisely chose self-preservation.

(AKA Lochlan got me last and talked me out of it. He undid all of Sam's efforts only I'm not all that sure if it was for my benefit or his. Maybe both. But is that a bad thing?)

But really if I was curious I would read everything. My curiosity will most definitely be what kills me (if Caleb doesn't kill me first) as I've said so many times but I'm not all that curious about Jake's letters. In fact, I'm blindly and inexplicably apathetic to them. I ventured an effort and it got snapped back so maybe I'll just take that as a sign.

Of what? That I am more important than the past?

Yes.

Definitely. Because I'm still here.

(I came to that conclusion on my own. Sam did not agree with Lochlan's efforts to prevent what he thought would be healing for me. They're really gearing up over here and I want to know why.)

Probably because I'm insane. Like your front row seat? Of course you do. Everyone's a voyeur.

In other news, I'm about to go out and lie in the driveway so someone can run over my cast and crack it off because I'm so fed up with it at this point you have no idea. None. It's killing me slowly. Like winter in the Prairies and wind in the Maritimes and ghosts in my garage and on the wall and in my soul. I saw my soul the other day when Caleb came to get Henry. I think the Devil carries it around on a chain.

And in mildly riveting news, out of housebound boredom between Olympic events I started a Pinterest account, pinning some things I have, things I know, things I like...is that the point? I don't get it. Am I inspired? Not really but it's better than getting a high score of 5 (yes, five) in Flappy Bird and throwing my phone at Andrew.

In my quest to add the button just under my profile so you can visit my uh..page I also found that I can add a "Pin this!" button to my posts but then I couldn't figure it out because I'm about as HTML-savvy as a goddamned starfish. I feel like the cast is actually on my brain. PJ said it definitely should be so I hit him with it.

The cast, not my brain. I wanted to use something that will leave a mark. Or a pin, as it were.

(Update: Pinterest was a flash in the pan and is gone now. I still don't understand the point of it.)

Mercury glitter.

More forms. Taxes. Wills. High School. New Jake having a little issue with his blood sugar because motherfucker needs his mom. I can't watch him too. Fighting with Caleb about which school Henry will go to next year. Fighting with Ruth to pass in her assignments on time but she's floating away on a musical cloud. Daniel has such a bad cold I want to cry for him. Norway didn't stand up to Crosby & company and we trounced them so easily. Important things in drawers I'm supposed to remember if things go wrong but I can't because I don't have that part of my mind anymore. Loch being weird about Sam out of the blue, all of the sudden. Duncan and Matt standing between them as if they needed to. Meatloaf for dinner because it's easy even though everybody except John hates it and Batman swooping in to take Ben for a talk to try and keep him on the path but out from under the wagon wheels as I pull on my coat yet again to go back to more lawyers and more nodding and more listening and more trying to remember things I shouldn't even have to think about it, so instead all I can picture is sitting in the sun wishing my whole life was the thick glossy polychromatic glitter like on the boat that the boss towed behind his truck my first year on the Midway. I never got a ride in that boat but every time I see that kind of glitter it makes me feel energetic, invicible and young.

One single letter folded in the pocket of my dress because it felt important so I pulled it out of the stack and tucked it in my hand in case I want to unfold and read it later on.