The Boy Who Steals Houses

by C. G. Drews

  He looks terrible. His face is cleaned, but there are butterfly stitches on his cheek and his bottom lip is a mess of scabs. But it’s his eyes, his storm-blue eyes that now look like a hurricane sucked them dry and filled them up with exhaustion and terror.

  Sam’s eyes droop to his arm, to the IV taped there. To the bed with the hospital blankets folded over his chest. His clothes are gone. Moxie’s waistcoat is gone.

  He ruined it.

  All her work.

  She’ll yell at him for six days solid for—

  Oh.

  There is no more Moxie. There will be no more Moxie.

  ‘This is a hospital.’ The words scratch on the way out. He wants Avery to deny it.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Avery, voice thick.

  ‘Do they … do they know …’

  ‘Yeah.’ Avery tugs the blankets up higher on Sam’s chest. ‘I’m sorry, Sammy. I-I-I had to tell them everything.’

  Oh.

  Sam waits for the fear to catch up, to pound into his chest with hot irons and hooks. But he just feels numb.

  ‘You had stitches,’ Avery says. ‘But it went in deep so … surgery. It took a while. I kind of passed out so I don’t know how long.’ Avery fusses with the blanket again, but Sam suspects it’s to distract from his flicking fingers. ‘I’m supposed to get the nurse when you wake up. For painkillers. Do you hurt? How bad?’

  Bad.

  ‘I’m OK.’ Sam closes his eyes. ‘Did they – get Vin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She … stabbed me?’

  ‘She ran. And no one knows who she really is and – I couldn’t say too much or they’d know what I was doing for her but – shit, Sammy.’

  He’s crying.

  Sam puts a hand on Avery’s head. He’s let his hair grow so it comes just past his ears, but it’s flat and wispy, soft as sunlight and feathers.

  ‘Do they know about what I did?’

  Avery grabs Sam’s hand and squeezes it. ‘I don’t think so. Just – just don’t say anything till we get a lawyer.’

  ‘Lawyer,’ Sam repeats dumbly.

  Avery scrubs his eyes with the hem of his T-shirt. ‘You’ve got some asshat of a social worker already out there.’

  Sam’s lips tremble.

  ‘Sammy, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let you die.’

  He’s going to jail. He’s spent a year of his life stealing into houses and trying trying trying to run away, and it’s over.

  A small part of his heart is glad.

  He’s so tired.

  ‘I c-can’t let them lock you up.’ Avery’s voice shreds with panic. ‘I can’t! Sammy – I can’t. I need you. I n-n-n-need to be with you.’ He scratches at his throat, a second away from spinning out, and Sam’s in no shape to catch him. ‘I lied when I said I didn’t. You know that, right? I lied. I lied! I LIED—’

  ‘Hey, hey, shh. I know.’ Sam stretches out his fingers, brushing Avery’s wrist. ‘Have you slept?’

  Avery shakes his head, whole body trembling.

  ‘Are you staying here?’

  ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  Sam chews his lips for a moment. ‘Can you fit on this bed?’

  There’s a pause and the sounds of the hospital filter in: hums of machines, squeaking of carts in the hall, a faint consistent drip drip past the curtains.

  ‘My hands are going like a psycho,’ Avery says. ‘I don’t want to hurt—’

  ‘Don’t talk like that about yourself. Hear me? You need to move. It’s OK.’

  Avery whimpers.

  Sam scoots over on the bed, even though it feels like punching himself in the stomach all over again. Avery hesitates a moment and then scuffs his shoes off and climbs on. The bed really isn’t big enough for two, but the Lou boys are small. Avery turns on his side and Sam tips his head so it rests against Avery’s chest. Avery flicks his fingers by his ear, listening to his own calming beat.

  ‘Is this OK?’ Avery says. ‘I can move.’

  ‘Don’t leave.’

  ‘I’m not leaving. I just don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Avery.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Don’t leave.’

  Avery tucks into Sam, two broken pieces in a puzzle box.

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ Avery says.

  The trick is to keep quiet.

  The trick is to hold on to Avery.

  The trick is to only cry in the dark so you won’t get pitying looks from the nurses who think it’s the pain but it’s not it’s not it’s not.

  It’s the falling.

  Sam curls in a ball on his bed, hospital gown slipping off one shoulder, while he focuses on counting the strands of the cotton blanket. His stomach feels like every muscle has been cut open and stretched like taffy. Sometimes he can’t take a deep enough breath. He won’t eat. It’s been twenty-four hours, and he’s so, so sore.

  The nurse has just finished with his bandage change, and hands him a paper cup and pills. ‘Your social worker is coming in now.’ She pulls the hospital gown up his shoulder. It just slips back down.

  He’s too small for an adult one and guesses they didn’t want to give him one with kid patterns because he’s a criminal. He’s trouble. They don’t want to see him as a child.

  ‘Do you know where my brother is?’

  ‘Sleeping in the waiting room around the corner. Do you want me to fetch him?’

  ‘When is—’

  There’s a slight scuffle at the entrance to Sam’s room and a jumble of tense whispers. The nurse frowns and pushes past the curtain around Sam’s bed to see. He curls tighter into a ball. Every sound, every scrape, every crisp tap of shoe on the floor, makes him think they’re coming for him. His lips move to ask the nurse to get Avery, but she’s too far away and he’s too hollowed out to do more than whisper.

  ‘Excuse me, but you can’t be in here.’

  Sam tenses.

  ‘But it says family, right? I’m family.’

  ‘Uh. You look nothing like—’

  ‘Oh, just five minutes. I’ve run across the entire city to find him. Please.’

  Sam’s fists clench around the blankets and he struggles upright, a cry on his lips – a desperate, pleading cry.

  Let me see her.

  A whimper escapes instead, but the curtain shoves back and Moxie De Lainey appears.

  It’s a fist to Sam’s already pulverised stomach. He isn’t sure if he wants to hide or fling his arms around her neck or sob his heart out.

  ‘Thank God.’ Moxie skids to a stop at the end of his bed. ‘Sam.’

  His name is a sob, a prayer, an accusation all at once.

  She looks frazzled, her hair loose and dishevelled, her shirt damp with sweat – like she truly did run across the world to find him. For a minute she just sucks in air and her eyes devour Sam and he thinks maybe maybe maybe he will keep it together.

  But then she frowns and her mouth punches out words that tear him to pieces.

  ‘How could you?’

  He shrinks against the pillows.

  ‘Was it all true?’ Moxie’s fingers tighten around the end of the bed frame. ‘What you did? I figured out your parents are abusive assholes and you had to run away, but it’s actually more than that. It’s you—’ She stops.

  It’s you who’s the monster.

  He wants to say sorry but he knows it’s pitiful and nowhere near enough.

  Slowly, like she doesn’t want to, she sits on the very corner of his bed. An ocean away. ‘We looked everywhere. We were out till dawn just driving up and down the coast. I was so scared.’

  ‘Moxie.’ His voice cracks on every letter.

  She lays her hands in her lap. Doesn’t look at him. ‘I told my dad everything. I should’ve done tha
t a long time ago.’

  She thinks the whole summer was a mistake.

  Sam pulls the blanket up to his chin and buries his face. He wants to curl under it completely, disappear. He grips this world with two fingertips and he’s tired and he hurt everyone and he should just let go.

  Her voice is tight. ‘Dad said he could’ve helped.’

  Too late now.

  ‘He couldn’t.’ Sam’s heart punches holes in his chest. ‘The police have looked for me for a y-year and your dad would’ve had to hand me over—’

  ‘What? And you don’t deserve to be caught? Like because you beat someone up for a “good reason” that makes it all right?’ She whips to face him, a blaze that scalds his soul. ‘You need serious help.’

  What he hears is,

  You can never be forgiven for that.

  He knows. Look what he did. Look at his hands. Look at his eyes, carved with lines of violence and crime.

  She slips a phone from her pocket. ‘I’m calling Dad and he can—’

  ‘No.’

  Moxie looks at him.

  Sam’s mouth is cotton and ash. ‘I don’t – I don’t … you should just go.’

  Her jaw trembles. ‘Seriously? You’re going to be like that?’

  ‘I don’t need your help,’ Sam whispers, cutting his heart out in bloody strips. ‘Just leave it, OK? My brother’s here and you could get into a lot of trouble for … you know, sheltering a criminal.’ He already has to bury mountains in his pockets to try and keep Avery’s name clean in this.

  Avery. Avery. Avery.

  All waif and damp eyes and fluttering fingers.

  ‘And your brother?’ Moxie says, stiff now. ‘I passed him sleeping in the waiting room when I came in. How is he going to help you? You said he needs help.’

  He does.

  ‘We’ll be fine.’ Sam rubs his knuckles over his eyes.

  ‘You know Griffin’s family is pressing charges, right?’ Moxie folds her arms, phone tucked against the crook of her elbow. But at least she didn’t call anyone. ‘Not that I didn’t feel like punching him too – but you were way, way overboard. And then … then what even happened?’

  Sam feels sick. ‘I got stabbed.’

  Moxie’s eyes widen. For a second she looks like she’ll puncture the distance between them and take him in her arms. But she doesn’t. ‘What? By who?’

  Sam closes his eyes. He couldn’t tell her, even if Avery hadn’t already said to keep his mouth shut until they get a lawyer.

  ‘Someone who hit Avery.’ Sam rubs his eyes again. They keep filling up. He’s so soft.

  The trick is to not be so soft.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so so sorry.’

  Moxie backhands her eyes furiously. ‘I know Griffin hit you first. But … Sam, you scare me.’

  He scares Avery too. He scares himself.

  I want to stop, he could scream. I don’t want this to be my forever.

  But instead, he tugs threads of the blanket and wishes there was a way to say sorry. It took golden thread and squares of cloth and a box of caramel chocolates last time. This is infinitely worse.

  He’ll need a ladder into space and a bucket to collect sunbeams so he can stitch her a dress with his bruised, broken fingers. And even then, would it be enough?

  ‘I don’t want you—’ she begins, but cuts off as three adults stride into the room.

  Sam knows she hadn’t finished the sentence, but all that repeats in his brain with razor barbs is I don’t want you—

  I don’t want you—

  I don’t want you—

  Moxie stands quickly. There’s a man and woman in suits, and a cop behind them in full uniform with weapon belt clanking. Sam’s insides turn to ice.

  ‘Hello, miss.’ The man wears entire black – black shirt, smart jacket, impeccably shined shoes. ‘I’m Sammy Lou’s social worker and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ He turns flint eyes on Sam.

  Sam wonders if you have any chance in a court at all if your social worker looks like he hates you already.

  Moxie pushes sweaty hair out of her eyes. ‘I can get his brother—’

  ‘Not necessary.’ The woman’s hair is a sea of silver. She sets a briefcase down, her eyes flicking over Moxie with suspicion. She turns to the social worker. ‘No visitors for my client. Have the hospital staff notified. This could already be a problem.’

  The social worker gives a tight nod and motions for Moxie to leave.

  She turns to Sam one last time, her eyes pools of unshed tears. She bites her lip, the lemon and steel fading to this vulnerable, agonised look. She mouths, Let me help.

  Sam gives the tiniest shake of his head.

  And then they’re ushering her out the door and he loses her.

  Sam bunches his fists in the blankets. He needs Avery. They’re not going to let him have Avery. Hot tears sting his eyes and he doesn’t bother to rub them away.

  The social worker holds out his hand to shake Sam’s. ‘Emery Evans,’ he says. ‘And this is your lawyer, Celia Polnik. She handles many of our kids’ cases, so you’re in good hands. Now, the police have some questions for you.’

  Sam’s throat is dry. He has no words. Can’t they see? He dropped them when he ran, and now his mouth is full of splinters.

  Just then Avery sprints into the room, half slamming against the wall in mussed, sleepy, sock-clad haste. He bolts over to Sam and throws himself to his side. His thin chest moves raggedly. Maybe a girl woke him on her way out.

  ‘OK,’ Avery says, ‘OK, I’m here. You can talk to him now.’

  Like they need Avery’s permission to come anywhere near his little brother.

  Sam insists he can dress himself, but he underestimates how much it still hurts. He puts on black dress trousers and socks and then decides he needs a break. Possibly a nap.

  Possibly he could never wake up.

  His fingers brush over the bandages taped to his stomach. It’s been a week and he should’ve been out of the hospital earlier except they have nowhere to put him. And the hospital psychiatrist isn’t happy with how little Sam’s eating. Or how often he screams himself awake at night. No one knows what to do with him.

  That’s great, because he doesn’t know what to do with himself either.

  Avery, so far, slips through the cracks of everyone’s attention. But flint-eyed Evans has zoned in on him, and Sam knows it’s only a matter of time before he deals with the panicked, flapping Avery too.

  Sam starts to go back to bed and tackle the shirt and tie later, when Evans walks crisply in.

  Sam pulls himself upright. ‘You said you weren’t coming till four.’

  ‘I said we’re going to the courthouse at three.’ Evans’s dark eyes flit about the room. No Avery. He seems satisfied. ‘Get your shirt. We leave now so we can start the paperwork before the judge is in. It’s just a preliminary hearing and Polnik will do the talking.’

  Sam’s shoulders cave inward. He pulls on the white shirt, still creased from the packet, and slowly does the buttons. Evans brought the clothes in earlier. A vicious ache runs through Sam every time he thinks of the waistcoat. Ruined with blood and sliced by the knife. They threw it out.

  Don’t think of the waistcoat.

  Or Moxie.

  You’re not allowed.

  You don’t deserve to.

  ‘Avery isn’t back yet,’ Sam says. ‘He went to get a clean shirt—’

  Evans picks up the tie and impatiently gestures for Sam to stand. Sam feels like a speck of a boy next to Evans’s towering limbs. The man is all spider-thin fingers and a disapproving mouth.

  ‘He can meet us there.’

  ‘He won’t know where to go,’ Sam says. ‘He might not make it in time. We have to wait.’

  Evans does
the tie efficiently, sliding it too tight and then adjusting Sam’s collar. ‘We’re not waiting.’

  Sam understands.

  Evans did this on purpose. He always brings paperwork and lawyers and police in when Avery isn’t there. When Avery’s sleeping. When Avery’s gone to try and find Aunt Karen. He despises Avery for skirting the system and being guilty but with not enough proof to nail him. From snippets Sam’s picked up, he’s waiting for Avery’s case to be assigned to him. Then his spider fingers will be all over Sam’s brother.

  But he doesn’t want Avery at the courthouse. Not Avery’s loud tics or panicked outbursts or the way he freaks out when someone comes close to Sam.

  But Sam can’t go without him.

  He’s so empty. They tried to stitch him back together, but too much already fell out. Stars and buttons and caramel truffles.

  ‘I need Avery.’

  ‘What you need,’ Evans says, ‘is a very merciful judge and a perfectly respectful attitude. Cooperate, Samuel, or this is going to go worse for you.’

  My name is just Sammy, he wants to say, but he just picks up the splinters of his soul that are left, and follows Evans out.

  Sam tests the car door handles as soon as Evans isn’t looking. Locked from the outside. The car smells of ground coffee and paperwork and there’s not a crumb to be seen. Sam has been around several social workers, but Evans is something else. Maybe when they get a case stamped with the words assault and runaway and thief and invisible boy, they pick the caseworkers who are made of black ink and hard lines.

  Evans’s car purrs smoothly through the city. He glances once in his rear-view mirror and Sam stares blankly back.

  ‘Am I going to jail?’ Sam says at last.

  ‘I can’t predict the judge.’

  A non-answer. Sam should be used to those.

  ‘When we go back to the hospital to get Avery—’

  ‘We’re not going back.’

  Sam’s eyes snatch to the driver’s seat, but Evans just holds the wheel calmly like he didn’t puncture Sam’s thin web of calm.

  ‘After this, I’m taking you to a youth detention facility and we’ll move through your case from there.’