Shifting

Matt

The road we walked on was rough and old, filled with pot-holes. We walked past a street lamp with a lost child sign that was so old I couldn't read anything else. She stopped in front of a small townhouse with a worn path but beautifully kept yard with a flower bed near the front door.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"We are here." she started shakily towards the door.

"Where is here exactly?"

"You told me about your parents." She knocked on the door. "Well here's my story, Hi mom, hi dad."

"Rach? Rachel!" The woman said and threw herself around Amber.

"My baby girl." the man held the two girls in his arms.

"Rachel? Did you leave your parents by choice?" I asked her not wanting the answer.

"Matt. Let me explain," she told me, but she was too late it had taken over.

"You spent all that time on the streets, in the foster home with Red, kept in cages like animals. You did it by choice! What just for the fun of it?" I was screaming now and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it back.

"Matt." She tried. "I did not do this to you. It's not what you think."

"Clearly it is." Stop it, Matt, she's right I need to calm down.

"Rachel who is this boy?" her mom asked.

"A boy I met can I bring him inside?" she grabbed me by the arm and led me down a narrow hallway to a dining room. "Shhh...You are ok. You're with me. Shhhh"

"So," I felt myself finally rip it back into my control. "Rach?"

"Yeah. About that. It's a really long story tha-"

"Amber. Don't worry about it." I cut her off.

"Amber? That's pretty. Well, I am betting the two of you are hungry and we always seem to have extras. Come eat." The man who must be her father said to us. I followed them into a smaller, less formal dining room with the table set for four.

"So Rachel." Her mom said sitting down. "Tell us, what you have been up to?"

"Matt?" she asked me scared that I would lose my grip.

"I am ok," I tell her.

"As you know I ran away when I was seven years old. And before I tell you why I want you to know that I missed you every day. But I was scared, I was scared of him and one of the times he hit me I..." She stopped looking at her parents. She stopped stirring homemade mashed potatoes. "I was never a normal kid, but I remember every time he would beat me. Every time except for the last, one second he was throwing a fist in my gut and the next he was laying on the floor bleeding."

"You really did that?" Her mother whispered.

"I don't know, I didn't until last spring. When I met a girl named Red, she showed me that we were alike. In the way that we are different."

"What are you talking about sweetie?" her father reached across the table for her hand but she jumped.

"Let me just show you." she stood up and stepped a few feet back into what seemed to be the living room. Like I had seen tons of times before she shifted into the beautiful fox. Her parents shot up and her dad threw his arm in front of his wife.

"It's ok. She is still there." I told them and she shifted back.

"I am sorry I left. I am sorry it took so long before I came back." she began to cry.

"My beautiful girl!" Her mom began and hugged her daughter, her dad joined them. And for a moment I was happy for them but the moment was quickly gone when all of a sudden the voice took over.

"Oh look at that a family reunion." I snapped bitterly.

"Excuse me?" Her mother said.

"No. Let me," Amber told her. "Matt. This isn't you. Come back to me." (ODP:12/8/17)