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When I try to remember my whole entire life, it feels like a Lego project where you’re missing some of the important pieces, like a robot mini-figure or a monster-truck wheel. You do the best you can to put things together, but you know it’s not quite like the picture on the box.
love my mom and my dad and usually my sister. But lately they’d really been getting on my nerves. Robin was a little kid, so of course she was annoying. She’d say things like “What if a dog and a bird got married, Jackson?”
didn’t ask any more hard questions after that. Somehow I just knew my parents didn’t want to give me hard answers.
“Look,” she said. “There’s nothing—nothing at all—wrong with asking for help, Tom.” Her voice was low and slow. It was the voice she used when a fight was coming. My chest tightened. The air felt thick.
help,” my dad snapped. “It means we’ve failed.” His voice had changed, too. It was sharp and hard. “We have not failed. We are doing the best we can.” My mom gave a frustrated groan. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans, Tom.” “Really?” My dad was yelling. “So now we’re resorting to fortune cookie wisdom? Like that’s going to help put food in our kids’ mouths?” “Well, refusing to ask for help isn’t going to.” “We have asked for help, Sara. We’ve been to that food pantry more times than I care to admit. But in the end, this is my—our—problem to solve,” my dad
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“Imaginary friends don’t come of their own volition. We are invited. We stay as long as we’re needed. And then, and only then, do we leave.”
Her stuffed armadillo, Spot, was in her lap.
“Don’t ask me. Human children are infinitely more complicated than kittens.”
The article I read about imaginary friends said they often appear during times of stress. It said that as kids mature, they tend to outgrow their pretend world. But Crenshaw told me something else. He said imaginary friends never leave. He said they were on call. Just waiting, in case they were needed.
