I can’t give him.

I’m a coward! he shouts,

lets go of my shoulders,

his face steaming with guilt and rage.

He rips the graph paper,

tries to break the pencil,

but it’s too small. He throws it instead.

I want to think of a joke,

or something wise

about how we are all afraid,

or some obscure fact about a chupacabra,

about the game or the beach.

I look at Lisa, but she’s quietly drawing.

He walks around the room,

then finally just sits,

his arms folded over his knees.

He mutters,

I was mad at myself.

I took it out on you.

I walk over,

sit down next to him,

pull out two fresh sheets

of graph paper,

and slowly I start

filling in squares

until he starts to do it too.

Bigfoot Versus Yeti

Later that night,

on my sleeping mat,

I stare at the darkened shapes

in the old wooden room,

and it hits me, the why of it.

A clear thought like starlight,

the kind that only comes

after something tough happens.

I click on the flashlight,

dig around for a marker,

pull an old picture off the wall,

and start to sketch.

I draw a bad picture of Bigfoot:

brown fur, giant feet,

long arms and longer teeth.

Pick, wake up and look at this picture.

He makes a noise, and I go again.

Bigfoot or yeti, Pick? Look.

And it’s like this for a while,

me holding up my Bigfoot picture,

asking him to decide if it’s

Bigfoot or a yeti.

Pick whispers, in a sleepy

yawn, That’s Bigfoot?

I laugh. What if I tell you

it’s a yeti?

What? Pick says.

It’s a yeti, I say.

It’s Bigfoot, he says.

Look at the brown fur.

Everyone knows yetis have white fur.

It’s a yeti, I say. A yeti. Yeti.

Yeti. Maybe it’s a southern yeti.

Maybe it’s the summer. Yeti all the way.

How can you know? You don’t.

Fine! he yells, defeated. Yeti.

NO! I shout.

It’s Bigfoot!

He looks confused,

sleepy in the dull light.

Do you get it? I say.

Everyone thinks the yeti

and Bigfoot are the same,

but they are completely

different creatures!

If you call something a name enough times,

maybe you just accept it.

Everyone knows that the yeti

is found in Arctic climates, the Himalayas.

He’s the Abominable Snowman.

Bigfoot is a Sasquatch, native to North America!

Everyone knows that they are different creatures,

but they just make them the same

because they don’t even TRY

to look at who they REALLY are.

Fine, he grumbles, fine. Can I sleep now?

and drops down to his pillow.

I let people call me names

because that’s what

they’ve always done.

I let them make me into who I am.

Some of the biggest lies I ever told

were the ones I told myself.