Watching My Fake Sister Dig Her Own Grave novel · Chapter 17 of 32
Chapter 17: The Shelter
"What party?" I said.
Nessa looked at the cops.
Then at Dez.
Then at me.
"The party," she said. "With the dresses. Uncle got a suit. A black one, in a bag from a store. He tried it on in front of the money table and asked if he looked like a rich man."
"Did he?"
"He looked like Uncle in a suit."
"Who said he was going?"
"The lady. On the phone. She said there'd be a ticket at the door with a fake name on it." Nessa's mouth went flat. "And she said bring the van around the back after."
"After what?"
She shrugged with the shoulder that didn't hurt.
"After she gives you to him," she said. "I figured you knew."
The children's emergency shelter was a brick building on the West Side with a mural of a giraffe on the side.
Inside it smelled like crayons and canned spaghetti.
They put Nessa and the boy in a playroom with a couch and a TV while somebody made beds.
The boy fell asleep in two minutes with his head on a stuffed pig.
His cough was the wet kind.
A nurse listened to his chest and frowned and went to make a phone call.
He wasn't the littlest one.
The littlest one was still with Uncle.
Nessa didn't sleep.
She sat at a kid-sized table with a stack of copier paper and one blue pen she'd asked a cop for.
She drew horses.
She drew them the way she always had, fast and mean, with too many legs, because she said horses were blurry when they ran.
I sat next to her on a chair made for a six-year-old, with my knees up near my chin.
The blades were in the duffel at my feet.
My regular legs were back on.
"Your arm," I said.
"It's fine."
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