Twenty.

I fell asleep for a while; it really is hard not to when a bed is so comfortable. I woke up to Madison climbing out from under her covers. I heard her leave the room, and a minute later, I heard her come back. She got back into bed. I opened my eyes. The sun was still out, but it was considerably later in the evening now — even that much was obvious with what little sunlight made it past Madison’s curtains.

When she crawled under the blanket again, she left her head out. She faced away from me. I stirred and I watched her shoulders tense. When I relaxed into the bed again, so did she. I moved closer to her, gently, so much so that I could smell her shampoo. Strawberries.

“Madison?”

“Mm.”

“Can I put my arm around you?”

She didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if that was a yes or a no. I thought maybe she was just taking her time to answer, but as time went on it was made more and more clear that she wasn’t going to answer at all. Did she fall asleep?

“Madison?”

“Mm.”

“I’m going to put my arm around you now.”

So I put my arm around Madison Bell. But with my arm over the comforter, it felt less like I was holding a girl and more like I was holding a pile of clothes.

“I’m going to put my arm under the blanket,” I told her, and then did just that. I tried to wrap my arm overtop of Madison’s arm, but the second I touched her jacket she twitched and pushed my hand out of the way.

“Sorry,” I sighed. Maybe this was a bad idea…

Madison, without prompting, took my hand in hers and pulled it across her stomach, wrapping herself up in me. She rested her own arm on top of mine and didn’t say a word. I pushed my face into her soft hair and squeezed her around the middle, under her breast. She was soft and squishy and warm and smelled like dessert. I wanted to have her forever and eat her all up at the same time.

The next time I woke up, it was the middle of the night. I had the loveliest dream…

Madison’s eyes were open. I could see the moonlight glisten off their surface. She was lying on her back and my arm was still tight around her stomach. I watched her for a moment, adjusting to the darkness of Madison’s room, but she didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. Her eyes though… they wouldn’t shine like that, no matter what light she was under, if she wasn’t starting to feel better.

“Hi,” I whispered, so softly that it wouldn’t disturb anything, anyone, anywhere. Her eyes flickered to the side, at me, and then at the ceiling again.

“I’m sorry,” she said just as softly.

“Tell me what’s going on, Madison. Please?”

Maybe it was the please that won her over.

“It just happens,” she muttered under her breath. “It comes out of nowhere, and it feels heavy and dark, and I can’t make it go away until it wants to.”

“Nothing makes it happen?”

“Sometimes things make it happen. Sometimes it just happens.”

“Like, loud sounds?” It wasn’t really a wild guess at this point. I’d been paying a lot of attention to Madison Bell.

“Yeah, like loud sounds.”

“Your parents?”

“Sometimes.”

“Me?”

This time she turned her head to look at me, properly, eye to eye, for the first time that day. She wanted me to know she was serious.

“Not you.”

She was having trouble with even her fake smile. I couldn’t even imagine what she must be thinking…

“You know, I always thought you were the happiest person in the world. Everybody sort of thinks that way about you. Seeing you like this, now… it barely makes sense to me.”

“I don’t want anybody—”

“To worry,” I finished for her. “I know.”

“Mom always worried about me, growing up. I never made any friends. I wasn’t good at talking to people. I didn’t know what to say or how to be interesting. And one day…”

She trailed off. She closed her eyes. Silence started to fill the gap between us, but I didn’t want anything between us. I want it to be her, then me, and nothing in the way.

“Go on,” I whispered.

“One day,” she went on, “in fifth grade, I was doing one of those worksheets where you solve the math problems and color in the block, and it’s supposed to make a picture. But when I was done, the colors were wrong. I mean, the picture was there, but not in the right colors. I misread the instructions. And everyone thought…”

It clicked. “They thought you were colorblind.”

“I was interesting after that. People wanted to talk to me. So I played along. I lied to everybody, and…”

She closed her eyes tight and I saw tears sparkling down her cheeks. I raised my hand off her stomach and wiped them away. When my skin touched hers, her eyes tightened and sent another battalion of tears to fend me off. They failed.

“I think you’re very interesting,” I said softly, into her ear. “You’re the most interesting person I know.”

She rolled over, but not to face away. She rolled into me and pushed her forehead into my neck and I felt her tears on my chest as they dripped off her chin. I pulled her as close as I could and ran my fingers along her back. Every part of me ached with sensation, like it was the first true moment I’d been awake my whole life. And all the parts inside me hurt for her.

“When the bad things started,” she muttered, exhausted, into my chest. If she was still crying, I couldn’t feel it anymore. “I couldn’t let anybody know. If they knew, if they worried, or if they stopped liking me… I’d be alone again. I had to hide it. I got good at it. Nobody worries now… Mom doesn’t worry now…”

“I worry,” I told her, playing with her hair. It seemed to help her.

“You were…” Madison was quiet, searching the darkness for the word. “Unexpected.”

It was just dawning on me that this was the first time Madison Bell had said any of these words, even to herself. They poured automatically out of her, like they’d been swirling and pushing and turning themselves into a storm for years. And now, finally, they’d broken down the walls. Or rather, I’d broken those walls for them. I hoped I had done the right thing…

“I want to help,” I told her. “I want to make it better.”

“Nothing makes it better,” she said with a laugh. A hollow, fake, broken laugh.

“Your kid stuff makes it better, doesn’t it?” Again, this was no guess. This was fact. This was observed, like gravity and thermodynamics.

She was quiet again. Had I said the wrong thing? No, I had to stop thinking like that. This needed to be about her.

“I know you like acting like a kid, that it makes you feel brighter. I see it every day. It fixes you, doesn’t it?”

Still, silence.

“Madison, you don’t have to be embarrassed about it. If it helps you, that’s all that matters. At least we know something that does.”

“It doesn’t always,” she finally admitted, rubbing her eyes on my shoulder. Her fingers were tied in my shirt. “Only sometimes.”

“Sometimes is better than never.”

Finally, I felt like I’d found the solution I’d been searching for, but it was an answer I didn’t want. It was a problem that shouldn’t exist. It was more hardship than she deserved. I wasn’t tired of solving Madison Bell - I never would be - but she was so tired of solving herself.

“I’ll take care of you,” I told her with so much certainty she couldn’t in good conscience doubt me. Until then, she had no reason to. Forever after, I wouldn’t give her one.