I Died Afraid My Broken Arm Burdened Them novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Knock

Dale breaks in and finds Ellis dead with a taped arm. Ellis finds he can light a screen. A black car stops outside.

Dale hit the door three more times.

Then he turned and shouted down the stairwell. "Get the key! Now!"

"I'm not your servant!" the landlord yelled up from the first floor. "That boy owes me for August!"

"Get the key, or I take the door off the hinges."

I stood in the middle of my room and watched the door shake.

I tried to say Dale's name.

Nothing came out. The air in the room stayed still.

Feet pounded up the stairs. A key scraped in the lock.

The landlord came in first, red in the face, ready to shout.

He saw the bed and stopped.

Dale pushed past him.

He was a broad man in a work jacket with the sleeves rolled, and he had worked the line next to mine for eight months.

He had shared his lunch with me on days I said I wasn't hungry.

"Ellis," he said.

He put two fingers on my neck.

He held them there a long time.

"Ellis, come on. Come on, kid."

He took his fingers away and looked at the table.

He saw the bottle and picked it up. His hand shook so hard the empty bottle rattled.

"Oh, you stupid kid," he said. "You stupid, stupid kid."

The landlord took a step back into the hallway.

"I didn't do anything," he said. "Don't you put this on me. I'm calling the police."

"Then call them," Dale said, without turning around.

He sat down on the edge of my mattress.

My body rolled a little toward him as the mattress dipped.

That was when he saw my arm.

He lifted it gently by the wrist. The paint stirrer was gray with sweat, and the tape had gone yellow.

Under it, my forearm was a dark purple, and it bent where an arm should not.

Dale's face broke.

"You told me it was a bruise," he said. "You told me it was a bruise, Ellis."

He pressed the back of his wrist against his mouth.

"I saw you eat one meal a day. I saw you couldn't hold the box. I said nothing, because you asked me to."

I stood at the foot of the bed and wished I could take it back.

I wished it more than I had wished anything in ten years.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He did not hear me.

My phone buzzed against the blanket.

It lit up again and again, so hard that it crawled toward the edge of the mattress.

The screen said: Mother. Fourteen missed calls.

Dale picked it up, wiped his eyes, and looked at it for a moment.

He pressed the green button and held it to his ear.

"Ellis? Why aren't you answering? We're almost there." My mother's voice was bright. "I stopped for a cake. Do you like lemon?"

"Ma'am," Dale said. "My name is Dale. I work with Ellis."

"Who? Why do you have my son's phone?"

"Ma'am, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Ellis is..."

"Put him on."

"He can't..."

"Whoever you are, you will not touch anything of his," my mother said. Her voice had gone high and hard. "Stay exactly where you are. We are on our way."

She hung up.

Dale lowered the phone and stared at the black screen.

"That's a strong voice for a woman who's supposed to be dying," he said in a low voice. "And she stopped for cake."

I stepped next to him and looked at the phone in his hand.

It had gone dark.

I wanted it lit. I wanted to show him the number on the bank message, the three million, so he would know I had not been a fool.

I pressed my palm flat against the glass.

It went through.

I tried again, with one finger, slowly.

This time something held.

Under my fingertip the screen woke and showed a clear gray smear of frost.

Dale jerked.

"What the..."

He dropped the phone on the bed.

He stared at the screen.

It showed the time and nothing else.

"It's the cold," he muttered. "Everything in this place is cold."

I could not say anything to him. I could not touch the quilt or move his hand.

But the screen had answered me.

Heavy boots came up the stairs.

Two paramedics came into the room with a stretcher between them, and a third man stood in the doorway writing on a clipboard.

"Time of death is going to be an estimate," one of them said. "He's been gone about an hour."

"An hour?" Dale said. "Could anyone have..."

"No," the paramedic said, kindly. "I'm sorry."

They lifted me onto the stretcher, and one of them turned my left arm to lay it across my chest.

He stopped.

He looked at the other paramedic.

"Look at that arm," he said quietly. "This kid has been walking around like this."

"How long?"

"Weeks, from the look of it."

They did not say anything else.

They zipped the bag over my face.

I followed the stretcher down the narrow stairs, because it was the only way I could go.

Behind me Dale carried my coat and my phone, and I heard him telling the landlord, "Don't you say a word."

Neighbors had opened their doors on every landing.

Faces watched us pass.

At the bottom of the stairs, a black car pulled up outside with its lights on, and a woman in a pale coat got out of the back before it had stopped moving.

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