The Devil Child

Chapter Sixteen

Kenzie collected things.

She collected the ticket stubs from every concert she attended. She collected pictures, and hung them on her bedroom walls. Kenzie collected bumper stickers and tags off of her clothes. The flashy tags, not the tags that instructed the buyer how to wash the clothes. She collected books she read in school, even if she didn't like them, and she collected magazines.

All the items Kenzie collected were important to her, in some way. The books, because while Kenzie often hated the books her teachers assigned for her, she read them anyway. And Kenzie was the type of person who could recall something like a memory or a feeling from just looking at the cover of a book. For example, her barely used copy of The Kite Runner sat in her bookcase, and when she looked at it, she could remember the smell of Christmas, all because of the time of the year in which she read the book. She could remember her aunt at the table, throwing her plate of food up in the air after Kenzie's mother took a phone call from Kenzie's father. That Christmas was a trainwreck. But, when Kenzie looked at The Kite Runner, she remembered all of it.

Kenzie collected the tags off of her clothes because she liked the thought of knowing what she was made of. And what a person wears is a part of who they are. Kenzie felt comforted knowing who she was by a collection of clothing tags.

Bumper stickers, because whenever she went somewhere, a bumper sticker had to be purchased, and then they were like memories. Memories that clung to the paint on her bedroom walls, much to her mother's dislike.

Kenzie collected things. She collected a lot of things. But the thing she collected the most of was her father.

To anyone who asked, Kenzie hated her father. She hated the man for leaving her behind one day, unannounced. To her mother, she found the man vile, and merely a sperm donor. To her mother, Kenzie didn't consider him a parent. To her aunts and uncles, Kenzie was fine. She didn't miss her father much because she'd never liked him anyway.

Kenzie was good at lying.

In reality, Kenzie loved her father. She loved the man who used to bring her to get ice cream, even in the dead of winter. She loved the man who used to swoop her up onto his shoulders, so she could see whatever game they were watching, better. She loved the man who were in the pictures – eyes crinkled in delight as he held his only child on his lap.

Kenzie collected her father more than anything. She collected the pictures of him, even the ones she wasn't in. Her favorite picture of him was before he was with her mother. He was young, fearless, dressed in fancy clothing. Beside him stood his brother, Uncle Theodore – though Kenzie had never met the man – and beside Uncle Theodore stood a girl. Kenzie didn't know who she was, but her main focus was on her father, who was making a funny face at the camera. His hands were pressed to his cheeks, and his eyes were closed. He looked so carefree, and so much unlike the father she knew.

She collected his old tee shirts, the ones he let Kenzie wear to bed. She had a few letters that he'd written to a woman named Meredith, and then some letters he'd written to her mother. Though, the difference in the letters was large, and Kenzie really believed that his father had been in love with Meredith.

Not shocking, really. Her parents were divorced before Kenzie's father left her behind. Kenzie couldn't really remember a time when her parents were happy together, and when she'd stumbled upon the letters to a woman named Meredith, Kenzie didn't have trouble understanding why.

Whoever Meredith was, Kenzie's father loved her.

On days when Kenzie was feeling particularly bad about herself, or about anything, she took out the box of her father. It was all she had left of him, except the few visits she was granted. Those were different, though. Different because her mother thought Kenzie hated her father. And that was why Kenzie's father thought his own daughter hated him. So each visit, instead of being a heartwarming experience, was dreadful.