A List of Cages(57)

“I don’t like that one guy with all those metal arms.”

“Doc Ock? Yeah, I guess he is pretty scary. Okay, so don’t think about that. Think about something you like.”

“I don’t know what I like.”

“Yes, you do. Think.”

“Elian Mariner?”

“Okay, so think of your favorite Elian Mariner book, and go through the whole thing in your head and don’t let yourself think about anything else.”

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Are you doing it?”

He nodded.

“Where are you?”

“In Elian’s ship. I’m flying.”

Now the machine version of Julian’s breath echoes in the room. The burn in my throat intensifies. Something hot and wet streaks down my cheeks. I’m crying, hard but without sound, into the stiff hospital blanket. I want to stop, but all I can picture is nine-year-old Julian’s face when I gave him my brilliant piece of advice—fearful and doubtful, because he must’ve already known the truth. Superheroes aren’t real, and even if they are, they come too late.





I WAKE TO the sound of whimpering. A nurse built like a wrestler is jamming a needle into Julian’s skinny arm. How could they possibly need more blood?

A quick glance at the digital clock on his bedside table reveals it’s only seven thirty. I must’ve fallen asleep, though I’m not sure how. I’d always figured hospitals were quiet, restful places. Instead they’re full of medical machinery going off like car alarms, nurses coming in and out every few minutes, and the pitiful screams of sick people in pain.

I stand, my back aching. “Hey, Julian, are you okay?” He doesn’t open his eyes, but he whimpers again when the nurse retracts her needle and jabs it back in.

“Do you have to be so rough?” I ask her.

The lady gives me a dirty look. “He has small veins.” She grabs his other arm, ties a rubbery rope around it, then slaps it with the back of her gloved hand. Again, she digs in the needle. A couple of tears escape his eyes, rolling toward his ears.

“Julian?”

He’s still out of it—groggy with meds, I guess—but obviously he can feel what she’s doing. It must be so scary to be in pain but too incapacitated to do anything about it.

I rest my palm on his forehead like I’m trying to take his temperature. “She’s getting it,” I tell him when I finally see his blood being sucked into the tube. After gathering five vials, she rolls her cart from the room. Julian’s cheeks are still wet, but his mechanical breath evens out. I drop back onto my fold-out bed, which is only slightly softer than the floor, and glance around the room.

I guess I couldn’t see it last night, but now that it’s daylight, I realize this is the pediatrics ward. The main wall’s covered in a mural of jungle and farm animals all living together in perfect harmony under an enormous rainbow. It’s a motif more appropriate for a four-year-old than a fourteen-year-old, and the cheeriness of it just makes me sadder.

“Adam?”

Mom’s standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer, just stares at Julian in shock and horror. I can see him through her eyes. The skeletal limbs. The cuts. The wires.

“I always check in on you before I go to work.” She’s talking to me, but looking at him. “It was hard for me when you started driving and I wasn’t taking you to school anymore. Hard not seeing you off in the mornings.” Her lips quirk up. “When you weren’t in your bed today, I got so worried. I know it’s silly, but my first thought was you’d been kidnapped. I used to worry about that all the time when you were a little boy. We’d go in the grocery store and you’d shout hello from the cart and try to talk to everyone we passed. You had no concept of stranger. I was worried, and since I couldn’t call you, I called Charlie.”

When tears start streaking down her face, I pull her into a hug. “He’s going to be okay,” I say.

She straightens, suddenly fierce. “Yes. He will.”


Julian drifts in and out all morning. A nurse gives him more painkillers through his IV whenever he cries, and I fidget in a metal chair near the bed.

I’m picking at the lunch tray sent from the cafeteria when a tall, broad lady with smooth dark skin breezes into the room. She’s wearing a purple blazer with shoulder pads, a matching purple skirt, and a floral scarf that flutters around her neck. She looks like she escaped the set of an ’80s sitcom about women in the workplace. Somehow she’s both regal and ridiculous.

“Adam Blake?” she asks, thrusting out a manicured hand.

“Yes?” I shake it cautiously.

“I’ve been appointed as Julian’s guardian.”





THE LADY HANDS me a business card as if this makes it more official, and there it is: DELORES CARTER, LICENSED CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER. “His guardian ad litem,” she adds. “I’ve been appointed by the court. In a situation like this, someone has to make decisions until a permanent guardian can be named.” She looks around the room, zooming in on the blanket on the fold-out bed. “Are you here by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your mother?”