A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

  “But none of us like having to delay class every day to wait for you,” Miss West says. “If you’re going to insist on doing this, then the least your aide can do is get you here early. All this coming in late and leaving early is very disruptive.”

  Slowly, Dawn nods, then Miss West says it’s time to return our exams. The room was already tense, but now it’s even worse.

  “David,” she says, handing a boy his paper, “seventy-six. Violet, eighty-five. Kristin, ninety-three. Julian…” She stops right in front of me. This close, she’s much scarier. Her eyebrows are two black ink arcs, and her skin looks like wax. “Forty.”

  I never talk and I don’t have a phone, so when I get yelled at, it’s for failing.

  “Can anyone tell me how someone could possibly make a forty on this test?” She looks around the room. “Alex, do you know?”

  Alex and Kristin are the most popular kids in the class, and they’re the only two Miss West seems to like. They can be tardy or take out their phones and she doesn’t get mad.

  Alex shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither,” Miss West says. “I would have thought it was impossible unless you just randomly circled answers.”

  I wince and close my eyes. If I concentrate hard enough, maybe I really could teleport.

  “Pitiful.”

  Or just disappear.

  At lunchtime in my hidden room, my fingers itch to trace the words in my mom’s notebook. I like the way it feels, but I’m afraid to bring the notebook to school. What if someone took it and drew ugly pictures in it? What if they destroyed it altogether? The thought makes me feel sick, like I’m in a speeding car instead of standing still.

  No, it’s better to leave the notebook safe in my trunk. I know most of the lists by heart anyway. There’s one that if it had a title would be called A List of Fears. All of the words end in phobia, except for number sixteen: kayak angst.

  I looked it up on a school computer and read that it’s an anxiety disorder you can only find among the Inuit sailors of Greenland. The sailor feels fine as he’s heading out in his one-man boat, but he panics once land disappears. Disoriented and alone, unable to see a shore in either direction, he’s terrified.

  It makes me think of Elian Mariner. He always sails alone, and he’s never afraid. Maybe he isn’t scared because he doesn’t experience this aloneness for long. One moment his sailboat is airborne in the stratosphere with a beautiful view of a tiny earth and all the stars. Then, flash, like fireworks and a sonic boom, you turn the page and he’s there. In another country or another world.

  The travel looks instantaneous, but when I was little I wondered about it and asked my dad, Where did he go?

  Dad pointed to the picture, his index finger a rainbow of ink. He’s right here.

  But in between? Where was he?

  I don’t know.

  Dad turned the page and kept on reading as if the place where Elian disappeared didn’t matter. Because when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.

  A FEW MINUTES into fourth period, I’ve only taken one step in the direction of my hidden room, when I hear my name. Adam is behind me, exactly where he was the first time a week or so ago, and wearing an amused smile. “Going to Dr. Whitlock’s?” he asks.

  I just stand here squeezing the yellow hall pass.

  “I’m her aide this year,” he adds. He starts walking, then halts. “Coming?”

  I hesitate before falling into step beside him. While we walk, I watch our feet. My sneakers used to be white but are now dirty yellow. His are new and bright white and moving like they always used to—fast, with a mixture of skipping and jogging.

  The whole time, he’s talking. “So you’re in Art? Do you like it?”

  I nod, but I don’t like it. Maybe I would, if I could get the beautiful pictures in my head onto the paper. Miss Hooper says my drawings are good, but they aren’t really.

  “What teachers do you have?”

  I steal a glance at him to see what looks like genuine interest. “Uh…” My voice comes out rusty and strange. “For English I have Miss Cross.”

  “Oh, I had her! She was really nice.”

  She probably never had to ask Adam to speak up.

  As we get closer to Dr. Whitlock’s office, all the cells in my body start telling me to run. “I have to use the bathroom,” I say, then rush through the door and duck into a stall. I stand here counting minutes until I’m sure Adam will be gone.

  But when I come out, he’s still there, pacing right outside the door. I must look pretty startled, because he says, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He reaches out, and even though I know he isn’t going to do anything, it still catches me by surprise. He puts two hands up, backing away a little. “Sorry, now I really didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He starts walking again, then stops when I don’t follow.

  “Um…” I don’t know how to say this politely. “It’s okay if you need to go somewhere else.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want me to walk with you?”

  I think he’s joking, and I never know what to say when people are joking. I think most people tease back, but I can’t come up with any jokes. But when you just stand there, you make people uncomfortable.

  Finally he says, “Just kidding,” which is what most people eventually say. “I heard you got lost on your way to her office the last ten times.”

  “I didn’t get lost.”

  Adam grins. “I didn’t think you really did.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, now I’m your…What’s a nice word for prison transport? Escort!” He bounces ahead, and too soon we’re heading into what looks like a waiting room, one with a big desk and a moss-green couch.

  Adam strides across the room and knocks on a frosted glass door to an interior office. I hear a voice, familiar and deep, say, “Come in.”

  Adam opens the door, bows a little to me, then drops onto the couch. With a sigh, I walk over the threshold.

  When I got to Dr. Whitlock’s earlier, she explained that my assignment was to bring in Julian—a lot like a bounty hunter, only without the violence. Or the reward.

  The first time someone assigned Julian to me, I was ten years old.

  I’d just started fifth grade when our teacher, Mrs. Nethercutt, announced that we were each being given a kindergarten reading buddy. Mrs. Nethercutt was one of those teachers who liked to remind you that you’d never have it as good as you have it right now. One day you’d be in the real world, instead of the fictitious world of elementary school. There’d be no friends or recess or lunchtime. Instead, you’d work hard and be still and never speak to anyone. All day. Every day. Until you retired, then, soon after, died.

  Her classroom was designed to replicate the future silent-sedentary life we’d inevitably have, so when she said we’d get to leave the room twice a week to play reading games, I was stoked.

  Our class hosted a party with sugar cookies and pink lemonade, and there was an elaborate ceremony to introduce us to the kids we’d be working with for the rest of the year. At the end, the kindergartners ordered their fifth grader to lift them up. Mrs. Nethercutt immediately ordered us to put them back down.

  The boy assigned to me—Julian—looked like an anime character, with too much shiny black hair that fell just short of his enormous round eyes. As soon as I deposited him back on the ground, he grabbed my hand in that unself-conscious way little kids do, and told me to listen.

  My attention had been wandering because the room was pure chaos. Kids were darting everywhere, someone had spilled the giant bowl of lemonade, and Charlie was wailing that his reading buddy had peed on him.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  Julian’s little face got serious, and then he burst into song. His powerful voice grabbed the attention of the entire room, and even Charlie stopped crying for a minute. I can’t remember what Julian sang, but he was good. Not just little-ki
d-good, but really good.

  It took a few meetings with our reading buddies before I realized that kindergartners were a lot like manic-depressives, vacillating between euphoria and despair with terrifying speed. It was overwhelming to a lot of us, and one time Charlie got sent to the office for saying “This is hell.”

  But I got lucky. Julian never cried or threw fits or peed on me. He was just a naturally cheerful kid—always singing and wearing those crazy glasses you’d get at joke shops—so we spent our time in the library playing superpowers and having fun.

  Well, that was until Mrs. Nethercutt demanded to know what I thought I was doing. I told her that Julian and I felt we’d been misled. We’d been promised reading games; instead, we just got reading.

  She ignored my totally valid concerns and ordered me to make Julian read aloud from one of the kindergarten primers at the center of our table. I promised I would, and I had the best of intentions, but Julian’s pockets were full of distractions—coins, paper clips, a gooey hand on a long gooey string—all the kinds of things my mom made sure I didn’t have in my possession before she’d let me out of the car in the morning.

  Mrs. Nethercutt eventually got fed up and said if we didn’t get to work, she’d assign me a new kindergartner, or even worse, Emerald would get two, and I’d have to sit alone and still. Emerald and her partner were seated right across from us, so when she overheard the threat she gave me a severe frown. Maybe she was still annoyed because I’d messed up her perfect hair with the gooey hand.

  I didn’t have much choice, so I got serious and told Julian no playing—just reading. The kid who was always singing and smiling dropped his dark head onto his outstretched arm, looking miserable, and kicked his little feet in the air.

  I could totally sympathize. The books we had to choose from weren’t exactly page-turners. Every line of every story was practically the same. Boy plus verb plus ball. Girl plus verb plus cat.

  Completely out of self-preservation, I brought an old picture book from home. Julian took one look at it, sniffed with very adult disgust, and said no, he didn’t want to read at all. I pleaded, telling him it was my favorite book when I was in kindergarten. He huffed that he wasn’t in kindergarten. He was a second grader. He’d said this before, and I’d figured it was just little kid posturing. He was always trying to impress me—like telling me that when he was at home he could fly and move things with his mind.

  “If you’re a second grader, then why are you here?” I asked.

  “I have dyslexia,” he said. “I’m in Reading Improvement.”

  Hearing that, I felt like a jerk. I knew how much it sucked to be separated from your class for something you couldn’t control.

  I glanced over my shoulder to find Mrs. Nethercutt watching us with narrowed eyes, and I hastily promised Julian it was an awesome book—my favorite in second grade too.

  This seemed to pique his curiosity, so he looked at the cover—a little boy with dark hair and round eyes standing on a giant sailboat—and tried to sound out the title. “E-e-el—”

  “Elian Mariner.”

  “He has a ship? Like Swiss Family Robinson?”

  I’d never heard of Swiss Family Robinson, but he was actually looking interested now, so I said, “Yeah, just like that. But Elian’s ship is magic. It can go anywhere.”

  The next time I saw Julian, he sauntered into the library, beaming, his little arms weighed down with a stack of Elian Mariner books. He said his dad had gotten them for him because he was a good reader now. He went back to being cheerful-humming-Julian till the end of the year, when our buddies had to write an actual book report.

  He glared at his blank page, refusing to write. After a while, I got impatient, took the glasses off his face—ones with eyeballs dangling from Slinkies—and pushed a pencil into his little fist. Sulking, he crossed his skinny arms over his chest.

  I got bored and turned away, watching my friends help their buddies, till Julian tapped my cheek. “How do you spell Elian?”

  “Elian? That’s easy for you.” I pressed my forefinger to cover up the E on the book’s cover. “What do you get if you put J-U here?”

  He frowned in concentration, then looked comically stunned. “That’s my name!” He began to write, and he had the worst handwriting I’d ever seen. Staggered, backward letters—hieroglyphics, not English.

  After a couple of sessions of working steadily, he read his paper aloud to me, since I couldn’t make out any of it. Right away I was in, just like when my mom read me actual books. At some point he must have been pretending to read, because it was way longer than the single page he’d written, but I didn’t care. His story was good—not just little-kid-good, but really good.

  I said as much, and for some reason that moment—right after I told him—is frozen in my head like a photograph. His smile was enormous, and his eyes were shining like he was blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. But sometimes that smile is superimposed onto the face I saw the next time he was assigned to me. The day his parents died.

  Dr. Whitlock smiles like she’s truly glad to see me, but the intensity of her gray gaze is hard to hold. Her eyes are more curious than friendly, and she’s dressed not like a teacher, but like a lawyer or a businesswoman.

  “How have you been?” she asks, folding her hands in her lap.

  I nod, hoping she can understand that a nod means okay.

  She asks me to take a seat, so I sit on the couch across from her orange cloth chair. It doesn’t look like the kind of chair she’d choose. Actually, as I take another glance around, I realize none of the furniture looks like it belongs to her. The small coffee table is purple. Her desk is yellow. Nothing matches, and it reminds me of a living room from a show that I must have seen a long time ago on Nick at Nite.

  “Julian…” That’s the tone I remember: careful, as if she’s about to give me terrible news. “Do you understand that this is a safe place, and everything you say here is confidential?”

  She’s being nice, but it just makes me more nervous, because she expects me to tell her things so personal that they need to be confidential. I don’t know what to say, and it becomes awkward, like it always does. Not because she looks annoyed or uncomfortable like most people, but because she’s not filling in the space either.

  I start picking at the tip of my shoelace. The last bit of plastic comes off and falls onto the floor. Dr. Whitlock lifts the wastebasket toward me. I pick up the plastic and drop it in the can, then she tells me to choose a game from her shelf.

  Board games were not something we ever did at home. When Mom and Dad and I played something, it was guitar or piano or pretend. But I know Dr. Whitlock likes games, so I choose Sorry, just like last year, because it’s the only one I know how to play.

  I learned it from Russell’s nieces when we visited his sister Nora’s house one Thanksgiving. They were obsessed with it, but it seemed like a mean and unnecessarily sarcastic game to me. If you draw the Sorry card, it reads something like SORRY! NOW I’M GOING TO TAKE MY PAWN FROM START AND KILL ANY OF YOURS I WANT.

  I set the game onto the purple coffee table. Dr. Whitlock opens the box and asks what color I’d like.

  “Any of them.”

  She frowns and already I feel like I’ve done something wrong. That’s what playing feels like too: not fun, because she’s watching as if she’s evaluating me on how well I play. And the thing about Sorry is that you can’t be good at it. It’s all luck, so I don’t know how I’m supposed to do well besides counting the spaces correctly and not landing on her when I have the option to do something else.

  The only time I’ve ever taken out one of her pawns was when I got the Sorry card and had no choice. Even then I took out the player farthest from her HOME, so it wouldn’t be as mean. But afterward I found her watching me, not the board, and she looked unhappy.

  IT’S DARK OUTSIDE, cloudy and starless, when Russell calls me into the living room and aims one long finger down. The hardwood floor is
stained, spoiled, like footprints left in wet cement.

  Earlier this afternoon I cleaned my shoes using something I found under the kitchen sink. They were gleaming white by the time I set them on the living room floor, but I guess there was still some bleach on the soles.

  “You have to learn to respect other people’s things,” Russell says, his voice calm and steady.

  “I do.”

  “You do?”

  “I’m sorry. It was stupid.”

  “Yes,” he agrees. “It was.” He pauses, and my stomach knots while I wait for him to decide.

  Then he says, “Go get it.”

  I freeze for a moment, then walk to the massive cabinet against the dining room wall. Whenever we used to visit this house, my mother would always say how beautiful the cabinet was, the dark cherry wood with shelves of antiques and paper-thin dishes.

  I open the long drawer at the bottom filled with lacy tablecloths and napkins. Underneath them is a thin willow switch. I watch my hand shake as I reach out for it, then return to the living room.

  I put it in his outstretched hand.

  There’s a sudden leap in his throat and the slightest catch in his voice when he says, “Take off your shirt.”

  If I really had powers, I could turn off pain the way I can shut my eyes. But I can’t. I feel it. Skin doesn’t get thicker. Instead, it remembers. I know this is true, because the second the air touches my back, it starts to sting like the switch is already falling.

  “Turn around,” he says.

  This part is hardest. A billion years of evolution tells your cells to run. But you can’t run. You have to turn around and face the desert wall. You have to be still. He doesn’t care if you cry, but you can’t fight.

  A sound fills the air, then pain so sharp, you feel sick. Slash after slash, cutting and deep, one on top of the other. They don’t stop until you’re screaming into your palms.