A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I don’t want to wait three more weeks. Tell me.”

  “No,” she sighs, still resting on my shoulder, “I don’t feel any different.” She scoots down a little till her ear’s against my chest. “When I was younger, I thought I would. Didn’t you? When you were a little boy, didn’t you think that once you were an adult you’d be smarter? And stronger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I did. I used to think about it all the time. As soon as I turned eighteen, I’d move out and be one of those strong, independent women who never cries.”

  “You’re already one of those people who never cries.” I mean, even when she won the spelling bee in middle school and Amy Flowers got jealous and poured her milk over her head, Emerald didn’t cry. If it weren’t for those red blotches that broke out on her neck, I wouldn’t have even known she was upset.

  “I do cry. I probably cry once a week.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Well, not in front of anyone, but yes. Why are you so shocked? Everyone cries, Adam.”

  “Not me.” She looks up and grins the way she did when I said I got into a fight with Marcus. “I’m not trying to be a badass. I just don’t. My mom told me that even when I was a baby I didn’t. She said I was always happy.”

  She lowers her head again, and I feel her soft laugh against my chest. “That sounds about right.”

  “So what’d you get from your mom?”

  “I don’t know yet. I won’t see her until tomorrow. She’s with her boyfriend.”

  “Seriously?” My mom would go insane if she couldn’t see me on my birthday.

  “It’s fine. The people I wanted most were here.”

  “Well, except for Brett, right?” Apparently he had some flight test he couldn’t get out of. “Sucks that he couldn’t come.”

  “Yeah…I don’t know. I know it’s not really long distance, but sometimes I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  If I were with someone who was beautiful and brilliant and amazing, an hour drive would be nothing. “If someone really matters to you, it’s worth it.”

  She shifts away from me and leans back against the couch.

  “I probably need to go,” I say. “I told my mom I’d be home by two, and I’m already an hour late. I can’t even call her, because I lost my freakin phone again.” I hop up. “Have you seen Julian?”

  I open the sliding glass door in the living room, zipping up my coat against the cold, and finally find him outside on Emerald’s trampoline.

  “You gonna jump or just lie on that thing?” I ask, climbing up and hopping a couple times. He starts laughing in a way that tells me he’s drunk. “Hey, I thought I told you—” He looks up at me with giant worried mouse eyes. “Forget it.”

  Emerald steps outside, wrapped in a thick gray blanket. She climbs up to sit next to us, and I mouth the word drunk. She laughs.

  “Julian.” I nudge him. “Time to go.”

  He starts to hum, but other than that he ignores me.

  “I can walk you home,” Emerald says.

  “Walk us home?”

  “It’s a nice night.”

  “It’s snowing.”

  “I don’t want my birthday to be over yet.” A few strands of her hair have come undone and are falling into her eyes. I want to touch them, push them back into place.

  “Okay.” I hop to the ground and give her my hand. “Walk us home.”

  I jostle Julian’s shoe. “Julian,” I say. He blinks up at me. “Let’s go.”

  For once he doesn’t flinch away when I come too close, doesn’t seem to mind that Emerald and I loop our arms with his to keep him upright. Soon the three of us are sliding down the snowy sidewalk together.

  “You should just carry him,” Emerald suggests when he stumbles for the third time.

  “No,” he mumbles. “Wanna walk.”

  “You heard him,” I say.

  He trips again, makes me lose my balance, and my feet slide wide apart—like Bambi on ice. I manage to pull them back together while Emerald laughs, a sound that echoes likes a bell. Linked and tripping over moonlit ice, I feel a rush of happiness so strong my legs fill up with energy and I just want to run.

  “Do you see?” Julian whispers.

  “See what?” I ask.

  “My breath.” He exhales heavily. A small cloud fills the air. “Do you see it?”

  “I see it.”

  “I’m real.”

  “Yes,” I agree. “You’re real.”

  We tiptoe into my dark house, and at this point we’re practically dragging Julian to my bed. He topples over onto his back and starts humming again while I tug off his cracked sneakers. Emerald looks down at him with amused affection. She and Julian both have snow-flushed cheeks and wet hair.

  “Wait,” Julian says, his eyes just foggy slits as I throw a blanket on top of him. “You didn’t ask.”

  “Ask what?” I say.

  “How many. You didn’t ask how many.”

  “Okay, how many?”

  He smiles and closes his eyes. “Ten…thousand…stars.”

  I WAKE WITH a start, still dressed in Adam’s clothes. My head aches and feels a little bit cloudy, but I try to shake it away. Russell. If he came home last night…

  And if he knows I didn’t…

  I find my sneakers on the floor, tug them on as fast as I can, and rush into the hall.

  I hear the shower running. It’s probably Adam, but there isn’t time to wait. I have to go now.

  I hop on my bike, a sick wintry feeling in my stomach as I pedal. I skid through a patch of ice, and the bike begins to wobble. I lurch to one side, but somehow manage to right myself and pedal even faster. My lungs begin to burn as I suck in too much freezing air.

  When I get to the house, I’m sweating despite the cold. Russell’s car isn’t in the driveway. I feel a flash of relief, but then the fear amps up again. That doesn’t mean he never came home. He might still know. And if he does…

  Think good thoughts.

  I park my bike in the garage and go to my room, the silence ricocheting off all the walls, the cold air from the fast ride still in my lungs. I change into a clean shirt and sweatpants, but I’m too nervous to do much else besides sit in the center of my bed. Then slowly, slowly, my muscles loosen, and I let myself lie on my back until the light begins to change.

  The thought of sunset brings a fresh wave of nerves. I don’t remember much of what happened last night after Camila poured vodka into my cup, but I remember sleeping deeply.

  I wish Adam could sleep over.

  Or that I could sleep at his house again.

  But I know neither thing can happen.

  I climb out of bed, calm enough now to open my trunk and fish out an Elian Mariner book. The glossy cover is smudged and cracked from so much handling. There’s a white line right through the center of the lilac people—the aliens with lilac skin and feathery manes, all tall and slim and androgynous like lilies. The ones who could escape their frozen planet if only the shadow man—the towering monster with insect wings and mouths full of sharp teeth at the tips of all his fingers—would let them go.

  I sit on my bed and turn to the first page. It begins the way every Elian Mariner book does, with his mom and dad tucking him in, then shutting off the light. In the dark you can still make out his bed and his toys and the ship in a bottle on his dresser.

  Turn the page and the bottle starts to shake.

  Turn again and the glass disappears.

  Soon the ship starts to grow, so big the room has to expand to fit it. Somehow Elian’s parents never discover what’s happening, but he’s not dreaming—it’s magic.

  Elian climbs aboard, and the ship floats like a ghost through the ceiling, into outer space. He sees the stars and a tiny earth and it’s so beautiful until—

  I hear a noise.

  Someone is opening the back door. My stomach starts to hurt and my ears tingle
as I listen. The jingle of Russell’s keys. His footsteps on the hardwood floor.

  My wildly beating heart is so loud, it’s hard to hear anything else as I wait for him to either go up the stairs or come down the hall.

  I’M WALKING AND texting my way through the hall on Monday when I spot Mom coming out of the main office. For a second, I get a PTSD-style flashback of her menacing my middle school principal.

  “Mom?” I say, and she gets this suspicious, caught-in-the-act look on her face. “What are you doing here?”

  She straightens, her expression fierce all of a sudden. “Meeting with Mr. Pearce.”

  “Oh—I swear that whole intercom thing wasn’t me.” The Game might’ve gotten a little out of hand during first period. But Allison totally didn’t have to accept the dare just because she’s an office aide with access to the PA system. Okay, maybe she did, but—

  “What?” Mom looks completely confused. “No, about Julian.”

  “Julian? Why?”

  “I just wanted to see how he’s been doing, and that man”—she means Julian’s uncle—“changed his number—not that he’d take my calls anyway—and Mr. Pearce won’t talk to me either. Confidentiality and everything.” She’s getting all worked up and not even bothering to put on the creepy-fake-happy smile.

  “Mom, everything’s cool. You just need to take some anxiety drops.”

  That suggestion goes over the way it usually does, with her being mildly offended at first, then saying, “Maybe you’re right,” with a sigh. “I need to get back to work.” The bell rings. “And you need to get to class,” she adds, scolding all of a sudden, like she’s not the reason I’m late.

  “Okay.” I bend down to give her a hug. “See you at home.”

  “WHAT IS HE—YOUR DATE?” Charlie mutters as Adam hands me my shoes.

  When Adam asked me to go bowling this Saturday, I didn’t realize Charlie would be coming too. It’s been a week since Emerald’s birthday, and I’ve been getting a ride home from Adam almost every day since. Jesse and Allison and everyone else talks to me, but I think Charlie hates me.

  I pretend he isn’t glowering and tell Adam, “I can pay you back.”

  “It’s cool,” he says. “It’s like two dollars.”

  I’m sitting on a bench in front of our lane, taking off my sneakers, when Charlie asks me loudly, “Do you shave your legs?” Now both he and Adam are staring at the strip of visible skin between my socks and too-short jeans.

  “Yes?” I answer.

  “Why?” Adam asks. He doesn’t look like he’s joking.

  But to confirm: “Are you joking?”

  “I’m totally serious. Why do you shave your legs?” They’re both squinting at my shins. I wish I wore Adam’s jeans again, even if they are dirty.

  “Because we’re supposed to. Don’t you?”

  “No,” they say together.

  “But you have to. You’ll get sick. Body hair carries germs. It isn’t sanitary.”

  “Who the hell told you that?” Charlie is looking at me like I’m crazy.

  “My uncle.”

  “Russell told you you’d get sick if you didn’t shave your body hair?” Adam’s voice deepens, clearly concerned for some reason.

  “But that’s stupid,” Charlie adds. “You’ve seen guys’ legs before, right?”

  I know that some men keep their leg hair, but Russell says it’s a disgusting habit and they’re going to get sick.

  “What about PE?” Charlie says. “Don’t you see the other guys in the locker room?”

  “I never had PE.”

  “Never?” Adam asks.

  “When I was really little, but not in years.”

  Adam looks suspicious. “But it’s a required class.”

  “I don’t know. I never had to take it,” I say.

  “You should still know this stuff,” Charlie grumbles. “Everyone took that puberty class in sixth grade.”

  I didn’t. Russell never signed the consent form, so when the boys and girls were split up to watch the video, I was sent to the library.

  “So…” I say, “you really don’t shave?”

  “I really don’t,” Adam says. “Guys don’t shave their legs. Except swimmers, because it’s supposed to make them faster—which I don’t get, because how much can leg hair slow you down? But no, it’s just something girls do.”

  “But why just girls?”

  “Because,” Charlie says, “no one’s gonna go out with a girl with hairy legs and pits—Wait a minute!” He grabs my sleeve. “Does this mean you shave your pits?”

  I pull away.

  “Quit it,” Adam says, moving to sit on the orange plastic bench between us. “New topic. Do we need to get the bumper rails for you, Charlie, or do you think you can handle it without them?”

  “Right,” he says, “as if you will ever beat me at bowling.”

  Adam grins over at me as if we’re in on a joke, and I smile back.

  WHEN MY ALARM goes off at six on Monday morning, I see the twenty-dollar bill beneath my shell. Through slices of pain, I walk to my attached bathroom, whimpering as every movement pulls the cuts on my legs. Tears sting my eyes, reminding me how much I embarrassed myself last night. Russell never gets mad at me for crying, but it’s still humiliating.

  I use the toilet, then consider showering, but everything hurts too much. For a moment I stand in front of the floor-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, looking at the horizontal red lines from my collarbone to my waist. He’s never done that before, never the front. It makes sleep impossible. I can’t lie on my stomach. I can’t lie on my back. But I have to, and it hurts.

  I turn around to see the long red stripes from my shoulders down the back of my legs. The legs that are pale and skinny, and according to Adam and Charlie, strangely hairless. I know Russell is just worried about my health, but I don’t want to shave anymore, not if no other boy does it.

  I feel another surge of regret knowing he’s gone to work and I’m home. I hate that I keep doing stupid things. I hate it when he’s mad at me. I hate that the proof of how he feels is still all over me.

  I turn around to face the mirror again and look into my eyes. When I was in the third grade we had to do a genealogy assignment, and my mother told me that no one in our family had eyes like mine. The only person I knew from Mom’s side of the family was her sister, Russell’s wife, but she died when I was five, so I barely remember her. My mom never spoke to any of her other relatives. I knew something had happened, some falling-out with her parents, but she never wanted to talk about it, and at the time I wasn’t curious enough to ask.

  My father didn’t have any brothers or sisters. His parents were old by the time they had him. He said they called him their miracle because they didn’t think they could have children. I don’t remember either of his parents, since they both died when I was still a baby.

  It hits me all of a sudden—my parents lost their parents. But they always seemed so happy. Was it real? I can picture them looking at each other, smiling right into each other’s eyes. Hers were bright blue. His were faded green. Mine are both, and sometimes when I look in the mirror, I can see both of them looking back at me.

  “HAVE YOU HEARD from Julian?” Dr. Whitlock asks the second I get to her office on Wednesday.

  “No. But he doesn’t have a phone or a computer, so I never hear from Julian.”

  “He’s out again today.” She frowns, obviously worried. I don’t tell her he’s probably just skipping. I mean, is she forgetting the first weeks of school when he dodged her? “This is the third day in a row. I’ve called home, but I haven’t heard back from anyone.”

  I guess three days is weird, even for him. “I could go by his house.”

  She perks up. “Would you? That would be very helpful.”

  “I can go now if you want.” Anything’s better than sitting in this office doing nothing. I can tell she’s about to say no, so I add hastily, “I’ve got lunch next peri
od, so I won’t be late to class or anything.”

  “All right. You can go”—her eyes shoot from side to side, and she whispers like her office is bugged—“but don’t tell anyone I said that.”

  “No problem, Dr. Whitlock.” Everyone worries too much.

  I ignore the doorbell. It’s always a UPS man or a salesman, never anyone I want to see. When it rings again, faster and more insistent, I slowly climb out of bed, wincing. I take careful steps to the front door, then peek through the fish-eye.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask when I open the door.

  “Manners, Julian,” Adam scolds, sweeping right past me. “Nice house.” Then he squints at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I retreat a little, afraid he might try to touch my shoulder. “Nothing.”

  “You look like hell.”

  The pain has dulled to something bearable, but I’m congested and my head aches. This happens a lot after a punishment. Just as the marks begin to fade, I get sick.

  “It’s just a cold. Or maybe the flu.”

  “You go to the doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what have you been eating?”

  “Uh…peanut butter and jelly.”

  He shakes his head as if disappointed, then scans the house again. “Is your uncle really anti-technology?”

  “Why?”

  “No computer. No TV. What do you do here all day when you’re sick?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That sucks,” he says sympathetically.

  He starts jogging through the house the same way he does through the courtyard at school. I’m terrified he’s going to break something, or that Russell will be home at any minute. Russell might be gone for two days or he might come home right now.

  “Where’s your room?”

  “It’s the last one on the hall. But I—”

  He starts jogging in the opposite direction and stops in front of the china cabinet. “What is all this?”

  “No one can touch that!”

  But he’s already opening the glass doors and poking at everything on the shelves—five antique cameras, dozens of first-edition books, delicate dishes, and an old silver gun.