Seven Times They Chose Him. The Last Time, They Lost Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Steps

Waiting on the porch with a packed bag, Zack falls and breaks his arm, tells his aunt he is fine, and the ER nurse notices nobody in his family has called him all day.

"Zack?" Aunt Dot said. "Did she do something to your sketchbook?"

"How do you know about that?"

"I gave you that sketchbook. It's the only thing you'd ever call me about."

"I haven't called you in two years."

"I know." A turn signal clicked on her end. "What did she do?"

I told her, in order, with no extra words.

When I got to the heron's eye, I stopped, because my voice had started to do something I didn't like.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know it's only paper."

"Don't you dare apologize to me for that."

She said it hard, and then she said it again, softer.

"Listen. I'll be there by seven. Put on your coat and sit on the front porch where I can see you from the road. Bring whatever you can't leave. One bag."

"Mom said she'd be back in an hour."

"Then she'll have an hour to notice you're gone, won't she?"

She hung up.

I stood with the phone in my hand.

Then I did what I'm best at, which was being quiet and getting on with it.

I packed my duffel in ten minutes.

Clothes, my toothbrush, the two library books I owed, and the grocery bag I filled with the pieces of the sketchbook.

I took every scrap out of the crate and left the foam where it was.

There were so many, and some were too small to tell what they had been.

I wrote a note for the fridge and tore it up.

I wrote another and tore that up too.

In the end I left nothing, because everything I tried to say sounded like asking.

My parents are Russ and Janine Houghton, and neither of them had called me all afternoon.

I noticed it around five o'clock, and I told myself they were busy.

At six-thirty I carried my bag out onto the porch and sat on the top step.

The bulb over the door has been out since August.

Dad kept saying he'd change it, and I kept not asking.

By seven the street was dark, and by seven-thirty I had counted every car that went by on Fenwick Lane.

None of them slowed down.

I stood up to stretch.

It was stupid. I had the duffel on one shoulder and the grocery bag in my other hand, and I couldn't see the step.

My foot hit the dog's water bowl at the edge of the porch.

I went down all five steps, and the last thing I did was put my left arm out.

It made a sound.

I lay on the walk and looked at the sky and waited to see if I was going to cry.

I wasn't.

I had gotten very good at that.

After a while I sat up, and I held my arm in my other hand because it didn't seem to want to stay in one piece.

The grocery bag had split.

Pieces of my drawings lay across the path, and I started picking them up with my right hand, one at a time.

Headlights turned into the driveway.

A door slammed, and someone was running.

"Zack!"

Aunt Dot was in a canvas jacket, with her red braid coming loose and her car still running behind her.

I hadn't seen her in two years.

She looked exactly the same.

"Hi, Aunt Dot," I said. "Thank you for coming. I'm sorry about the mess."

She dropped to her knees on the walk.

"Don't move that arm."

"It's fine. I think I just sat down wrong."

"Zachary." She looked at my wrist, and then at my face. "That is not fine."

"It doesn't really hurt."

That was almost true.

It had gone a hot, far-off kind of numb, and I couldn't make my fingers close.

She took off her jacket and laid it over my lap and my arm.

Then she looked up at the dark house, the dead bulb, the empty driveway, and the split grocery bag.

I watched her read all of it.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. We're going to the hospital."

"Mom's going to be home soon. She'll want to know where I am."

"Then she can come find you."

She picked up my duffel and my torn pages, every scrap of them, and she didn't ask me whether I wanted to keep them.

In the emergency room a nurse took my name and my birthday.

"Today," she said, and her eyebrows came up. "Happy birthday, sweetheart."

"Thank you."

"Is Mom or Dad on the way?"

"They're busy," I said. "It's okay."

"Can I see your phone? I'd like to put a parent's number in the chart."

I handed it over with my good hand.

She held it a second too long.

I looked at the screen to see what she was seeing.

The last message in my phone was from Mom, at 8:14 that morning.

It said, Don't forget to feed Waffle.

Nothing after that.

Nothing from Dad, nothing from Dylan, and nothing from anyone else.

It was after nine at night.

"Honey," the nurse said, very carefully. "Does your family know where you are right now?"

"No."

Beside me Aunt Dot made a small sound, and put her hand flat on the counter.

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