Day 120

Day 120

 

“They’re going to come get me,” one of the girls murmurs sleepily. She’s younger than Evan, maybe five or six; he doesn’t know her real name, but everyone calls her Minnie (or Mouse, if they’re teasing) because she has a Minnie Mouse doll she carries everywhere. She’s holding it now�"it’s faded and dirty, since it only gets washed when it’s in the bathtub with her. “They said they’d be back. They said.”

“But what if they can’t come back?” Jeremy, a boy younger than him, frets. He’s about six, and Evan has never spoken to him before, even though he came here before Evan did. “I mean�"if they had to go away�"maybe they won’t want to come back?”

“They want to!” Minnie protests hotly, hugging her doll. “Of course they want to! But the bad people took them. That’s all.”

The bad people are the police. Evan found that strange, at first, but now he understands. The police and the CPS are the ones that separate the parents and kids, the reason why most of them ended up here.

All of them, really. Except for Evan. That’s why he doesn’t speak up when they talk like this, late at night.

“Why?” another girl, fourteen or fifteen, asks. Her name is Sandra�"probably. People make up new names for themselves sometimes, but it’s not like anyone cares.

“They…I dunno. They said they did something bad. They stole something. But I didn’t do anything, dunno why they made me come here….”

She frowns in the glow from the night-light. None of them like it here�"not even Mrs. Comer’s own kids. But they’re stuck.

“Least they wanted to stay,” an older boy, Kyle, mumbles, punching his pillow. He is thirteen, and earlier in the evening he shoved them all out of the bed and claimed it for himself, just like he always did�"but no one cared now. They were fine like they were, huddled together on the floor. “Never did anything to them…never did anything bad…I got good grades and everything, did the homework…f*****g drunk b******s, I’ll kill ‘em…I’ll find ‘em and kill ‘em dead, just you wait….”

Evan still didn’t say anything, but he sympathized with Kyle. Four years ago, his dad, who treated him and his younger sister badly for a long time, left his mother, who ignored and neglected them, forcing him to take care of his sister on his own. Two years ago, his mother drove off somewhere and didn’t come back. Kyle stayed in the house with his sister, taking care of her and waiting, but they cut off the water and electricity before long, and then a truant officer came by to ask why they weren’t in school, found out, and took them away. He didn’t know where his sister was anymore.

“And I’ll find Izzie,” he adds firmly. “I’ll find her. We have a plan.”

“What? To do what?” Jeremy asks.

“Christmas this year, we’re gonna do something really bad, both of us. And then they’ll have to bring us back to the home, and we’ll find each other then. And we won’t let ‘em separate us again. I’ll tell ‘em, it’s both of us or none of us.”

“’S that why you set the curtains on fire?” a girl Evan’s age, named Charla, he thinks, asks sleepily.

“Yeah. Would’ve got the whole house, I wouldn’t’ve cared, but she caught me. Gotta do something different this year, though, or I’ll get in jail.”

“You will?”

“Yeah. Once you’re twelve, you can go to jail.”

“Wow…” whispers Jeremy, sounding scared.

“You don’t have to worry about that, kid,” Kyle assures him. “You don’t need to get in trouble. Your parents’ll come back, I promise.”

“Yeah,” says Jeremy, uncertainly. “But why’d they…I mean, they’ll say they’re sorry, won’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Sandra tells him, with deep sympathy. “They’d better. You ever think you’re better off here?”

“But…if Mommy and Daddy come back….” He trails off, unsure. Evan can’t remember, but he thinks that Jeremy’s parents drove him to the hospital a year ago, dropped him off at the front door, and left him there. He’d had to wait for hours before anyone noticed him there. The older boy had been furious when Jeremy had told them that they hadn’t gotten in trouble for that: it’s not against the law to abandon a child, even a tiny baby, in front of a hospital.

“It’ll be okay,” Sandra promises him. “You’re better with us. We’d never do that to you.”

Really, she was lying�"during the day, the kids made alliances and fought bitterly with each other, so brutally that it could never be mistaken as just a game. They’d turn against one, then turn against another, then be turned against. But at night, none of that mattered, and they were all friends, almost. Maybe that’s what Sandra meant.

“Were your mommy and daddy mean, too?” Charla asks Sandra.

It’s an innocent question, but Sandra scowls at the ceiling all the same. “Yeah,” she mutters.

“Did they hit you?” Charla asks, solemnly.

Sandra sighs. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

No one knows what she’s talking about�"except for Kyle, who rolls over and says fiercely, “You didn’t tell me that!”

Sandra just shrugs.

Kyle mutters a few swear words, then hisses, “That’s sick. Why didn’t your mom�"?”

“She didn’t care that much. He wasn’t that great to her either.”

“I’ll kill him for you,” Kyle promises, his tone frightening to hear. “I swear to God I will. If it were my sister…. Just tell me where to find him, and I’ll go make him pay.”

“Yeah, I might…I might do that,” Sandra says thoughtfully. “Thanks…just let me think about it, okay?”

“’Kay,” mutters Kyle, rolling over again.

Evan wonders if they’re joking, or if she’d really ask him to do it�"and if he’d really do it. He wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

“Won’t you get caught?” Jeremy wants to know.

Kyle snorts. “They won’t catch me. I can fool ‘em. Knock ‘em out, throw ‘em in a lake somewhere…they’ll never find ‘em.”

“But what if they do?”

“Well, it won’t be my fault if they die, will it? They would’ve been fine if they hadn’t fell in the water. An’ they’ll never know it was me.”

They all think about that for a minute, searching for loopholes. But it seems pretty airtight. Especially if he wears gloves and wipes everything down with bleach, Evan thinks, but Kyle probably already knows to do that.

There’s a long silence. Then the Charla asks, “What happens if they come back? What happens?”

“Then we get to go home!” Minnie says happily.

But Kyle shakes his head. “No…it’s not that easy. There’s a lot of paperwork…legal stuff…if they wait too long, they might not get us back. It’s not easy.”

“But…but they’re my mom and dad!” Minnie protests.

“Well, they shouldn’t’ve let you get taken in the first place. It’s not like it’s for no reason. They did something bad, didn’t they? So they shouldn’t’ve done it. They should’ve remembered you and not done it.”

“Oh…” Minnie sighs, hugging her doll even tighter and hiding her face. Sandra reaches down with one hand and brushes her fingers through Minnie’s hair, a gesture of comfort.

“It’ll be okay,” she says. “You’re fine here, you’re safe. And when you’re eighteen, you can do whatever you want.”

“I hate it here,” Minnie whines, and Evan can tell that she’s not just sulking�"she’s not faking her misery. “I hate school…I hate it here….”

The other kids reach out to comfort her, the ones sharing the floor with her snuggling closer. Evan turns away from them, his face pressed against the wall, and frowns at the night light plugged into the wall beside him. He and Minnie go to the same school�"and he hates it too. But at least she doesn’t get bullied and made fun of, at least her teachers don’t think there’s something wrong with her, at least she’s passing…. She’s only in kindergarten, what’s so hard about that?

And yet she’s the one getting comforted�"she’s the one they want to hear about. No one asks him why he’s here, or who brought him here, or if his dad’s ever coming back….

What Kyle said�"is there really a time limit? Could it really be too late for all of them? It’s all fine for Sandra, and Charla, and Kyle, because they don’t want to go back, but what about the rest of them? What about Evan?

It’s been almost four months…what if his dad is already too late? Or what if�"what if the time limit is four months? He has to call his dad as soon as possible…tomorrow…his dad would want to know, wouldn’t he? Doesn’t he want to come back?

If it’s already too late…. It’s a long, long time before he turns eighteen. Ten whole years. He doesn’t want to stay here for ten years. But he’s scared of moving�"Kyle, Sandra, and Charla have all been moved before, and Kyle wasted no time telling them all sorts of horror stories, laughing at their fears. He’s so mean when Sandra isn’t around….

They’re still talking behind him, saying nice things, mean things…he doesn’t care. He wishes they would all shut up and leave him alone.

At least they all knew why they’d been left behind.