Wayward creatures, p.4
Wayward Creatures, page 4
My eyes close and my body shivers.
The fire will come for me. And I must simply wait for it. Alone.
Eight
Gabe
I DON’T GO DOWNSTAIRS for dinner. Mom knocks and asks if I want a plate. I don’t answer.
I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see the pulse of blue lights, the red burn of the flames. But I must doze a little, because the next time I open my eyes, the sky is dull gray.
The house is quiet. I sneak downstairs and grab a granola bar. Then I take the whole box out of the pantry and creep back up to my room. I take a bite of the bar, and it tastes like cardboard. I wrap the rest of the bar in the foil packaging and put it back in the box.
I check my phone—no texts or emails. Nothing from Owen or Leo.
How could they leave me with a forest fire and not look back once? Who does that? Cowards. Not real friends.
But they haven’t been my real friends in months.
I climb back into bed and pull the covers over my head. My brain won’t drop the pulsing and the flames, so I try to trick it into thinking about something else—song lyrics. It takes me five different songs until I land on “Baby Shark” and just repeat the lyrics over and over until finally my brain shuts down.
“I cannot believe you!” Liz’s words shatter the quiet.
I stay under the covers, eyes closed.
“Of all the insane things you could have done to get attention, you decide getting arrested is the best way?!”
Like I need another person to pile on the hate.
“Mom and Dad are completely freaking out! I mean, they had to pick you up at the police station. What were you thinking?!”
Her words hammer into me. I did want attention—but Owen’s, Leo’s. Is that so bad?
She keeps going, “Ugh, of course you weren’t thinking. Some of your loser friends were there, I bet, right? You’re so desperate to get back in with them, you decide to set fire to a park like a lunatic?”
Bad, bad. The words pulse in blue light. Is that why the guys ran off? Did they sense it, with me shooting the fireworks at Taylor? It felt insane then. Is that what they saw—see? Desperate, lunatic, bad . . .
“You need to check your damage, Gabe, because this is just—”
“GET OUT!” I scream. The words bubble up from my gut, claw up my throat, explode out of my mouth.
“I’m not even in your room, idiot.”
In one motion, I leap out of my bed, cross the room, and slam the door. Right in her face.
She screams, “Mom! He broke my nose!” Her footsteps slap down the steps.
This smile creeps out across my lips, a gross smile; and I know it’s awful, but for sure I’m smiling because I hurt my sister. Because that’s what I wanted, for her to hurt. For her to feel this sickness inside, even just a little.
Who would want that? The kind of kid who thinks about burning another kid. With stolen fireworks. A bad kid.
That’s why Owen and Leo ran. They saw this bad kid and ran as far away as possible. The cop saw it. Mom and Dad see it. Liz sees it.
I’m the bad guy. I am the sickness.
That brittle part? It breaks. It’s kind of a relief. At least I’m not going to hurt anymore.
Everyone thinks I’m a bad guy? Then I’ll be the bad guy.
You hate me? I hate you.
I mean, honestly, who is Liz to get in my face about anything? If she hadn’t been so selfish, maybe there would have been a little air in the house for my problems. Maybe if Mom and Dad had taken a second to stop fighting, they would have seen how bad things have been for me. Owen and Leo could have stopped by once just to say hi before school, or texted to meet up for lunch, or just saved me a seat on the bus. If anyone had even bothered to notice anything beyond their own stupid lives, I would never have been in that forest with those fireworks. No way would I have been so . . . desperate. No way any of this would be happening.
When the morning light brightens the fabric of my comforter, I get up to use the bathroom.
I crack open my door, check the hall. It’s clear. I sneak across, pee, then decide to risk slipping down to the kitchen—I polished off the granola bars last night. I stop at the bottom of the stairs and peek around the corner.
Mom and Dad are sitting at the table with mugs. Not talking. Papers crowd the table’s surface.
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Mom says. “Where did we go wrong?”
I don’t wait to hear what Dad says.
I go back to my room. Close the door. Crawl under the covers.
I don’t cry. I won’t cry.
I.
Will.
Not.
Cry.
Knock at the door. “Gabe?”
It’s Mom.
“You need to eat something.”
I guess she hasn’t noticed the missing granola bar box.
“We should talk.”
Nope.
“I’m going to call the community justice center tomorrow,” she says. “We’re going to get through this.”
We, she says, like they are a part of this. Like now that the police are involved, they care. Like now that I’m going to juvie, I’m worth their time.
Monday, I get up with the sun, shower, grab food and a water bottle, and am out the door without having to speak to anyone. I am so not doing the bus, so I bike all the way across town to the school. It’s cold, and the air freezes my skin, my eyeballs, the snot in my nose. I don’t care. I like the hurt.
As I’m locking my bike up outside school, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“Dude, Gabe,” the person says.
I glance back. It’s Taylor.
“I need to know what you told the cops.”
He’s holding on to my shoulder and looking super intensely into my face. It’s kind of freaking me out.
“What?” I say. “Nothing.”
“Did you tell them I was there?”
His nails dig into my skin through my sweatshirt.
“No,” I say, my heart hammering. Sweat pricks out of every pore. “I didn’t say anything to them.”
He holds on to my shoulder for a second more, then lets go, giving me a little push. “Okay, good,” he says, running his fingers through his hair. “Okay,” he says again. “I mean, thanks.” He backs away from me. “My dad, he would, like, lose it if he knew.”
I don’t say anything. Like my dad didn’t lose it?
“Cool, well, bye,” he says, like this was just a regular conversation. Then he runs into the school like he can’t get away from me fast enough.
I just stand there, shivering with the amount of effort it’s taking for me to not scream or cry or both.
The bell rings.
I suck all that scream back in, all those tears. I shove them down, crush them deep, deep, deep, and then run for the doors.
Inside, I see Taylor huddled with Owen and Leo, whispering.
So they’re all in on it.
Walking down the hall, I keep my head in my hoodie, my hands balled into fists in the pockets. In class, the teacher tells me to take the hood off, so I do, but I keep my head down. Still, I hear the whispers, feel the eyes crawl over me like spiders.
Everyone knows.
I don’t go to the cafeteria at lunch. I grab a bagel from the salad bar and eat under the stairs at the bottom of the stairwell with my headphones in. I don’t listen to anything, just sit in the semi-darkness and pull bits off the bagel.
In English, I get a text from Mom: We have an intake appointment at 3. I’ll pick you up in front of the school.
In front of the school? What, so I can be stared at by every single person as they file out?
Absolutely not.
I google the East Burlington Community Justice Center. It’s not far.
I have my bike, I text back. I’ll meet you there.
The little bubble with the dots appears. Disappears. Reappears. Disappears. Then finally Mom chooses words: Fine. Be there at 3 sharp.
Like I need something poking me in the back now—something sharp—to keep me in line.
It’s not until I turn off the bike path onto the street that I discover that the East Burlington Community Justice Center is on the back side of the police station. The website should warn people about this: that to get there, you have to pass by the cops.
The justice center has its own little sign beside its door with a rainbow curling around the words like this place is the nicer, friendlier cousin of the police station on the other side of the wall. This only makes me more suspicious.
Inside, there’s a beige room with some beige couches and low wooden tables with pamphlets like Restoring Communities and Repairing Harm versus Punishing Wrong. Both Mom and Dad are sitting in stiff black plastic chairs with their backs to the window. Mom has her purse in her lap and her hands folded on top of it. Dad has his leg crossed on his knee. He switches legs as I walk in.
“You’re late,” Dad says.
This meeting is already awesome.
Allen.
I want to smack my brain.
The wall opposite them has a square cutout like they have in doctors’ offices. A lady with dirty-blond hair wearing jeans and a fleece pokes her head through.
“We’re all here? Fantastic. Come on in,” she says.
The door next to the cutout buzzes. I follow my parents through it.
The lady leads us to a small room that’s just a circle of chairs and a little table with a folder on it, which the lady sits next to. I take a seat on the opposite side of the room from my parents.
The lady flashes a smile like she’s selling knockoff goods and knows it. “My name is Darcy Andrews, and I’m the panel coordinator here in the CJC. What this means is that I’m going to help you through this process.
“Mrs. Meyer, you said on the phone that you’re hoping to move forward with this as quickly as possible, and I think, given the extremely public nature of this incident, that’s a good idea. We can show the community that something is being done to help repair the harm. At least the fire was contained to the park!”
She smiles around at us. None of us smile back, though Mom gives a halfhearted shrug of her lips.
Ms. Andrews turns to me. “Gabe, your mom told me that you’re ready to take responsibility for your part in Friday’s fire.”
Wait, what?
Mom grabs my hand. “He is.”
Ms. Andrews glances at the hand. “You know what? Mr. and Mrs. Meyer, would you mind waiting in the lobby? I’d love to chat a little with Gabe, and then we can bring you back in.”
“Should he have a lawyer?” Dad asks, sounding less like he cares about me and more like he doesn’t want to be cut out of the action.
Ms. Andrews shakes her head. “Everything we do here is confidential, Gabe,” she says to me. “Anything we talk about stays right in this room.”
My parents look at each other, then, sighing, step out.
As the door closes, Ms. Andrews seems to relax. “So, Gabe, how are you?”
The question catches me off guard. “I don’t know,” I say. “Not great.”
She smiles. “Listen, are we maybe moving too fast with this? Your mom told me that you wanted to move forward as quickly as possible, but it seems to me like it’s your parents who are ready to move through the process. However, this can’t come from them. This whole thing only works if you are committed to it.”
I dig my toes into the soles of my shoes. She’s the first person who’s actually asked me how I feel about any of this.
“It’s just crazy,” I say. “I was fooling around and then there were cops everywhere and my parents are freaking out.”
Ms. Andrews nods. “I get it. How about we start at the beginning?”
“Like when I was born?”
She laughs. “If that’s where you want to start.”
I shake my head, kind of laugh. This lady’s maybe all right. So I tell her. Why not? It’s all “confidential” she said, which means it’s our secret. She lets me talk, asks for more details a few times.
“And then there were fire trucks and flames everywhere,” I say. “The cop made out like I meant to burn the whole world.” Is it weird that my heart’s racing and I’m kind of sweaty?
“But you meant to set off the fireworks?” she asks.
Set them off in Taylor’s face. I snort a laugh because it sounds so ridiculous now, after everything. “Yeah, I guess.”
“And there was a consequence to that—not what you intended, but a consequence, nonetheless. And some people were harmed by that. This place—the community justice center—is only interested in repairing this kind of harm. We’re not a court; we’re not here to judge you or punish you.”
“So they’re not sending me to juvie?”
She shakes her head. “Participants are expected to take responsibility for their actions and acknowledge that justice requires that they do something to help fix the pain they’ve caused to both individuals and the East Burlington community. We bring together the people who were affected by the crime and the person or people responsible, and together come up with a plan to fix that harm. The plan is called a contract. If the responsible person completes the plan, the case is dismissed and won’t show up in any criminal record search.”
“What’s in the contract?” I ask.
“The contract is whatever the responsible party and the panel come up with. This whole process is about looking at the community as a system, a system that somehow broke down and led to this crime.”
“There was no system breakdown,” I say, kicking the rug. “I’m just a bad seed.”
“Bad to the bone, eh?” She raises her eyebrows.
I snort another laugh. “Everyone thinks it.”
She shrugs. “You might be surprised by your community. People are hurt, maybe even angry, but there’s something about coming together and talking it through that can really change people’s views of things.
“Do you think you’re ready to talk with them and start trying to fix this?”
I dig my toes deeper into the soles, practically into the rug. I mean, why delay things?
“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
Nine
Rill
THE MORNING LIGHT SLICES into my hollow. I lift my snout, taste the air—my nose smells nothing but smoke and ash. But the air is clean on my tongue. The fire must be far off or dead.
Dead. My thoughts run to my family. I didn’t hear them, didn’t hear anything but the rush and roar of the flames all night. I should be dead, and I’m more of a coyote than any of my siblings. What chance did those fuzz-heads have? But Mother? Father? It can’t be that they’re all gone. That I’m alone.
I hear Father’s final howl in my mind: Fern! Pebble! Birch! Sand! He did not call for me. They are not my pack. Not anymore. So no matter what, I am alone.
I pull my paws under my body and try to stand. A yelp escapes my jaws—the pain is unbearable. My paw pads are raw and red and hurt like teeth scraping across my tongue. I lick my paws, but that only makes them hurt more.
I can’t stand. I can’t run.
Panic sets my heart racing. The rock walls of this small crevice are dry. The dirt beneath me is damp, but there’s not a drop for me to drink. And the forest is quiet, like every other animal has fled for the hills. What will I eat?
I scent the air again, trying to clear my snout of the smoke, of the flakes of ash I can feel blocking my senses. But I get nothing. The air is just smoke and steam and wisps of half-burned leaves.
But there—a dampness. There’s a crevice under the ledge, just behind me. I could sneak under the rock—maybe there’s water! I drag my body around, paws screaming, then dig out some dirt, making a hole big enough for me to slip into. I can just fit beneath the rock and at the back—water! Just a thin sheen, a few licks and it’s gone, but it’s something. And it is cool under the rock, which feels good on my burned paws and fur.
A bug scuttles by and I snap it up. So much for a hearty breakfast. That could be it for the day: three licks of dew and a beetle.
I survived the fire, but how will I survive the after?
Ten
Gabe
I STAYED HOME FROM SCHOOL today. I was ready with a fake stomachache, but Mom and Dad were like, You’re staying home and doing this, then handed me this intake worksheet from the justice center. Ms. Andrews wants to meet with me again, privately. She told me yesterday to have a proposed list of participants by our meeting so she can begin calling people for my panel.
The worksheet is so random. When things are tough, what kinds of things get you through the tough times? I skip to the part I know I have to do: the crime stuff.
What did you do? I scrawl in, Started a fire on accident.
What were you feeling at the time? Uh, weird question. Okay, um, I was scared of the fire so I write, Scared.
Who has been affected by your actions?
The only name I can think to write is mine.
Who else was affected, really? I mean, the fire burned down a portion of a park that’s mostly just scrubby trees and rocks. It wasn’t the prettiest park to begin with. For real, people only go to Rockledge for the beach. They won’t miss the trees. And maybe this will help with the tick situation the park people are always warning the town about. Seriously, it could really be that I’m the only person who’s negatively impacted by this whole thing.
I mean, if we change the list to People Who Should Also Be Facing a Community Justice Panel, I can think of two names right away: Owen Shultz and Leo Hilliard. And that Taylor guy. Three names. Boom.
I should totally tell on them.
I toss the worksheet off my bed and roll over, facing the wall. Snitches get stitches, that’s the rule, right? What kind of loser would I look like, pointing fingers at other people? Plus, Taylor basically threatened to beat me up if I told on him. Would Leo join in the beating? Would Owen?
I have to squeeze my eyes shut because I WILL NOT BE HURT BY THEM.
