A List of Cages(59)

He shakes his head, but it looks like he’s working in slow motion. “You…sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. When I found you, it was nineteen days after you checked out of school.”

His eyes close. His eyelids look pink and translucent. “Adam?” I lean in closer to show I’m still here, still listening. “It didn’t…feel like nineteen days. It was like a thousand years…longer than my whole life before it. Why?”

I have to hold my face rigid, because it’s happening again. The burning throat and the urge to cry. I went years without crying, but now it’s like I can’t stop. In spite of my decision to be calm and soothing, I have to blink and brush away tears, but then more stupid tears just refill my eyes like a faucet I can’t turn off. I drag in a breath and try to answer his question.

“It must’ve felt like forever.”

“But why?”

“Because it was so awful.”

“But why can’t good things feel like forever? It was all so fast…before they left. I want to spin it back…slow it down. Why is time like that? Why does it slow down in the places you don’t want it to, but it speeds away when you’re happy?”

I wipe my face again. “I don’t know.”

He gazes toward the window even though the curtains are drawn and there’s nothing to see. Then his head drops in the jerky movements of a robot powering down.





THE NEXT TIME Julian wakes up, my mom and Delores are both there. Delores is good with him, all things considered, trying to get him to eat something without being pushy about it. But he stays on edge till they stop talking to him altogether, then he aims his attention at the blank television screen.

“You want to watch something?” I ask, grabbing the remote control/nurse call attached to his bed. He doesn’t say no, so I click it on and flip through the channels. He nods when I land on the Disney Channel. Some sitcom I haven’t seen in years about a teenage girl with magic powers.

He’s watching with absorbed concentration when Officer Clark and his friends fill the doorway. “We’re here to speak with Julian Harlow.”

Delores stands, looking tall and formidable in her bright pink power suit. She presses a business card into Clark’s palm and tells him firmly that she won’t be going anywhere. He looks impressed.

“All right,” he says. “Everyone but the guardian, out.”

Julian shrinks into his bed with wild-wide eyes.

Delores grows six inches taller. “He’ll be more comfortable if they are allowed to stay,” she tells him.

She and Clark argue for a while, then he points a finger at me. “You can stay as long as you’re quiet and out of my way. Against that wall.” Clark loves making me stand against walls. Mom looks irritated on my behalf but doesn’t say anything.

“Son,” Clark says to Julian, “I need you to tell us exactly what happened.”

Julian looks small in his hospital gown, surrounded by cops who don’t even bother to sit. I can see the impatience on Clark’s face when, instead of answering, Julian starts to pick at the tape on one of his broken fingers.

“We have to know, so I’d appreciate it if you’d cooperate.”

Julian gives a shaky nod, and for the first time he explains in quiet stutters about being locked inside the trunk. After a while I can’t look at him, so I stare at the wall and focus on a smiling sheep.

When he stops talking, I feel sick.

“Do you know where your uncle is now?” Clark’s tone is so unaffected, so compassionless, it pisses me off.

“Maybe at work? He works a lot.”

“Your uncle hasn’t worked in over a year,” Clark snaps, as if he thinks Julian’s lying.

I look away from the happy sheep to see Julian’s eyes widen in confusion. “But he goes to work. He always—”

“If you know something,” Clark says, “you need to tell me.”

“But I don’t know.”

“Could you guys maybe give him a minute?” I say.

“Son…” Clark says son in the most condescending and grating way imaginable. “I’m gonna need you to wait outside.”

Julian looks even more panicked now.

“He doesn’t want me to go.” I gesture to the obviously terrified kid.

“Are you refusing to leave this room?” The officer’s deliberate tone sounds like a dare.

Delores stands as if she’s going to intervene, but before she can, my mom steps in front of me.

Clark drops a hand to his holster. “Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to take two steps back.” This has suddenly become a deadly serious game of Mother, May I.

“Yeah, because she’s such a threat,” I say. Furious, I cross my arms over my chest, and I almost want some sort of video to memorialize this moment when I’m completely not me anymore.

“If you don’t stop talking”—Clark steps right into my face—“I’ll arrest you.”

“You can’t do that,” I sputter. “You can’t arrest someone for talking.”

He pulls his cuffs out with one hand and shakes them in the air. “I’ll arrest you for interfering with a criminal investigation.”