“The police officer will be back,” she shouts, her voice muffled by the glass of the car window.
“I know!” I’m trying not to shout because I don’t want to draw attention. I glance down the street to see if anyone’s coming our way. The coast is still clear. “I’ll break the glass, Madar. I can hide us. I just need to get you out of the car!”
I pound on the glass with my fists, hating that I’m not strong enough to crack it.
“No! Shah-jan, no!” she cries frantically.
She still doesn’t think I can handle this. I know she’s scared but I’ve been scared too. That’s the only thing that’s kept me going from the gas station in Elkton to the train station to the hospital and into the tall city of Manhattan. I’ve been scared every step of the way, but I’ve been more scared of losing my mom forever, so I kept going.
“Shah! The police are—”
I look for something to use to break the car window. I see that the movers have left a dolly on the sidewalk, so I leap across the street and grab it. It’s two pieces of wood on metal wheels, something used to move heavy boxes. It’s the heaviest thing I see so it’ll have to do. I pick it up and start to run toward the police car, the dolly raised high over my determined head.
“Shah! No! Don’t do this!”
How else can we be together? I want to ask my mother. I’m lost without her. I’m sobbing and so is she.
“Move away from the window, Madar!” But she doesn’t. She’s shouting something that I can’t hear over my sobs. That’s why I’m hesitating. That’s why I still have the dolly raised over my head, ready to crash it through the police car window, when I hear a voice boom down the street.
“Don’t you dare, kid!”
It’s the police officer who trapped my mom in the car. He’s running toward me. I look at my mother and she’s got her palms flat against the window, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her eyes look red and tired.
Officer Khan comes charging around the corner. His elbows pumping, he is running faster than any of the marathon runners I saw today.
“Jason D!” he yells.
I look at my mother and let the dolly fall to the ground. I let them come to me, never taking my eyes off my mother. Maybe we won’t be able to run. That’s okay. The important thing is that I’m not leaving her. I’ll fight with everything I have to stay with my mother.
And now I know how hard I can fight.
Thirty-Two
Officer Khan grabs me by the shoulders. He doesn’t need to, though. I’m done running. I stand there, his hands holding me up, as the other officer unlocks the police car.
“I’m so sorry. We always keep the doors locked from the inside and I . . .”
My mom bolts out of the car before he can finish explaining. I’m in her arms, feeling like a million pounds have been lifted off my shoulders.
“Madar!” I want to say so much more, but it’s just not coming out right now.
Officer Khan is on his phone.
“We’re here with him,” he says. He’s got one hand on his hip and his eyes glued to me as if I might take off again. “No obvious injuries. Seems to be all right. Yeah, call off the Amber Alert.”
My mother’s fingers are pressing into my arms, but I’m glad for it. I can feel her heartbeat, and have my arms wrapped around her waist. We’re leaning against the police car. The movers have come back out of the building and are looking at us with curiosity.
“You’re not in Afghanistan,” I say to my mother.
“No, jan-em. I’m right here.”
“But I saw them take you.”
“Is that why you ran?” my mother asks me, her voice trembling. I nod. I’ve replayed that morning in my head over and over again. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
“I was at the gas station and I saw them. I saw you in that car, leaving.”
“My sweet boy, I’m so sorry. I never wanted you to be so scared!”
“I’ll go with you, Madar. I’ll go with you to Afghanistan. I don’t care if it’s dangerous. I don’t want to be here alone.”
“We’re not going anywhere, jan-em. We have a lot to figure out, but I think we’ll be okay.”
“What do you mean?”
My mother looks at the police officers. She takes a deep breath and starts to explain.
“I am asking for permission to stay. When I told them how I came here and all about your father and why I was too afraid to go back, they told me I should apply for asylum. There are many papers to fill out and I will have to tell my story, but I have faith and hope. I think we will be okay, Shah-jan-em.”
When she calls me her king, I think maybe it’s possible that we will be okay. I’m so relieved.
“I want to be home with you, Madar-jan.”
My mother kisses my forehead and runs her fingers through my hair.
“You are my home,” my mother says. Her voice is as sweet as honey to me.
Officer Khan puts a hand on my shoulder again.
“I think we should get you back to the hospital for a checkup. You look okay, but we want to be on the safe side.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“Jason D, you had a pretty bad head trauma. You were supposed to be recovering, taking it easy. I don’t think that’s what you’ve been doing today. I’m still pretty baffled. I mean, one minute you were at the hospital. Next thing I know you and your friend have vanished, then you take off on a police horse, and then you’re wandering around West Seventy-Fourth Street. Did I miss anything?”
No, I haven’t exactly taken it easy today. And I’m proud of that.
“The Central Park Zoo,” I say matter-of-factly.
“You went to the zoo? Whoa. Max didn’t mention that.”
I stand straight up.
“You talked to Max?”
Officer Khan nods, a small smile on his face.
“She’s fine. She’s a tough cookie, just like you.”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of the steely look Max gets in her eyes when she’s made up her mind about something. “She’s more than a cookie.”
Officer Khan nods again slowly and puts his hands up in some form of apology. “I stand corrected,” he says cheerfully. His phone rings and he turns away from us to answer it. The other police officer steps in.
“The hospital is a good idea. Better to be on the safe side, as my friend here said.”
My arms wrap around my mother again. My lips press tight. “I’m not going anywhere without her.”
“We wouldn’t expect you to,” the officer says. I finally feel like I can breathe.
We hear the rattling of a truck door, and I see the movers are back out by the curb, their yellow shirts dark with sweat stains around the armpits and down the middle of their backs.
“Where’d you put the dolly, Charlie?” the taller one asks, saying Charlie in a way that makes it almost rhyme with dolly.
“My name isn’t Charlie,” mutters his partner.
“Could have been worse. I could’ve called you Polly.”
“You know what? Sometimes you’re a real . . .”
“Hey, there it is! What are you guys doing with our dolly?”
The dolly, of course, is at my feet. It is upside down, wheels sticking up into the air and still spinning, like a beetle stuck on its back.
“That’s the kid you were looking for?” the taller mover calls out cheerfully. “You found him!”
“Where was he?” shouts the one not named Charlie.
“We’re all set here, thanks, fellas.” Officer Khan shuts down their questions. He puts the dolly back on its wheels and kicks it across the street. Not-Charlie picks it up just as his friend looks at the mattress and the clear plastic cover marked with my footprints.
“Hey, Polly,” he says, scratching his head. “Didn’t your mother ever warn you about monkeys jumping on the bed?”
Thirty-Three
I am in the back of the police car, sq
ueezed in between my mom and Auntie Seema. They’re staring at me with weird looks on their faces. I almost wonder if I’ve sprouted a second head or some other curiosity.
“Shah. Really,” Auntie Seema says, her voice chiding me gently. “You really think I want to put you in jail? Ah. This many years and this is what your son thinks, Rona?”
“I’m sorry, Auntie Seema. It’s just that I heard you talking to . . .” I let my voice drop off because Officer Khan is driving the police car we’re in, and I still feel bad about lying to him and running off when he was only trying to help.
“Oh, I’m just glad you’re all right. And I’m glad you were coming to me. That makes me very happy. You know I would do anything for you.” She squeezes me against her. She smells like she always does, a mix of incense and the special kind of dark tea she drinks. I can see flecks of different colors underneath her nailbeds and on her cuticles. Her patterned scarf hangs loosely around her neck, and her eyes are soft and brown. I do feel a lot better with her here.
“I’ve been telling your mother for years to apply for asylum. Who could turn her away after all your father did and what happened to him? And after all he did for those soldiers?”
“I was afraid, Seema.”
My mother looks like she needs to hear something. I want to take away that feeling she has right now. “I know what it’s like to be afraid, Mom. But I think we’re going to be okay.”
I haven’t said much, but something in my mother seems to relax. Auntie Seema reaches over and puts a hand over my mother’s.
I’m brought back to the hospital I left. It’s not the closest hospital, but it’s the one where they did all those tests on me, and they don’t want me to have to do it all over again somewhere new. They check me in to the same emergency room. A nurse and a doctor look me over from head to toe. The doctor, a man old enough to be someone’s grandfather, reads my information in the computer system and pokes at the bump on my head. He shines a light in my eyes and makes me balance on one foot. He asks me a lot of questions about what I did once I left the hospital.
He shakes his head, not in disappointment but in a sort of admiration.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, kid. A really long time. And I’ve never seen anyone manage a grand escape.”
I sit up a little straighter, as if he’s patted me on the back. I wasn’t expecting him to say that, especially since this is the hospital I ran away from.
“But let me ask you something. Just out of curiosity,” he says, his hands in the pockets of his white coat.
My mother and Auntie Seema are sitting in visitor chairs inside the room. They lean in, anxious to hear every bit of this conversation. They’ve been suspicious, too, that I’ve left out some really dangerous part of the story. I think if I told them I wrestled a tiger in the middle of Times Square they would believe me right now.
“Sure,” I say. “What is it?”
“How’d you get off the unit upstairs? We keep some pretty tight security up there for the kids.”
“Oh, that.” I smile to myself, thinking of how Max swiped Nurse Eric’s badge and the way we soaped the alarm bracelets off our wrists. I could tell him about it, but that would give away too much. I’m no longer Manhattan Doe here, but I can still be a bit of a mystery. “I can’t tell you that part, but if you’re ever trapped somewhere, feel free to give me a call.”
The doctor’s eyebrows spring upward and he lets out a good belly laugh. My mother puts a hand to the side of her face, half-embarrassed and half-amused by my response. Auntie Seema claps her hands together happily because she’s okay with breaking rules sometimes.
I watch him walk out of the room and see Officer Khan standing in the hallway beside a tall counter. He’s filling out some forms. I get off the exam table, putting a second hospital gown over the one I’m wearing to cover my backside. I need to look proper for what I’m about to do.
Auntie Seema and my mom are on their feet right away.
“I want to talk to Officer Khan for a second,” I explain, seeing the concern on their faces. Auntie Seema puts a hand on my mom’s elbow. They both sit back down, and I walk over to the door. I poke my head out and clear my throat to catch Officer Khan’s attention. When he looks my way, I step out of the room and into the hallway, closing the door behind me.
“I just want to say that I’m really sorry for not telling you the truth,” I say slowly. “I know you were trying to help me.”
Officer Khan puts the papers down on the counter.
“I don’t like what you did, Jason D, but I get why you did it. And I wish you’d never felt like people in uniforms were the bad guys. That’s not what we are. I hope you’ll see that now.”
“I do,” I say. I feel my face flush suddenly with embarrassment. “And I didn’t think you were the bad guy. I thought I was. I mean, it’s my mom who broke the rules.”
Officer Khan presses his lips together and looks at me for a long moment. Then he walks over to me and looks me straight in the eye in a way most grown-ups don’t.
“You are not a bad guy. Your mom is not a bad guy. Sometimes people break rules because they think it’s the best thing they can do. Sometimes it is the right thing to do. Sometimes it’s not. These are tough questions, and tough questions never have easy answers. But don’t blame your mom. She did what she did because she was scared. You know her better than anyone else. Listen to what your heart thinks about her, not any piece of paper.”
I stare at the cold tiles of the hospital floor. It’s true. I’ve been ashamed that my mother hid so much from me and broke the rules. When people on television talk about walls and documents, I never thought they were talking about my mom. But I know Officer Khan is right. My mother has never wanted to be on the wrong side of any rule. She’s a good person with bad options.
“Thanks,” I say. He seems to get what I mean by that one small word. And the look on his face makes me feel bold enough to make a big ask.
“I wanted to ask for your help with something.” This is one of the reasons I didn’t put up much of a fight when Officer Khan told me I’d have to go back to the hospital for a checkup.
“What is it, buddy?” Officer Khan asks me.
“I want to see Max.”
“Ah,” he says. “I bet you do.”
I’ve been thinking about Max since I left her on the sidewalk. I’ve been hoping she hasn’t gotten into too much trouble and that she’s not too sick. Running away from the hospital was harder on her than it was on me. But I get why she did it. She’s a good person who wanted a chance to make a choice for herself.
“Let me give her parents a call and see what they say. Maybe you can return her backpack to her.”
“The backpack I left on the sidewalk?”
Officer Khan gives me a playful nudge.
“It’s my job to collect evidence from the scene of the crime, and I store that evidence in the safety of my trunk.”
I think of the phone and the notebook, the message I wrote for my new friend, the messages she wrote for herself. I think of the brochure about Vincent van Gogh and the incredible art that came from his brain. I want her to have that bag back.
Things start moving. Officer Khan talks to my doctor. The doctor calls a nurse upstairs. Next thing I know, I have the backpack on my shoulders like I did for so much of today, and I’m in the elevator again, headed to the pediatric floor for the second time in three days.
Max is in the same room. She’s sitting on her bed, watching her feet dangle off the side. She looks a little tired but otherwise okay. She turns to the door when she hears the knock. I’m happy to see her face brighten when she spots me.
“Jason D!” she exclaims. She jumps off the bed and squeezes me tight. Her parents are standing by the wall, holding hands and looking like they might cry. Max and I sure have turned all the adults into emotional wrecks. “You did it!”
My face breaks into a wide grin.
“I heard you found your aunt!
I knew you would make it.”
“I guess I did.”
I open my mouth to say more—to tell her that I couldn’t have done it without her help and that I wished she could have been there with me for the whole day and about how I managed to sneak onto a food truck and away from Officer Khan when he was just a block away. But then I shut my mouth, because I don’t think it would be a good idea to boast about the things we’ve done just yet in front of my mom, Auntie Seema, and Max’s parents.
Instead, I hand her the teal backpack that kept me company when she was gone.
Our families are busy shaking hands and apologizing to one another for our behavior. That seems a little silly to me, but sometimes adults just can’t stand saying nothing.
“I dropped your bag, but the police officer picked it up. I wanted to give it back to you. Your phone’s in there.”
“I tried calling you on that phone but you never answered.”
“That was you?” I remember staring at the incoming calls, wondering if I should answer.
“When I got to the hospital, they told me your mom was looking for you. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t pick up.”
I want to kick myself.
“Yup,” she says, taking the bag from me. She looks over at the cluster of adults in the corner. They’re talking to one another while stealing glances at us from the corners of their eyes.
“My surgery is tomorrow,” Max says quietly. She’s toying with the zipper of her bag as she says this, her eyelashes fluttering nervously.
I search for the right words. Why is it so hard to figure out what to say?
“You’re going to be fine, Max. I bet you don’t have anything to worry about, and I’m going to come visit you when it’s over and you’re back to your regular self so I can tell you I told you so.”
Max looks up sharply. She didn’t miss what I said. And I do believe it. I don’t think anything could change Max, not even surgery on her brain. I think she’ll always be Max, and I’ll always want to be her friend.
“And I bet you’re going to be famous now,” she tells me with her head tilted and her mouth in a smart twist. “You’re the kid who ran up and down Manhattan and escaped the cops. Don’t let all this celebrity stuff go to your head, all right? You’re a long way from Hollywood.”
The Sky at Our Feet Page 18