A List of Cages(49)

Russell knocks on the passenger window and aims his long, skinny thumb backward, indicating that I should get out of the car.

Does this mean he’s letting me stay?

I follow him into the house, into my bedroom. My trunk is open and empty, all its contents stuffed into two cardboard boxes. He points to a suitcase and says, “Pack.”

Numb, I take the clothes from the closet.

I’m zipping the suitcase closed when he returns and leans against my doorway. “You’ve lived here for a long time. You had no one, and I took you in.”

I nod.

“I wanted to do the right thing for you after your parents died. I was only a little older than you when my father died.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“When you were younger, sometimes your parents brought you into this house.”

“I…I remember.”

“They didn’t care how you behaved, how many messes you made, how loud you were. They’d smile when you interrupted them.” Russell’s eyes glow with fury. “And they expected me to be subject to the whims of a child. To stop everything because you wanted to sing.” He’s getting angrier and his body is getting bigger. “None of you was satisfied unless everyone’s eyes were on you.” The vein in his throat starts to pulse. “You were spoiled.”

He takes a breath.

“But with me…” His voice is softer now. “…you began growing into something better. I’m not sure what happened this year.” He pulls something from his pocket. “But I don’t think it’s too late.” A lock, heavy, shining silver. “I think I can still teach you.”

“Teach me what?”

He looks at me the way you’d look at a painting or a statue or anything that can’t look back. “Get in the trunk.”

“What?”

“Get in the trunk.”

“But…I…I’m going to Nora’s.”

“No, Julian. You’re not.”





I LOOK FROM Russell, to the trunk, to the door. He seems to know what I’m thinking, because his face twists into something terrible. “Stop. Fighting. Me.”

I try to think of anything to say that will make that expression disappear, but instead a memory from Miss West’s science class flashes in my mind. A diseased brain. Something blocking the space between neurons so no messages could pass.

“I’m trying to give you a chance here.” Russell’s voice is so close to gentle that it shocks me into really looking at him. “Would you rather I sent you away?”

“You…you don’t want me to leave?”

“No,” he answers. “I don’t want you to leave.” My eyes flood with tears, a collision of relief and reliving rejections. “Do you want another chance?”

I nod quickly.

“One more chance. That’s all I’m willing to give.”

“Thank you.”


I kneel until my face is pressed into the cold metal floor of the trunk, then I angle my knees to the side in an awkward contortion. I think wildly for a second that I need to turn over, find a better position, but too quickly the lid has closed over me. I hear metal scraping against metal as the lock slides into place. It sounds very far away.

I shift, try to pull my hands from where they’re pinned beneath my chest, but there’s not enough room. It’s too dark. I can’t move. Already I’m sweating, from the heat, from the fear. The sound of my breath is louder in the trunk and coming too fast. There won’t be enough air.

I try to free my arms again, but I smack my elbows against the walls. The awkward angle of my hips is already hurting, but there’s no way to straighten.

It’s too dark.

I can hear my heart pounding in my ears, so fast and loud that I wonder if I’m dying. Then a muscle in my shoulder rips and somehow I’m moving, turning over just enough to see it. Light.

When I was nine years old, only a few hours before I left for camp, I found my package of glow-in-the-dark stars, and I stuck them all to the roof of this trunk. Why did I do that? It wasn’t as if I’d ever see them.

My stuttering laughter echoes inside the trunk. My breath comes easier now. I look up, watching the lid expand higher and higher until it isn’t there at all. I’m lying beneath an infinite star-filled sky.




I get tired of pacing outside Julian’s classroom after about two minutes and just knock. His teacher peeks her head out. “He’s absent,” she says, then shuts the door. Awesome. That means a boring hour of sitting in Dr. Whitlock’s office.

My phone buzzes—a pissed-off text from Charlie. His Chemistry teacher’s out to get him again. While I’m messaging him back, I stumble into a trash can and fall on my ass. As I’m getting back onto my feet, I notice I have a voice mail.


“It doesn’t make sense,” I say to Dr. Whitlock for the third time. “Julian would’ve told me if he was moving.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Adam.” She’s sitting at her yellow desk, flipping through a thick file folder. “His uncle signed the paperwork this morning.”

“So he decides to have Julian move when we’ve got, what, a month left of school? Does that make sense to you?”