“And I’m going to make some great videos. Right?” But when I look at them, I’m the only one smiling.
Antonio takes a set of dry clothes and pushes them toward Chad. “Can you get dressed by yourself?” he asks.
Chad fumbles with a wet T-shirt that sticks to his body.
“Okay, raise your arms, little buddy,” Antonio says.
Chad holds both arms straight up. I step to his other side and into the foul musk that still clings to him despite my efforts with the hose. When we pull the T-shirt inside out over Chad’s head, I gasp. Across his pale back are crisscrossed scars and welts.
Chad must have heard me. “Wha?” he asks.
“What happened to your back?”
“I fell.”
I turn away while Antonio helps him into Max’s sweatpants.
He didn’t fall. Scrapes from wipeouts don’t look like that.
Chad sags against Antonio, who helps him to sit down again and then sits next to him. I sit on Chad’s other side.
I imagine us as Rogue, Gambit, and Wolverine, seated side by side in the X-Mansion after Rogue and Wolverine rescued the injured Gambit. They made sure he stayed with the X-Men and didn’t return to his family of thieves.
Antonio leans forward, his head in his hands. My Wolverine doesn’t know what to do. But I think he was wrong about Chad being trouble. Chad’s family forced him to do what he did and beat him if he didn’t.
“Do they hit Brandon too?” I ask.
“No.” Chad’s voice weakens. “I make sure of that.”
“You protect him?”
Chad nods. “I’m ruined. But he should have a good life.”
“You’re not ruined.”
“Yeah, I am. Look at me. I’m gonna run away with Brandon ’fore they do it to him.”
I blink. How can Chad be ruined when he cares so much for his brother?
Chad burps, then mumbles, “I don’t feel so good.”
I hear and feel footsteps behind me. Dad pokes Antonio with a plastic bucket. Antonio jerks upright, grabs it, and holds it in front of Chad in time to catch a rush of sour coffee.
Dad crouches behind Chad and rubs his back. Chad flinches and moans.
“Careful, Dad. His back is all beat up.”
My father rests a hand on Chad’s bony shoulder, holding him steady. “I heard you talk about it.”
Which means he heard how Chad took the blows for Brandon. “So what can we do to help them?” I ask.
If my father were Professor X, he would do something. But I’d never thought of Dad as a superhero. So when he says, “I’m going to have to speak to some people. This can’t go on,” I don’t know if I believe him.
What Dad can do: Clean and rebandage Chad’s arm. Put him to bed in Max’s bottom bunk. That’s it. Half an hour later, someone picks Antonio up. He won’t tell me who. I go upstairs to my room.
The next morning, when I peek into my brothers’ room to check on him, Chad is snoring. Back in my room on the opposite side of the house, I glance out the window, half-expecting Dad and Mr. Elliott to jam in the park with their guitar and banjo even though it’s only seven thirty, still too early for them to get together. I wonder what Dad will say to Mr. Elliott about last night.
Around nine, Brandon comes outside. Is he waiting for Chad to come home? Should I go to the park and tell him what happened and that his brother’s all right?
While I’m changing from my pajamas into a shirt and jeans, a police car with two officers inside drives down Washington Avenue. The car stops across from the park and idles for a couple of minutes. Squinting, I see one cop hold up what looks like a clipboard. Brandon runs inside his house. But instead of getting out of their car, the cops pull back into traffic and out of my view.
Brandon didn’t need to run inside. They weren’t looking for the Elliotts. They’re just passing through.
Someone knocks hard on our front door. The cops? Looking for us? Legs trembling, I run downstairs right behind Dad, who is already dressed. “That was fast,” he mumbles.
“What’s so fast?” I ask him, but get no answer.
Dad opens the door. Two police officers stand on the other side. They show their badges. One says, “We’re looking for Jeremy Thornton. He reported a case of child abuse.”
My chest tightens. I can’t breathe. Dad called the cops?
A brief flash of light comes from behind me, from the park, and an explosion shatters the air. The entire house rocks. My hands fly to the top of my head. The two cops take off running.
CHAPTER 26
TWO MORE EXPLOSIONS RATTLE THE HOUSE. DUST FILLS THE room. My eyes sting. Along with the dust are the odors—the intense onion smell from the Elliotts’ entryway, the rotting-egg smell of their backyard, the fertilizer smell of Brandon’s hair.
I try to clear my lungs. Dad is coughing too. “Let’s go! Now!” he gasps. His hand squeezes my wrist.
My feet stay frozen in place. “What about Chad!” I choke out as Dad pulls me through the front door.
“He’s safe upstairs.”
Outside, sirens close in on us from all directions. Our house stands intact, but beyond the oak and pine trees, black smoke billows, and flames shoot high into the air above Mrs. Mac’s house. Fire trucks pull up to the house, sirens screaming. Then police cars and ambulances arrive, red and blue lights flashing.
Hoses crisscross both Washington Avenue and Cherry Street. I cover my nose and mouth with the rolled-up sleeve of my shirt to filter the chemical stench. Dad approaches a policeman who’s herding neighbors to the park.
“Did they get out?” Dad yells above the din.
“Stand back, sir.”
“A little boy lives here. Did you find him?”
“Stand back, sir.”
I gaze at the second floor engulfed in fire and smoke. A hose shoots water through the window above the side door, where the Mackenzies’ dining room used to be.
Where is Brandon? I saw him run into the house, just before the police officers knocked on our door.
“Did you see the little boy who lives downstairs?” I ask two cops on the sidewalk. “He was my friend.”
The officers’ walkie-talkies drown me out. Someone calls, “Person down, behind the garage,” and one of the cops dashes across the street.
“Going to get someone now,” the other cop says. He holds his arm out, keeping me away.
An orange-and-white ambulance backs up. Emergency workers surround a stretcher. Two wheel it into the street and a third holds a bag with a tube at the bottom. Before they roll the stretcher into the ambulance, I get a glimpse of who’s propped upright on it.
It’s a man. Mr. Elliott?
The flames have singed his long hair almost to the scalp. A mask covers his nose and mouth. He holds up one arm, and it looks like all four of his fingers have melted away, leaving only a black-tipped thumb.
The siren screeches as the ambulance drives off.
Then another ambulance rolls into its place. Its crew pours out, carrying a freshly made-up stretcher-bed. Its sheets are clean, white. Within minutes, a stretcher with Mrs. Elliott is wheeled toward the ambulance. Her hair is burned too, and there’s only black nothingness where her ear should be.
Dad lays his arm across my shoulders. I stiffen. I’m afraid to ask him about Brandon. His parents have been horribly burned. I imagine him burned too. But maybe … he escaped. He’s a little kid. He can crawl through small spaces. And his bedroom’s on the other side of the house. Maybe that side didn’t burn as badly.
Dad shakes his head slowly. “I can’t get any information about Brandon.”
My teeth chatter despite the heat. “I saw him run inside. Right before the cops knocked on our door.”
“They still think Chad’s inside too. Even though I tried to tell them …”
Little by little, the water from the hoses knocks down the fire. The smoke turns gray, but the chemical smell hangs in the air, and the empty feeling stays inside me. Another ambulance pu
lls up, but its lights and sirens are turned off. It waits, engine idling, back doors open.
My father jogs up to the EMTs. Cops fan out in the brush behind the Mackenzies’ yard and on the far side of the house. I listen to the crackle of emergency radios. Dad returns, shaking his head. “Brandon’s still missing. But at least they know Chad’s accounted for.” He rubs my back. I shudder.
“I’m not leaving till they find Brandon.” I have to play wrestlers with him again. Even if all his wrestlers got burned up, I’ll come up with the money to buy him new ones.
“I agree. Chad will want to know.” Dad pauses. “I want to know.”
A few neighbors drift away after one of the cops calls us “a bunch of looky-loos,” but then more come. The twins, Eddie and Mike Perez, arrive with their parents, who talk to one of the cops and then hustle the boys away. Channel 8 News shows up in a van with a satellite dish on top. Reporters jump out to interview people. I can hardly hear above the noise, the radios, the conversations, the vehicles, the sirens. An ambulance roars by on the avenue. A helicopter hovers.
Police say … a meth lab … Did you suspect something?
We had no idea.
They just moved in.
They kept to themselves.
Two young boys … little one’s a cutie.
The kids played in the park … there was music … in the park.
I turn away from the cameras, because I don’t want them to film me crying. I don’t need the entire state calling me Crybaby Kiara even though this time I have a good reason to cry.
My father pushes his way through the crowd. He dodges a reporter holding out a microphone. “Kiara! Kiara!” he calls.
I wave. I can’t tell from his face whether he has bad news or good news. Or any news at all. But someone told the reporter, Little one’s a cutie. Like he still is.
When he gets to me, Dad’s lips turn up at the ends. A smile. The skin around his eyes crinkles.
“Brandon?” I ask.
“They found him in the brush behind the house!”
“He’s okay?”
“Not okay. But he’s alive,” Dad tells me. “The police officer told me Brandon has serious burns, but they aren’t life-threatening.”
Burned like his parents? I shiver, thinking how awful they looked.
“But he will get better, Kiara.”
“You’re sure?”
“He’s on his way to the hospital now.” Dad nudges me toward home. “He’s in good hands.”
I breathe out. It feels like the first breath I’ve taken since the explosion.
“We need to tell Chad. He’ll be happy to hear his brother made it out,” I say.
We come home to a silent house. Dad calls for Chad.
No answer.
Dad runs up the stairs, two at a time. By the time I get to the top, Dad’s already in my brothers’ room. The door is wide open and I hear Chad’s voice, weak and groggy. “What’s going on? And where am I?”
I stand in the open doorway. Huddled on the bottom bunk, Chad faces me. His skin is greenish-gray.
Dad sits next to him, hunched over to avoid hitting his head on the top bunk. “You’re at Kiara’s house. You had too much to drink last night. We brought you here where you’d be safe.” Dad helps Chad to a sitting position, then reaches forward and drags a wastebasket toward the bed. “But there was an accident at your house this morning.”
“What kind of accident?”
“A fire.”
Chad pulls his legs up to his chest. His lips are cracked and crusted white. His eyes stare blankly into space. It occurs to me that his eyes are sky blue. Like an empty sky.
“Brandon?” he whispers. “Was he burned?”
“Yes, but he got out of the house before getting hurt too badly. The police found him in the brush behind your yard,” my father says.
“He will get better,” I add, repeating Dad’s words to me.
I expect Chad to smile like Dad did when he found out the news that Brandon made it out alive. But Chad doesn’t smile. Instead he says, “But he’s burned.”
My father pats Chad’s back gently. “Yes. They took him to the hospital. Your parents too.”
Chad squeezes his head between his knees. “I should have been the one that got burned.” His voice breaks.
“You should be happy,” I say, stepping into the room. “Brandon’s going to be okay. And you’re free from your evil parents.” They’ll never be able to snatch Chad back the way Gambit’s parents snatched him back.
I don’t know why both my father and Chad are staring at me, their mouths wide open.
In the silence, I continue. “But it’s true!”
Dad leans forward. “That’s enough, Kiara.”
I stomp my foot and give Dad the open-mouthed stare.
Chad buries his fingers in his hair, like he’s going to yank his hair out. “Why Brandon? He didn’t do nothing to no one.” Chad’s voice is tiny and hoarse. Suddenly, he slams both his fists against his head, over and over. And then he howls.
CHAPTER 27
IN THE AFTERNOON, A WOMAN PULLS UP IN A COUNTY CAR TO talk to Dad. Dad calls Chad downstairs but tells me I can’t listen. I fold my arms across my chest and blow my breath out. I want to know if Brandon will be all right and where Chad is going now that he has no home and no family, and all his clothes and everything else have burned.
“Control yourself, Kiara,” Dad whispers. “This is no time for a tantrum.”
I glance at Chad. His head hangs, but I see the tears slick on his face. I escape through the backyard and the fence to watch the firemen spray water on piles of smoldering embers. The reporters and cops have left, except for one car with swirling lights blocking the entrance to Cherry Street. Orange cones and yellow biohazard tape surround the house and the sidewalk. The firemen stand outside the tape.
I walk behind the firemen, past their truck along the curb of Washington Avenue. The Ned Lamont sign lies flat on the ground, stomped and soggy. All that’s left of the house is the first-floor extension, where the entrance to the record store used to be. Where the upstairs bedroom was, where Mr. Mac had his heart attack … nothing.
One of the firemen turns to me. “Hey, kid, you don’t want to be out here. This smoke is toxic.”
I’m immune. Contaminated by toxic chemicals before I was born. I keep walking up Washington Avenue.
I wipe my stinging eyes on my shirttail. As I gaze into the stand of trees and brush at the far side of the house, I imagine Brandon running there after the explosion, the back of his T-shirt aflame. That’s what Dad told me—his shirt had melted into his back. It must have really hurt, even though Mr. Internet once told me the worst burns don’t hurt because even the nerves are dead.
The biohazard tape keeps me from going into the brush, as if I could find my answers if I walked the path along which Brandon fled. I double back toward the park. Lying in the grass next to the burned house are bits and pieces of a family’s life. A pot with a melted handle. A pair of metal scissors. What look like tuna fish cans, but blackened and without labels. And next to the curb, a half-dozen scattered wrestlers.
Brandon’s wrestlers. “Brandon’s hurt,” I whisper to them, pushing the words past the clog in my throat. “Maybe you can help him feel better.”
I collect the wrestlers, one by one, and cross the street. When I find out which hospital Brandon is in, I can bring them to him. And the new ones I buy for him too.
Then I see it, lying across two branches of the large oak tree, right above the top of the fence. Mr. Elliott’s banjo. It must have gotten blown out of the house in the explosion and landed in the tree branches above my backyard. A sign like Brandon’s wrestlers? But only if the banjo isn’t ruined.
I dash inside for the video camera. No one’s in the kitchen. I hear voices, Dad’s and the woman’s, in the living room. The word relatives comes through, and then Dad.
“Chad Senior said they came from Iowa. He didn’t say where.
It’s a big state.”
Chad will go away too. I am sure about that. They’ll send my Gambit to Iowa. Not New Orleans with the bayous and cypress trees, but a flat, dry place of cornfields and tornadoes.
I shut the back door quietly so they won’t notice me. I locate the banjo in the camera screen and zoom in. The long neck is dull gray under the overcast sky. No dents or dings in it or the wooden resonator, and no cracks in the frosted white head. I take a few shots from different angles. Then I drag a ladder from the lean-to, prop it against the fence, and climb up. I sit atop the fence with my heels on the horizontal rail. Pulling the banjo out of the tree is like lifting a baby from a grown-up’s arms. I hold it like a guitar and strum it a few times, but I can’t play anything because my right hand and left hand don’t work together. It’s one of the ways I’m a mutant in a family of musicians.
• • •
I hide the banjo behind a pair of speakers and a microphone stand in the pantry. Dad will think the skinny neck is just another mike stand.
I will give Chad the banjo before he leaves so he’ll remember me. He’s the New Kid who stayed my friend the longest.
Chad refuses to eat dinner that night. He says his head and stomach hurt. Dad gives him some Tylenol and tells him to sip from the glass of water so pills and water stay down. And Chad will sleep instead of crying all night or whatever a kid does when his whole family gets blown up while he’s passed out drunk at someone else’s house.
Chad’s asleep in Max’s bottom bunk when Mami calls. Dad sends me to my room so he can talk to her downstairs.
“No!” I stomp my foot. “I want to hear what you say about me.”
“Kiara, you’re making things worse for yourself.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Then give me my cord back so I can use the computer.”
Dad gives in. He retrieves the cord from his bedroom and hands it to me. But the computer’s still downstairs where he won’t let me go. Stupid me, I think as I bang my head softly on the wall next to my bed.
After giving myself a headache, I try to listen. A few words floating up from time to time tell me that they will send Chad to Iowa or to some place called a foster home, and I’ll never see him again.
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