A List of Cages(50)

“No,” she agrees, “it doesn’t.”




I awake to throbbing pain. My elbows and shoulders and knees ache, worse even than the stinging cuts on my skin. I’m thirsty. I’m hot. I don’t know how much time has passed. My breathing is still ragged and heavy, the way it is when I have a cold. The stars look dimmer, or maybe my eyes are just blurring.

No, definitely dimmer.

And then I remember. They have to absorb light to glow. I stare up, neck bent at a painful angle, as they fade, slowly, terrifyingly, into nothing.

It’s too dark. I can’t breathe.

I want to scream, but Russell might hear. I claw at the metal. I need out!

Then my fingers find it. A small round hole.

Instead of feeling relieved that I’ll be able to breathe, I imagine Russell drilling holes into the trunk my parents gave me, and I feel sick.

I pull my knees to my chest a little tighter. I need to pee. Soon that’s worse even than all the cuts and sore joints.

Just when I think I won’t be able to hold it anymore, there’s the unmistakable sound of the lock being opened. The lid lifts and I launch upright, taking gulping breaths. A cold glass of water is pushed toward me. I grip it with two shaking hands and drink, then I say, “Bathroom.”

Russell is watching me with a sort of detached curiosity. When he nods, I move in a stumbling jog that reminds me of Adam.

After I use the toilet, I sink to the floor to rest my face against the cold tile. The walls and floors and lights are brilliant white. I can stretch my arms and legs, and it’s cool, so cool.

Russell’s tall shadow falls over me. “Get up.”

I don’t ever want to leave this room, but I lever up with my palms and stumble toward my bed.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

I cough. My throat is dry. I wish I drank more water. “To sleep?”

He shakes his head, and points to the trunk.

“I’m sorry.” I start to cry.

“You’re fighting me.” He turns and leaves the room. I fall onto my bed, but moments later there’s stinging pain across my shoulders and back.

“Stop! Please!” I try to lift my arms, but the muscles won’t work, so it hits my face. It keeps falling. “I’ll go to Nora’s!”

The switch stops abruptly, and the expression on Russell’s face is the scariest I’ve ever seen. “You want to leave?”

“No.” I shake my head. “No.”

He’s still holding the switch with a frozen shattered expression. “After everything? You want to leave?”

“No.” I shake my head again, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. Suddenly the switch descends with dizzying speed. “I’m sorry.” I rise and stagger to the trunk.

He’s still hitting me as I lower myself inside.





THERE WAS LIGHT before, two pencil-thin rays through two air holes, but now it’s completely dark. I’m hot. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I feel a sudden jolt of panic and the urge to scream.

Think good thoughts.

If I think good thoughts, I can breathe. I imagine Elian Mariner. I’m standing on his ship, and his ship can go anywhere.

My breathing gets easier and soon I’m so calm I’m half-asleep. More thoughts drift in and out of my head. My mother…my father…Emerald…Adam.

How much time has passed?

I don’t know.

After a while, I can only think of one thing: I need to pee. I count to sixty, and then I do it ten more times. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. It’s not a decision. There’s no choice. I can’t hold it anymore.


You can’t always control what you remember. Like the look on Mom’s face when I got angry and said I loved Dad more. Or the look on his face when I got angry and said I loved her more. It’s as if those kinds of memories are all tied together on a single string. You look at one and you can’t stop seeing them all. Every bad thing you ever did.

Like the time we went for a walk and I found the baby frogs. Mom wouldn’t let me bring them into the house, so I hid them in my pocket. And the time I found the robin’s nest with three eggs still in it. Dad told me not to touch it, but I snuck it to school for show-and-tell.

When I took the frogs out of my pocket, they were dead.

When I got to school, my teacher said the mother bird wouldn’t come back to the nest, even if I returned it to the tree. The birds would never be born.

I didn’t mean to kill the frogs. I didn’t mean to kill the birds.

Mom and Dad told me not to cry. He picked me up, saying, “You’ll give yourself a headache.” But I already had a headache. He rubbed my head with his rainbow-colored fingers while my mom said, “It was an accident, just an accident.” But accident wasn’t a word for when something died—for when you made something die.

The memories for accident are on the same string too. The accident I had at school in second grade when Mom had to bring me clean pants. Accidentally spilling red paint on the couch. And the social worker who told me about my parents. An accident, just an accident.


I think I hear the lock. Sometimes I think I hear it and it turns out to be nothing, but this time it’s real. The lid opens. Russell must be standing right above me, but all I can see is light so bright my eyes start to tear. But bright light is good. It will activate the stars. The longer the trunk stays open, the better.