by Carrie Mac
“Yeah. She’s at home, but she’s sick.”
She nods. “My name’s Holly,” she says as she waves over one of the cops. “Can you tell us your address, Ethan Mingus Kirby the Brave?”
I do know our address. My mom had me practice it. She says if I ever go to school, I’ll have to know things like that. For now, she teaches me at home so they don’t come snooping. I’m not sure if it’s okay to tell them my address, but my mom is sick and bloody and she hasn’t moved in a lot of sleeps, and there are flies buzzing around her and she smells bad and we have nothing left to eat. I tell them about the flies and the smell and the man who hurt her.
“Tell us your address, kid.” The cop says something into the radio. Another cop joins him and they’re both leaning into the back of the ambulance, scaring me. I shake my head.
Holly cups her hand to my ear. “It’s okay, you can tell me. Me and your mom are friends.”
So I tell her, and the cops write it down, and they rush off and jump in their cruiser and take off with the sirens screaming.
Holly drives me home. When we get there, she says she’ll look into ordering the clutch for me to put in. I say thanks, and I mean it in an indescribably huge way, even though it’s the same small word we use all the time. She gives me her cell number and tells me to call any time, and it’s not like when people say that and you know they don’t mean it and you know you’ll never call. I know I’ll call. Maybe not right away. But I will. I want her to tell me more. About the nights she’d watch my mom sing. About the times when she was doing so good. About what changed, and how she slid back down again.
When Kelly comes home in a few weeks, I’ll take her to the station so she can meet Holly and John. If she can leave her potty mouth and attitude at home, she might be able to ride along with them. I sleep for a few hours. When I wake up, I don’t even leave my room to take a leak. I head straight for the little desk each of us has to encourage us to do our homework, and I start writing the five hundred words Captain wants from me. It turns into this, which is way bigger than five hundred words, in more ways than one.
Carrie Mac is a best-selling author in a number of genres. Her first novel, The Beckoners, won the Stellar Teen Award and the Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada. Crush and Charmed, both Orca Soundings novels, have been nominated for the American Library Association’s Quick Picks list.
A paramedic, Carrie Mac lives near Whistler, British Columbia.