Chapter Text
Lottie remembers her family.
She remembers the late nights, the long trips. She remembers empty homes and pretty dresses. She remembers sparkling chandeliers and expansive dinner tables. Their faces have melded together, though, and she hadn’t been old enough to learn their names by the time the car crash happened.
She remembers that too.
Lottie remembers the sinking gut feeling, remembers the way her breath picked up, because it still did that, she remembers screaming but only after a screeching halt (too late, both too late). She crawled out, lost and useless.
She remembers sirens and then not much else.
And then she wakes up (not really, more like…her brain is alert again.) She’s almost seven, two whole months after The Accident , as the woman who talks to her and drives her to her doctors appointments calls it, and she’s been in more rooms in shorter time than she can count.
She was living with a woman, older than her own mom, named Leslie. And Leslie was kind, she baked Lottie cookies and laid down with her when she couldn’t sleep at night. But Leslie was also old, couldn’t see very well. There was another woman who drove her too appointments and meetings, which there were a lot of, named Ms. Kimberly. She was much younger than Leslie, and kind as well.
Lottie doesn’t remember her parents funeral, but she has the dress and the shoes she’d apparently worn to it.
What she does remember from living with Leslie, is going to daycare in the mornings with fingernails cut too short and the small blue pill she took every morning that made her feel tired. She remembers meetings with a doctor that wore a blue shirt and took her into a play room, like the one at school except without the other kids, and sat with her and asked her to draw whatever was on her mind.
Sometimes that was the sun wearing sunglasses, and sometimes that was her parents with their faces scratched out. She could never get them right, and that frustrated her to no end.
When Lottie turned seven she was still living with Leslie and Kimberly was talking about her meeting her “forever family”
Lottie was seven and a half when she was introduced to Bill and Rosa Martinez. She was wearing white shoes and a pink dress when she answered the door for Leslie (who had been having a hard time moving around as much.) to see an awkwardly uncertain man and a woman with a bright eyed two year old on her hip.
Kimberly lead them in, and sat them down at the couch in Lesley’s living room, the fourth and final person in the Martinez family following behind them like a sulking dog.
He was in a red shirt and shorts, with hair that was cut short. He was her age, and pouting, holding a toy car in his hand, spinning the wheels absently.
The visit was nice. Rosa was occupied with the baby, who was named Javi. He was old enough to walk and say a few words, but not old enough to do much on his own. Bill asked her, in a gruff and low tone, about the deer she was drawing in purple crayon, politely ignoring the yellow flames licking at a mangled red car.
They left with very few words. Lottie went to bed, tried to overhear what Kim talked about with Lesley, but couldn’t.
It was uneasy for a few days, no one told Lottie if the Martinez family were coming back, Lesley was content to keep things the way they were, getting Lottie ready for school and going the short distance to the bus stop.
The following Friday, Kimberly told her that they were going to the park that weekend for the second visit. Lottie thought this was good news, that they didn’t hate her at least.
It was a bit cloudy that sunday, and they didn’t get there until noon, since the Martinez family went to church on a semi-regular basis, but Bill was carrying a soccer ball, and Lottie’s eyes grew.
Her dad had never let her play many sports, for no other reason than she went on business trips with him a lot. She wouldn’t be around enough to practice, it was a waste of time, of money.
Kicking the ball back and forth was fun, eventually Travis got up and joined them, sometime after Javi came over to see what was going on. It was fun, genuinely. Lottie kicked it too hard once, and it hit Travis in the stomach. He doubled over but when Lottie went over to see if he was fine, he waved her off and smiled.
That was the first time she’d seen Travis smile. It was nice, friendly. It soothed her, made her feel calm, welcome.
Rosa fed them a very late lunch, and it was delicious, the best meal Lottie had in a while. She said as much, and the woman smiled warmly.
At the end of the day Kimberly loaded Lottie back into her car, before going to talk to Bill and Rosa. It seemed to be a tense conversation, but it was quick. Bill left, taking Javi, and Rosa nodded once, before leaving. They didn’t seem…happy. And that scared her.
Kimberly talked excitedly about how the day went, pointedly leaving out the last few moments. While getting out of the car Lottie turned and asked the question weighing on her for the last ten minutes.
“Did you tell them about…about the pills.” Lottie asked in a small voice. Kimberly’s face twisted from her warm smile to the soft pity that Lottie was forced to be used to.
“I did. Lottie, they need to know, if they are going to be your forever family, they’ll have to prepare.” Kimberly crouches down.
Lottie can’t help the fear inside her though, the roiling ball of guilt, after being so happy all day. “What if they don’t want me anymore? I like them. I like them-I like them more than mine.” She chokes on the words, on the sob welling in her throat.
“Oh sweetheart-” Kimberly knelt down beside her, taking the young girls hands into her own. “Lottie, dear, it’s okay. I know you miss your parents, obviously you miss them and you still love them. But it’s also okay to want this. It’s okay to want them to be your parents. You don’t have to worry about it, about your…condition. I think they’ll be okay.”
Lottie sniffs. “You do?”
Kim nods, sucks in a breath. “I do. They seemed okay with it, said they would have to sleep on it-” Then seeing Lottie start to tear up again. “But Rosa said that it wasn’t a no, okay?”
“Yeah.” Lottie sucked in a breath. “Yeah okay.”
She ate with Louisa that night, spaghetti, until she calmed down enough to go off to bed on her own.
Lottie’s dreams were filled with anxiety and fears, she woke up at least twice, silently crying and smelling the faint scent of burnt tire.
-
The Martinez family adopted Lottie on the 8th of December, three months after meeting her for the first time. It was a fast adoption process, all things considered.
She moved in, one suitcase filled with clothes and a stuffed dog Lesley gave her the night before, holding back tears. The older boy, Travis, was the one to greet her at the door, spiderman t-shirt and hair longer than last time.
He greeted her, Rosa coming up behind him to help welcome Lottie. Bill took her bags from Kimberly, and Travis took her upstairs to the room she was going to stay in. It was blank.
“Momma said we could paint it.” Travis tells her. “Dad just emptied it out, um, last week.”
“Can it be purple?” Lottie says. Travis shrugs.
“Probably.” He doesn’t care too much, not in a rude way, more in the way that he’s seven. “Do you wanna play with my legos?”
“Sure.” Lottie replies, following him out to the living room.
-
Christmas came and went, Lottie painted her room a light fluffy purple, pictures she drew littering the walls. She adjusted slowly to her new life, to the new rules of her life. For the first month she didn’t sleep more than four hours a night. One night, after everyone had gone to bed, Lottie was awake, unable to sleep. She instead grabbed her paper and crayons, and drew all night. Momma Rosa had found her the next morning, curled around her stuffed animal on the floor.
She started a new school too. She’d been homeschooled before the accident, and Lesley lived too far from Wiskayok for her to go the local elementary school.
She was in class with Travis, but sometimes he ignored her. Instead she sat silently in her desk, trying to focus on the teacher telling them about the weather and one plus one.
At recess she sat alone in the field, she loved when it rained at night, she could see the worms climbing up from the dirt to relax, and then as it warmed up she watched them go back home. But since it was winter, the snow creeped up on everyone, and she was stuck at home a few days.
Those were really nice days, watching Disney movies, holding hot chocolate with both hands. When Momma Rosa went to put Javi down for his nap, she let Lottie and Travis stay up. She was watching Robin Hood intently, when she felt something hit her face.
Popcorn. She looked up to see a grinning Travis. She smiled back, taking one of her own and throwing it at him.
Within five minutes they were chasing each other around with pillows, popcorn covering the ground.
After that, once Rosa returned, she sent them to put their snow suits on and to go play in the snow. Where Travis taught her how to make snowballs, but Lottie got bored of fighting, and made a small army of snowmen, naming each of them, giving them stories for themselves (“ That one’s afraid of fire.” “Why?”; “That one loves wolves, but not too much.” “Wolves are cool.”; “That one can shoot like Robin Hood” “The fox?”)
-
Travis and Lottie’s birthdays were less than a week apart. Travis was born on February 28th and Lottie on March 3rd. It made the most sense, for them to just celebrate together. They invited the whole class, even though Lottie wasn’t friends with anyone.
There were only two girls there without parents. Vanessa and Natalie, who came together. Natalie had a backpack with her, and Vanessa only had her bright smile and brighter hair. Natalie on the other hand smiled but not too big, eyes covered by her long brown hair. When it was time for presents most of them went to Travis, or were to be shared between the two of them.
Except for Natalie and Vanessa. They had a small card with an assorted bag for him, and Natalie handed Lottie a hand drawn card and a scruffy stuffed cat.
The card didn’t have any words, but had a picture of a stick figure and some lady bugs. Lottie with her friends.
“His name is Bagheera.” Natalie tells her, looking a little shy. It’s okay, Lottie was too.
“Like the Jungle Book.” Lottie comments, smiling wide. “I love that movie.”
“Me too.” Natalie says, before sitting back down with the rest of them. Bagheera was afterwards placed gently on Lottie’s bed along with her stuffed dog, Moose.
-
That summer Lottie learned how to play soccer.
Bill had been trying to teach Travis for three years, but he was never excited about it. Not like Lottie was.
Playing in the backyard while Rosa cooked supper was when Lottie felt the least numb. Her new dose of meds made her feel gross, but not in anyway she could describe. She felt tired but also not.
Being outside helped, and once Bill saw her after work, kicking a ball around on her own while Travis tried to learn how to do a wheelie on his bike in the driveway, her Dad become suddenly very excited.
It was bonding for them, he taught her how to keep control, how to shoot with the side of her foot, rather than her toe.
But this meant that Travis got less attention suddenly, without Dad trying to get him to play, he was left to his own devices. And even if he had no interest in sports, he missed it.
And then he got angry.
When school started, Grade three, he pretended not to know Lottie most days, not just ignoring her. At home he told her to leave him alone when she tried to play with him. It made Lottie sad, confused. And it only got worse.
Halloween 1996 was the worst. Travis wanted to go trick or treating with his friends, but Rosa and Bill said they were going as a family, since he was too young to go alone. Lottie didn’t mind. She was excited even.
She loved Scooby-doo, and wanted to go as Daphne. She got her costume, and convinced Javi to dress as Scooby, an easy feat seeing as he was four. Travis wanted to be Batman, and Lottie loved the idea. They were all going to be detectives. Travis didn’t like it.
The days leading up to it were a mess, Travis was still arguing against going, saying that his friends were all going to be superheros too. So Lottie changed her costume, the night before she finally finished a Wonder Woman costume. She stayed up sticking cut up stars onto the skirt of a blue dress, grabbing one of Travis’s red t-shirts and turning it inside out so it was plain. She made it all out of crayon and paper.
She woke up late the next morning, since she’d been up so long making it.
When she finally woke up, scrambling to put on her costume and stuffing her mouth with cereal, grinning to hide the dark circles under her eyes, she was happy. Excited to show Travis.
When he got down, Batman costume still not velcro’d up the back, he saw her and frowned.
“What are you wearing?” He demanded. Lottie looked up.
“My costume.”
“No you’re not.” He replies, visibly angry. “That’s not Daphne. And that’s my Flash t-shirt.”
“I’m borrowing it!” She protested. “I was gonna give it back.”
“Lottie-” Rosa came down the stairs. Stopping when she saw what she was wearing. “That’s not Daphne.”
“I’m Wonder-Woman.” Lottie grins.
“No you’re not!” Travis replied. “You can’t be Wonder-Woman.”
“Did you make it yourself?” Rosa asks as she gives Travis his cereal and Lottie a blue pill. Lottie nods proudly. Rosa kissed her on the head. “It looks great dear.”
“No it doesn’t.” Travis grumbles.
“Be nice to your sister.” Rosa scolds.
“She’s not my sister.” Travis grumbles, and Lottie feels all the air get sucked out of her lungs.
Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was the build up of frustration from Travis being inexplicably angry with her for months. Maybe it was just plain hurt from the words.
Whatever it was, it doesn’t really matter, not when the tears start rolling down her cheeks and her lip starts quivering.
“Travis!” Rosa admonishes. “Why would you say that?”
Lottie tries to stop it. “No-no i-I’m ok-ay, it’s- it’s fine.” She chokes on her own words.
“Because she isn’t!” Travis finally shouts, standing up. “She isn’t related to us! She’s basically a stranger-”
“How dare you-” Rosa looks furious, angrier than Lottie has ever seen her. “¡Ella es tu hermana, Travis!”
“¡No lo es! Ella no sabe español, solo es una desconocida-” Lottie knows some spanish, she knows enough that she can understand the implication, that they only really speak it around her during arguments, that they speak mostly english now that she lives with them.
“I-I’m-I’m sorry-” She starts, but they ignore her. Shouting at each other. Bill comes down, holding Javi, who’s wearing a Scooby-Doo onesie.
“Travis está siendo grosero con Lottie, le está diciendo que ella no es su hermana- ” Rosa began, turning away from the kids now and towards her husband.
“¡No lo es! ¿Se supone que solo debo sentarme aquí y fingir? ¿Fingir que es normal? ¿Que ella es normal? Es literalmente una loca-”
“A tu habitación, Travis. Ahora.” Bill points up the stairs. “Ya veré que hacer contigo después. Pero puedes empezar a olvidarte de salir esta noche.”
“¡Te odio! This is so unfair!” Travis shouts as he storms out of the room.
-
There’s a picture from that night on the fridge, still there three years later. (Lottie’s still in her Wonder Woman costume, holding hands with Scooby Doo, Travis is in character, all grumpy in his Batman costume) Travis and Lottie’s differences only grew in start of middle school, with Lottie joining up for soccer and getting a popular girl’s reputation through association with Jackie Taylor, while Travis only got more and more unpopular.
He was the scrawny band kid who played flute (reluctantly, he was awful and hated every second) and hung out with the nerdy guys if he hung out with anyone at all.
His friends from grade school moved on, and left him sitting in the cafeteria while they played basketball outside.
On the other hand, Lottie making friends was…overwhelming, kind of. She was consistently surrounded by people at school. At lunch she sat with the friends she made at soccer, and by extension all of their other friends.
She was quiet and spacey, which came off as cool and aloof, somehow. Her rolling her eyes when Jeff or one of the other base ball boys did something stupid was seen as funny and a little bitchy, rather than Lottie just being unable to control her expressions.
Sitting with the soccer girls, though, also meant that she saw more of Natalie. They hadn’t shared a class in years, and Lottie was oddly excited to be seeing more of her. She wore darker clothes now, darker makeup too. She was cool in her own way, at least Lottie thought so, while admiring her chunky rings and chipped nail polish.
Nat wasn’t popular though, she was still the punk from the trailer park, even if she did play soccer. Lottie didn’t care. She grinned whenever they saw each other in the hallways, Lottie teased her at practice, running circles around Nat with the ball.
Lottie’s large friend group only managed to drive a larger wedge between her and her brother.
In March of 1991, when it was time for Lottie and Travis’s shared birthday party, their parents gifted them the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Travis was more excited than Lottie, but she was still wanting to play with it. Travis was allowed to keep it in his room under the condition that he allowed Lottie to use it, and that they also allow Javi to play sometimes.
This lead to hours in the evenings during spring hunched over Super Mario World, taking turns and helping each other. Lottie’s favorite memory was when she let Javi play, Travis laughing whenever their brother fails to make one specific jump. Javi, despite being laughed at, smiles, and tries again.
Lottie starts sitting with Travis more often, that spring. They got Legend of Zelda and were excited to talk about it, even if Travis tended to go ahead without her and miss more of the story.
One particular day, when Lottie sits with him rather than the team, she feels someone slump down beside her, she glances momentarily, caught up in speaking, and falters when she sees a slightly grumpy looking Nat.
“Jackie is driving me crazy today, I would much rather sit with you, Martinez.” Nat says to her, she looks across the table. “Travis right?”
Travis nods, a little shocked, a lot shy.
“What’d Jackie do to piss you off now?” Lottie nudges her. Nat rolls her eyes, sighing heavily.
“She was laughing at Randy’s stupid jokes, which of course, made Shauna angry, which made her leave for the library or something, which means Jackie’s being just a bitch.” Nat rolled her eyes. “She’s also just, really dumb.”
“Come on, she’s not that bad-” Lottie tries to defend.
“Yeah well, when Randy said you totally had a thing for Travis she just laughed with him so-.”
Travis chokes on his chocolate milk. “What the fuck?”
“I know.” Nat groans. “Idiots.”
“We literally have the same last name.” Lottie looks at Nat in disbelief and disgust.
“ I know. ” Nat repeats. “He said that you two were like arranged marriage or something. He’s saying it like you two aren’t related by blood, weirdo.”
Travis and Lottie exchange a puzzled look. Lottie thought Nat knew, assumed everyone knew, honestly.
“We…aren’t?” Lottie tells her, it’s Nat’s turn to look confused.
“Yeah she can’t even speak spanish.” Travis teases, and gets a balled up napkin thrown at him.
“I can!” Lottie protests.
“No you can’t-”
“Cállate, puedo totalmente-”
“Tu acento todavía apesta mucho-”
“Sorry I’m still confused?” Nat interrupts their argument. They both turn.
“Right, I’m adopted.” Lottie explains. “I was like eight though, so it’s been five years.”
“I totally thought you guys were twins…” Nat looks still confused. “I mean, whatever Randy was saying is stupid still, and probably somehow racist.”
“Our birthdays are like, less than a week apart, so we just celebrate on the same day.”
Nat nods. “You’re older though, right?” She asks Lottie. She shakes her head, solemnly, Travis grins. “Damnit, you seem older.”
“Thank you.”
-
Then eighth grade happens. Travis’s scoliosis gets more and more noticeable and Rosa and Bill fight over getting it corrected.
He’s out for most of the year, because of the surgery, and the fighting only gets worse. Then Travis gets involved in the arguments, directly. And Lottie is caught between it all. She feels like she’s on a tightrope. If she leans too far one way she risks losing Travis, too far another she risks loosing her dad. Any direction seems like a losing battle, so she gets quiet.
She gets quiet and needs something to fill the noise. Most of it is filled, the sounds of her family fighting while she hunches over her homework with Javi. But at night, after all the doors finish slamming and it’s dead silent, she finds herself returning to the four hour sleep schedule she used to get by on.
Lottie is fourteen when she hears her parents voices again. She hadn’t heard them in years, had barely remembered their voices, so she isn’t sure if it’s theirs. But they blame her, so it must be them.
Lottie is fourteen when she feels the need to start looking over her shoulder at every turn. She’s fourteen when she gets so tired she can’t care anymore. Fourteen when she stops speaking for the first time.
Only Nat notices, but by then she has her own problems, and when Lottie picks away at her food on the top of the bleachers to get a moment of silence, Nat is under them with Kevyn Tan getting high off shitty weed for the first time.
Lottie is fourteen and a quarter when she starts speaking again, softly, whispered and through gritted teeth.
Lottie is almost fifteen when the shouting becomes too much and she hits her head against the table so hard she gets a concussion.
-
After the concussion incident she starts seeing a therapist every week, and a psychologist twice a month. She goes through several different medications, different combinations, learns every breathing technique and grounding exercise in the book.
She pretends at school, pretends to be normal, but everyone remembers mumbling Martinez. Apparently she talked to herself more often than she thought she had. Though this was mostly contained to the soccer team. For the time being.
Travis had it worse.
The first time she overheard someone call him Flex she was confused. The fifth time made her angry, and the twelfth-
“Charlotte!” Her dad shouted across the field, Lottie using her height to intimidate one of the smaller kids on the baseball team, the boy doubled over in pain from her knee.
She was in trouble that night. Drove home in silence, berated as soon as she stepped into the door, and then given the silent treatment as she begged him to talk to her.
-
Lottie and Travis walk into school on the first day of high school, and stick together. The school of course put their lockers side by side. So when Jackie and the others congregate by hers, Jackie beginning to tell her all about her summer, Travis stays silent.
Until Jeff comes up behind him.
“How did summer treat you, flex?” He asks. Travis slams his locker and leaves. Lottie grinds her teeth.
“You’re an asshole,” Lottie tells him.
“Calm down Lottie, it’s just a nickname.” Jackie says. Lottie opens her mouth to say something when Shauna speaks up.
“Is that Nat?” She says. Lottie whips her head around to find a grumpy girl with smudged mascara and much more eyeshadow, bleach blonde hair a stark contrast to the darkness of her clothes.
She walks by them all, ignores them as she signs up for soccer try outs.
-
Lottie learns that her dad died. She doesn’t talk about it, Van tells her, tight lipped and hesitant. Lottie doesn’t quite understand her exact pain, but at the same time she does.
She makes it Junior Varsity, along with Lottie. Scowling while Lottie preens under the proud gaze of her dad.
-
Three years later Jackie wins them states. Shauna’s well timed pass directly to Jackie’s waiting forehead.
The sun beats down on her jersey as she lets the breath off relief go as the whistle flies. Number 5, Martinez, emblazoned on her back.
“BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ”
They’re going to Nationals, they’re-
“We’re going to motherfucking nationals!” Jackie screams.
Lottie looks over, finds her dad smiling at her, and she beams. She feels pride. Then she feels a strange dread. She ignores it. Assumes it’s nothing.