Chapter 11 - The Snack Drawer
I still kept food under my pillow.
Not because Dad and Sarah didn't feed me. They did. Every meal. Every snack. Every night, Dad asked if I wanted a glass of water before bed, and Sarah asked if I wanted the hallway light on. They never made me feel strange about needing to check.
But old habits don't disappear just because the danger does.
The snack drawer helped. So did the little basket in my backpack. But some nights, my hand still reached under the pillow to touch the granola bar wrapper. Just to know it was there.
One Saturday, Lily found a cracker in my sock drawer.
She held it up like a tiny treasure.
"Ethan, why is there a cracker in your socks?"
I felt my face get hot.
"I don't know."
She tilted her head.
"You do know."
Lily was only seven now, but she had become very good at knowing when adults were lying. Probably because she had grown up around Amanda.
I sat on the floor.
"Sometimes I worry there won't be food."
Lily sat beside me.
"Even now?"
"Even now."
She thought about that.
"Then we should make the drawer bigger."
I laughed. It surprised both of us.
That afternoon, Dad and Sarah took us to the store. Not to buy groceries. To buy labels. Lily picked out stickers with stars and dinosaurs. I picked out a pack of colored markers.
At home, we cleared out the bottom drawer of my desk. It was wide and shallow, perfect for snacks. Dad lined it with a soft towel. Sarah wrote a list on the inside of the drawer in purple marker.
You can always ask.
You can always take.
You are never in trouble for being hungry.
Lily added a sticker of a dinosaur holding a sandwich.
"That's you," she said.
I stuck it right in the middle.
The next week, I took a granola bar to school and ate it at lunch without hiding the wrapper. A boy at my table named Marcus asked if he could trade his cookie for half.
I gave him half without thinking.
He gave me the cookie.
Then he said, "Your mom packs good stuff."
I looked at my lunchbox. Sarah had cut the sandwich into triangles and drawn a smiley face on the napkin.
"Yeah," I said. "She does."
When I got home, I told Sarah.
She stopped chopping carrots.
"What did you say?"
"I said she does."
Sarah turned away, but I saw her wipe her eyes.
Dad came in and saw her face.
"What happened?"
"Nothing," she said. "Ethan just called me his mom at school."
Dad looked at me.
I shrugged.
May you like
"She is."
Dad hugged both of us, carrots and all.
