A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

  “I TEXTED YOU.” This is Charlie’s pissed-off way of saying hello when he gets to Government. He hefts a chair and drops it next to my desk—he’s too tall to fit his legs under one of his own. “Ms. Stone’s being a bitch.” Apparently Regular Chemistry’s no better than AP Chemistry. I can see another visit to Charlie’s guidance counselor in my future.

  “I didn’t get it,” I tell him. “My cell phone broke.”

  “You broke another phone?”

  “I don’t even know how it happened. I guess it was in the pile of stuff I threw in the washing machine.”

  “Idiot.”

  Emerald and Camila breeze into class, whispering to each other in a way that looks more secretive than how I’ve ever talked to anyone in my life. Emerald’s shoulders are back like she’s a professional dancer. Below her flowing white dress, her legs are long and bare and strong like a Roman statue come to life. Her mixed-up-colored hair is in dozens of tiny braids that are somehow combined into a larger braid, and then all of that is twirled on top of her head. Sometimes her hair alone makes me think she might be a genius.

  She smiles when she sees me, and Charlie gives me a knowing look before he whines, “I’m starving.”

  “You’re always starving.”

  We’re still two periods away from lunch. After Government it’s time to grab Julian and bring him to Dr. Whitlock’s, then there’s nearly an hour of just sitting.

  “But I’m really starving.” He looks pretty pitiful, actually.

  “There might be some food in my backpack.”

  He dives for it, and looks disgusted when he comes up with nothing but a Ziploc of carrots. “Well, this sucks,” he says, but he eats them anyway.

  A minute later Mrs. Conner announces that we can work in groups. “We love you, Mrs. Conner!” I shout, then pull my desk next to Emerald’s because if you’re going to do an assignment with anyone, it should be her. I watch the totally engrossed way she works—for Emerald, every assignment’s a major one. I have the urge to unravel her braids or maybe touch the mole beneath her eye. Instead I ask her how Brett is.

  She looks surprised for a second, then her whole face lights up—beautiful except for why she’s lighting up. “All right,” she answers.

  “Amazing!” Camila corrects, leaning over their desks so I have no choice but to look down her shirt. “He’s taking her up in the plane this weekend.” Emerald’s blue eyes widen and she looks a little embarrassed, like maybe this whole sky date was supposed to be a secret.

  “Seriously? That’s awesome.” Because seriously, it is. It’s exactly the sort of badass date you’d love to plan for your girlfriend, but instead you end up taking her to the food court at the mall.

  “I guess.” Emerald lifts one shoulder in a graceful shrug.

  “You guess?” There’s obviously no way to impress her. “I mean, seriously, I want to be Brett’s girlfriend.” She, Camila, and Charlie start to laugh. “Do you think Brett would consider a sister-wife thing?” More laughs. “Be sure to tell us how it goes.” Emerald shrugs again, looking more embarrassed than stoked.

  For the rest of class I have this weird feeling. I’m trying to write, but for each word I’m picturing Emerald and the rower-pilot barreling through the clouds.

  I take the note from Miss Hooper and step gingerly toward the hall. The pain has lessened, but I can still feel each cut stretching my skin when I move. When I open the door, Adam is there, only this time I’m expecting it, so I don’t embarrass myself. He’s smiling brightly, but I don’t really know what he’s thinking, because you can’t always believe smiles.

  “Hey,” he says. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here. Dr. Whitlock said you’ve been out the past couple of days. Were you sick?”

  I nod.

  The morning after the punishment I woke up to find a twenty-dollar bill beneath the conch on my dresser, which meant I was allowed to miss school and order pizza. Seeing the money, I had the usual conflicting feelings. Guilt that he’d be going to work while I stayed home. But relief too. If he was letting me miss school and order food, he couldn’t be too angry anymore.

  “Feeling better?” Adam asks.

  I nod again.

  “I hope you didn’t take a bunch of pharmaceuticals. That stuff’s poison.”

  “No…”

  “Good. You ready?”

  I nod and fall in step beside him, watching our feet. I’m wearing my bleached white sneakers. Today his shoes are red high-tops, like Superman’s boots.

  “So do you like to draw?”

  I nod, even though I don’t.

  “Cool. You’ll have to show me your work sometime.”

  This is what happens when I lie. Almost instantly I’m put in some situation where I have to tell more lies or I’ll get caught. We walk in silence, but it’s actually not that uncomfortable, because he doesn’t seem to mind that I don’t know what to say.

  “I took Art my sophomore year,” he says a couple minutes later, as if there was never any lull. “I sucked.”

  He smiles, and now I wish I had just told the truth, because then we could have had sucking at art in common. He launches into a story about how his friend Charlie was in his class and went insane during the third week of their hallway projects. The hallway project, Adam says, sucks.

  “You have to draw these three-dimensional hallways using nothing but tiny squares.” He explains that it requires a lot of patience and Charlie has none. “He tore up his paper and threw all his markers on the floor. He’s kind of a giant first grader.” Adam laughs, but I’m just staring in awe, because I’d be way too afraid to do something like that.

  “I know, right?” he says, as if I said that aloud. “He got two days of ISS. Personally, I’ve never even gotten a detention. And…” He looks at me pointedly. “I’ve never ignored a faculty member’s summons and hidden out in the school.” He might be joking, but I’m not sure. “I really should stop hanging out with delinquents.”

  “Is…?” Adam watches me, his expression patient, as if he doesn’t mind waiting for me to finish my question. “Is Charlie your best friend?”

  “You mean, do we wear matching friendship bracelets and have photos of each other in our lockers?” He smirks, so I guess I said something stupid. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ve known each other since kindergarten. It’s funny—he’d never gone to preschool or anything before, so that first day he was flipping out. He cried, like, all morning, till I gave him my cookies at lunch.” Adam grins. “We’ve seen each other practically every day since then. Well, except for when we went to different middle schools. But I don’t think I’ve ever labeled anyone as Best Friend. I just have a lot of friends.”

  He shrugs as if having a lot of friends is no big deal at all.

  JULIAN PAUSES OUTSIDE Dr. Whitlock’s office, one of his skinny arms dangling to his side while the other arm reaches across his chest to squeeze his bicep, like it’s sore. He’s not that small—about the size of any other freshman—but he seems smaller because he’s always bent like he’s ducking a low ceiling.

  When he finally heads inside, I drop onto the couch, prepared for a good forty minutes of boredom. I’m not sure why Dr. Whitlock even has an aide. I deliver maybe one note per period. I can’t even do any filing, because everything’s confidential.

  While I’m answering texts, I make out a voice on the other side of the door—just hers—which isn’t surprising since he’s so freakin quiet. But he wasn’t always. Back in elementary school, he was anything but.

  A memory pops into my head—Julian giving me this construction-paper card on the last day of fifth grade. All the kindergartners made ones for their buddies, and they were all really proud when they handed them to us. It was pretty adorable, actually. I think I still have mine somewhere. I didn’t expect to see him again after that. Then two years later, I came home to find a little boy sitting in the center of our yellow couch, holding a stuffed dog under one arm. When he looked up, his enormous eyes were l
ike glass, something reflective instead of animated.

  “Julian?” I said.

  Mom whispered, “You know him?”

  “Yes.” But it was like looking at a photo of a painting. Julian, twice removed. “We were reading buddies. Right, Julian?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared straight ahead like a sleepwalker.

  “Julian is going to be staying with us for a while,” Mom said.

  Still, he said nothing.

  “Julian.” Mom spoke carefully. “Adam and I will be right back.” She ushered me into the kitchen, and as soon as the doors swung shut behind us, she started to cry. My mom’s a pretty emotional person, but when it came to the foster kids who stayed with us sometimes, she always kept it together—no matter how bad the story was.

  Knowing this, I got a sick feeling in my stomach. “What happened?”

  She shook her head and breathed in fast. “His parents were on their way to pick him up from school. They were all going out of town for the long weekend.”

  “What happened to them?” I repeated.

  “They were in an accident.”

  “And…”

  “They died.”

  “Both of them?” She nodded. “How?” I wasn’t really asking for details—just questioning how one boy’s life could be so instantly and completely obliterated.

  She ignored the question. “He wouldn’t leave the school. He wouldn’t go with the social worker. He kept saying his parents were coming.”

  My eyes drifted back toward the living room. It scared me. If something happened to my mom, I’d be the one sitting in some stranger’s living room.

  “I need you to help me with him,” Mom said suddenly. It was a weird request, since I was always nice to the kids who stayed with us. But I just nodded and said okay.

  Julian didn’t make a sound, not during dinner. Not when we watched TV. Not when Mom tucked him into the other twin bed in my room.

  Then in the middle of the night, I was woken by a strangled whimper.

  “Julian?” I climbed out of bed and stood over him. Tears were shining on his cheeks. “Want me to get my mom?”

  He shook his head and began to cry, only I couldn’t really call it that.

  It was convulsing.

  It was dying.

  It was the most pained noise I’ve ever heard another human being make. No one should be capable of that sort of agony and still live.

  I was scared to stay with him. I was scared to leave him.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I grabbed his stuffed dog and shoved it at him. He looked at it for a second, then convulsed even harder.

  “I’ll get my mom,” I said.

  “I want my mom.”

  I didn’t know what to say—what could you say to something like that?

  Still sobbing, he pulled a pillow over his face. Afraid he was going to suffocate, I pulled it away.

  “I’m getting a headache. I need my dad. I need him right now!” He was hysterical. “I have a headache! I need him!”

  “What does he do for it?”

  “He fixes it.”

  “How?”

  “Rubs my head.”

  I sat down beside him and rested my palm on his forehead like I was taking his temperature. “Like this?”

  “No.” He ran his fingertips across his forehead like he was playing the piano.

  I tried to mimic it. “Better?”

  He continued to cry.

  I’m not sure how long we sat there like that before he asked in a soft, wiped-out voice, “Where are they?”

  “Didn’t…didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “They died. I know.” He sounded so tired. “But where are they? Where did they go?”

  At the time I didn’t get that he wasn’t asking where they were in a physical way. I didn’t know what to tell him, so I rubbed his head with a little more pressure. “Go to sleep, okay?”

  He looked up at the ceiling, eyes wide with despair. “They disappeared.”

  Julian had no relatives, no godparents, no anyone, so at the two-week mark, when most of the foster kids went home, he stayed. At first it seemed like he was never going to be anything resembling himself again, like he would always be sad. But then there were little things.

  We’d go to the mall, and he’d want to wear those joke glasses you could buy at Spencer’s—the kind with an attached nose and handlebar mustache.

  Or Mom would be reading him a story before bed—he still loved Elian Mariner—and when she finished, he’d add this crazy-long epilogue.

  Or he’d sing and talk about his mom—she could sing anything. And his dad—he could draw everything.

  But sometimes, out of nowhere, he did this approximation of crying, where his face would scrunch up in pain and his shoulders would shake, only he wouldn’t make a sound.

  Months went by, and it started to feel like Julian had always been with us, like we were real brothers. After school we’d run around the neighborhood, and at night we’d run around the house till Mom told us to wind down. We’d watch TV—I’d suffer though all those Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows he liked. He’d endure my superhero movies and endless questions about which superpower he’d want if he could only have only one.

  That time we watched Superman still pops into my head every now and then. I wasn’t really thinking when I stuck in the DVD. Then we reached the part where Lois Lane dies….

  It was like Julian stopped breathing—he looked that stricken—as a devastated Superman pulled her from the wrecked car and cradled her head. Julian covered his face and whispered, “Don’t cry, Superman.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “See?”

  Julian peeked through his fingers. Superman was rising up through the air, into the clouds. Julian gasped as he spun the world backward and brought her back to life.

  MISS HOOPER DOESN’T wait for Adam to knock on her door anymore every Tuesday and Friday. She just sends me on my way. Today, as soon as I step into the hall, he asks, “What is that?” He’s laughing at me, but it doesn’t feel mean the way it does when other people do it.

  “It’s for Child Development,” I explain.

  He takes the large plastic doll from my hands. “You have to carry this thing around all day?”

  “All week.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He shakes his head in sympathy.

  “Miss Carlisle says we need to learn that having a baby is terrible.”

  Adam laughs. “I guess this would do it.”

  My parents never told me it was terrible. They always sounded so happy when they’d talk about bringing me home from the hospital, or the expression on my face the first time I tried baby-food spinach.

  “Do your teachers get pissed when it goes off in class?” Adam asks.

  “Sort of.” Mostly Miss West. “But I think Miss Cross likes it.” She says things like You couldn’t find a sitter? Or It must be tough to be a single dad. I’m almost sure she’s joking, but I can never think of a joke to say back, so I mostly wish she wouldn’t say anything at all.

  The baby suddenly bursts into loud mechanical sobs. “What do I do?” Adam panics, pushing it back at me. I type the correct code into its back to stop the crying. “All week,” he repeats, shaking his head again. “Jesus.”

  When he starts walking, I fall into step beside him, and it’s like trying to keep up with something that has too much energy for its container. It fills the hall and ricochets against everyone we pass. A teacher can be approaching, face stressed or sad, and body bent as if they’re carrying something too heavy.

  Then they see Adam.

  They blink as if blinded, and their mouth spreads into a Christmas-morning smile. Sometimes they stop to tell him how much they’ve missed him, that Algebra or Geography isn’t the same without him. Then they ask him what his schedule looks like next semester—does he have room to be their teacher’s aide? Adam will ask about their family, mentioning each relative by name; then with a brilliant smile, he p
romises to visit their classroom very soon.

  And now that smile is aimed at me. “Anything interesting happen today?” It’s a question I get every Tuesday and Friday.

  “Yes,” I say. “Miss Cross is making us be in a play.”

  “‘Shakespeare in the Spring.’ The English department does it every year, and every year it’s awful. Do you know which one you’re doing?”

  “The one…I can’t remember his name…something weird.”

  “Not specific enough.”

  “The one where everyone dies.”

  “Still not specific enough.” The nice thing about Adam is it’s easy to tell when he’s joking, because he’s nearly always joking.

  The doll starts to scream again. I have to punch in the code for Distress. “Miss Carlisle says the old egg method was better,” I say. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Yeah. Kids used to carry around an egg instead of a doll. You passed as long as you didn’t break yours.”

  “Oh.” That sounds a lot easier than this. “What play did you do?”

  “When I was a freshman?”

  I nod.

  “Macbeth. Oh my god, it was such a freakin mess. So I guess you know, every freshman has to participate. They make the sets, the costumes, everything.”

  I nod again.

  “Well, obviously there aren’t nearly enough parts for everyone, so the English teachers just add them. Like when we did Macbeth, eighteen girls performed the parts of the three witches. It might’ve been okay, but we didn’t have after-school rehearsals till a couple days before the show—we just practiced in class. And since the witches were all in different English classes, they learned their lines in different rhythms—the witches’ lines rhyme, almost like a song.

  “Anyway, the girls only got to have one read-through as a group, so when we did the actual show, no one was together, and you couldn’t understand a thing they said—for the entire play. I’d say it was funny, but Emerald was Witch Number Eight, and she’s, like, still traumatized.”

  “That’s terrible.”