A List of Cages(72)

I laugh, a crazy, hysterical noise. “No. I think it’s his.” I nod to Russell, who’s watching me with malevolent and not-quite-dead eyes.

I half-hear my mom organizing, sounding counselor-composed while she gathers crying kids and tells them to come inside. Emerald takes Julian by the hand and leads him away like a child.

“I didn’t—it was an accident,” Charlie stammers. “I was just trying to—” He scrambles away, rubs his shaking, bloody hands in the grass, and falls back against the fence. “He was gonna take Julian. He was gonna kill you.”

“I know.”

“I stopped him.”

“I know.”





I’M NOT SURE how Emerald found me way the hell out here. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. Just took off and didn’t stop till I reached the lake and couldn’t walk any farther. She takes a seat on the wet grass beside me, and for a few minutes we watch the blue-green water without talking.

She breaks the silence. “I remember coming here when we were kids. Wasn’t there a rope tied around that branch?” She points over my head to a tree with limbs that extend over the lake.

“A hose,” I answer. “They took it down after someone drowned.” I made that up—I actually have no idea why the Tarzan-swing garden hose is gone. Now she’s looking bleakly out at the water like she can see someone’s ghost. That feels appropriate.

“Are you okay?” It’s only been a week since I sat in the backyard with Charlie and watched Russell die. I looked him in the eye, while Charlie looked at the sky, then something happened that I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain later if I tried. Russell’s eyes were so full of hate. So full, then just empty, just glass, just nothing.

After everything that’d happened, I expected Julian to get even worse. Instead, he seems stronger, actually speaking at a normal volume now. It’s almost like he was afraid to talk before, afraid Russell could hear him no matter where he was.

I remember when Julian was a little kid, he was so stubborn, but maybe that’s a good thing to be—a force of will that doesn’t die no matter how many horrible things happen to you. But me, I just have this one thing, this one bad night, and I’m—“I’m fine.”

“What did I do?” Emerald shouts, startling me and the ducks swimming just a few feet away.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Then why won’t you talk to me?”

Because I’m an idiot—like as stupid as Brett was, if he’d actually existed. Because I blamed her for what happened to Julian even though it’s really on me.

“Do you know how scared I was?” She’s crying, her face all blotched like she rolled around in poison ivy. “I thought he was going to kill you. And when you were okay, I never felt so grateful in my life. I didn’t want to take anything for granted anymore. I thought you’d feel the same way, but you didn’t. I love you, and you won’t even talk to me. I told you.” She sobs. “I told you I would break.”

It’s like we’re back inside the center of the labyrinth and I’m struck with so much regret and so much love, it’s worse than a heart attack. “I’m sorry, Emerald. I can’t. I’m not helping anyone right now.”

“You do help.” She wipes the tears off her red cheeks. “You helped him. You were so brave—”

“Brave? I’m not brave. As soon as I saw that man I should have been, I don’t know, so fueled with homicidal rage that I did something. But I just stood there, crying. It was Charlie who actually did something, and I’m not even sure he likes Julian.”

We go back to silence, until again, Emerald breaks it. “Everyone watches you, and you don’t even know it. You just…It’s like you come into a room and you’re glowing or something.”

I laugh, but it’s not a happy sound. “Yeah, glowing is my superpower.”

“And when you smile…my grandmother calls them big-soul smiles. She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.” Emerald wipes her wet face again. “There are different ways to help people, Adam. There are different ways to do good.”

I don’t know if it’s the fear or the sadness or all the pure emotion from the last month, but I’m embarrassingly close to crying, so I respond the way I normally would. “Are you going to start singing that what makes me beautiful is that I don’t know I’m beautiful? Because I don’t think I can take that.”

“You are.” Her voice is more tender than I’ve ever heard it, and I can only stare at her, no longer in the mood to joke. “Beautiful.” And her fingers touch my face, carefully, like I’m something that might break.





JULIAN’S TYPING AWAY on the desktop computer in the living room while I’m watching TV and texting Emerald. All of a sudden he leaps up and stares at the television—some show on the Travel Channel.

“Can I borrow your laptop?” he asks, which is weird, since he’s already using a computer.

“Uh, yeah, I guess.” He grabs it off the coffee table and bolts from the room. A few minutes later I hear the sound of breaking glass.

I head into Julian’s room to find one of the framed photos of Mittens smashed against the wall. I step over the pieces and try for a joke. “I told you we could redecorate.”