Haffling (The Haffling series)

by Caleb James

  I felt the tiniest surge of hope. This is too easy.

  She continued with a bright smile. “Jerod is your boyfriend, you’re his magic onion, and Nimby is your fairy.”

  Eighteen

  THE express zipped down Manhattan. At Fourteenth, Jerod’s cell rang. “It’s Clay.”

  Changeling Mom stared at him. “Clay is your brother.”

  He nodded and took the call. “What’s up?”

  Mom’s gaze was fixed on him; her face mimicked his. It was like watching a weird kind of camera. Every twitch, the way his hand brushed his temple. “Don’t panic,” he said. “Calm down, Clay.”

  “What’s wrong?” Stepping away from Mom, I was aware of how crowded the train had become. “What’s going on?”

  Jerod whispered, “It didn’t work. There were cops in the alley. They’re taking Alice.”

  “No!” The train was back in motion. I felt like punching something.… No, let it pass. Adrenaline surged. I couldn’t look at Jerod, the concern in his face. Whatever feeble plans I’d pieced together were all shot to shit. “Is she still there?” I asked.

  Jerod nodded. “They’re in front of our house. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Yeah,” I said, reaching for the phone.

  “Be kind, Alex. He’s only nine. This wasn’t his fault.”

  “I know. Hey, Clay, it’s Alex. Tell me what’s happening.”

  The third grader was crying. “I tried to get her away. They were in the alley. I told them it wasn’t Alice, but they had her school picture. They said if I lied to police I’d get in trouble. I’d go to jail.”

  I bit back my anger—what sort of twisted creep threatens a nine-year-old with jail? “It’s not your fault. You’re a brave kid. Where is she now?”

  “She’s in a blue Prius in front of our house. She’s looking out the window. She’s crying, Alex… I’m sorry.” He was sobbing.

  The train slowed. We were at Chambers Street. “Clay, we’re on our way. I need you to do me some big favors. Write down the names of the social workers, the license plate of the car… anything that can help me track down Alice. We’re on our way.”

  “Okay.”

  I handed the phone to Jerod as the doors slid open. “I’m going to your house.”

  I bolted out the doors and ran flat-out. I had no plan, only to get there fast. It was the sort of strategy Sifu hated. As I dodged the snarling rush-hour traffic on Canal, I imagined his warnings—too much momentum… find your center… stay in the middle. All useful when you’re sparring, but now.…

  Pumping my legs and scanning for obstacles; there was too much foot traffic and touristy crap on the sidewalks of Little Italy. I swung into the road, nearly colliding with a bicycle messenger. Off to the right, I spotted the weirdly canted brick wall outside the church. And then I saw the flashing light of a police cruiser and a blue Prius as it turned on its signal light and eased away from the curb.

  Alice was in the back, strapped in. She was straining against her seatbelt. I shouted. “No! Stop! Wait!”

  In front of the house, I saw Clay being restrained by Blanca, the Haynes’s Columbian au pair. The little boy’s face was tear streaked, and he clutched a skateboard as he tried to free himself from Blanca.

  “Let me go!” he screamed.

  “Clay!” I called to him.

  “Alex… I’m sorry.” He was red faced and crying.

  I watched the Prius and the cruiser, now at the end of the block, heading toward Houston.

  “Give me your board.” I grabbed it from his arms. I flipped it over, then dropped it to the ground, and with my right foot pumping asphalt, was in pursuit.

  As I chased after them, Clay shouted, “I got the names of the social workers.”

  “Good work!” I screamed back, bobbing and swerving to avoid potholes and a double-parked delivery van.

  At Houston, the cruiser took a wide left, and the Prius went right. The only thing in my favor was the time of day. It was rush hour, and traffic was going nowhere. Four lanes of vehicular sludge. Staying a few car lengths behind the Prius, I tried to catch my breath. The car had state plates and a sticker proclaiming the agency’s commitment to energy conservation. From the outside, it looked normal, but having been hauled into protective custody, I knew the inside handles were disabled and the doors locked. I looked at the two workers in the front seat—a man and a woman—who took their jobs serious enough to go after an eleven-year-old near the end of their shift. It was nearly five, and there’d be hours of work as they got Alice settled.

  Each time the lights changed, traffic inched a dozen spaces. My cell buzzed. Where are they going? I didn’t want to think what would happen if they got on the FDR Drive, but that seemed the destination. I looked at the on-ramp five blocks in the distance…. It had no sidewalks, bicycles, pedestrians, and skateboards off limits. It wasn’t going fast… but it was moving. They could take her anywhere.… My phone buzzed again, and then the harp came on.

  I pulled it out, never taking my eyes off the Prius. “Yeah?”

  “Alex.” It was Jerod. “I’m on the computer. The two OCFS workers—Gary Osborn and Lydia Green—are out of an office in City Park.” He gave me the address. I memorized it while staring at Alice’s blonde head. She didn’t know I was following. I couldn’t think about how terrified she must be, although she’d never show them. She’d shut down, instead. They’d see a quiet little blonde girl who’d give them nothing.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Houston. They’re heading to the FDR.… There’s got to be some kind of intake place or safe house.”

  “They don’t give the addresses for those,” he said.

  “No, they don’t want parents kidnapping their kids.”

  “Or brothers either,” he added.

  “No.” And the light changed. Still holding the cell, I pushed off. I kept low and mostly hidden behind a boxy yellow cab. It seemed a lifetime ago when we’d been pulled from Marilyn’s custody. In reality, it was five years, nearly a third of my life. “It was close,” I said.

  “What was?”

  “The place they first took us… it could have been City Hall Park…. I was too numb to notice, but I know we didn’t leave the island.” The Prius was a block from the FDR. If they were going downtown, they’d have already turned. “I’m going to lose them.” And then an idea came. “Jerod… do you have numbers for the workers?”

  I heard the clicking of a keyboard. “Yeah.”

  “Here’s what I need you to do…. You got a pen? It gets complicated.” I watched as the Prius took the on-ramp for the FDR and headed north. The traffic started to flow, and I glimpsed Alice. It was all I could do to fight back my anger and my fear and tell Jerod what had to be done.

  Nineteen

  MY RIGHT foot touched down, my knees soft like shock absorbers as I wove through traffic. There was a weird snippet in my head from one of the dozen or so psychiatrists I had to see when I was in OCFS custody. I think he might have been in training, and the only reason he stuck in my head was he had the most beautiful brown eyes.… Yeah, sucker for brown eyes. He told me I had trust issues. I remember looking at him and cracking up. His statement of the obvious had struck me as ludicrous. “No shit,” I’d said. And then I’d torn into him… like, of course I had trust issues. Yet here I was, flying like a maniac up Avenue B, depending on someone else to come through. That scared the hell out of me. I didn’t really know Jerod… and for all his words, and those kisses. But no, I had to get home and pull together a costume for make-believe Mom.… But if it doesn’t work, if Jerod doesn’t do what he needs to…. “Shut up, Alex,” I told myself.

  I tucked into a sharp turn and shot for our building. I jumped off, flipping up the board and catching it. Then I keyed in and tore up the stairs. As I rounded the fifth floor, I wondered if maybe there’d be workers waiting for me. It seemed unlikely. Sure enough, there was no one there.

  I thought about Lorraine… would
she be inside? I hoped not. On the subject of trust and why it’s not something I did… she was a blinding example. To be on the safe side, I knocked. There was no answer. I turned the three locks, feeling the heft of the security bar and the deadbolts as they pulled back.

  Inside, I flipped on the lights. It was home, and it felt empty and sad. Lorraine had tidied things up, and there was a bowl of apples and oranges on the kitchen table. The door to Mom’s room was open, and most of her artwork had been taken down. The clothes were off the floor and stuffed into the closet.

  I knew what I needed. I dug out a navy skirt suit I’d bought for her at a thrift store on Canal. It was from an upscale women’s shop and had never been worn. I pulled a wrinkled white blouse out and a pair of low-heeled navy pumps. I hauled it into the kitchen, pulled out the iron from under the bathtub/kitchen counter, and went to work on the shirt.

  The iron huffed, and I wondered where Nimby had gone to. I was so used to her incessant chatter amping up my anxiety. But no, my little fairy had gone AWOL. I suspected she’d left me for Jerod. Who could blame her? As I worked at the worst of the wrinkles, I wondered how it was that he was the first person who could see her. Yes, Alice believed me when I told her about Nimby, but she couldn’t see her. So why Jerod? Was this the tip of the price he’d have to pay for traveling into Fey… for me? That was a whole other set of rules, and I sure as hell hadn’t figured them out yet. I resisted the urge to check in with him. He’d either get it done or…. I didn’t have a backup plan. You have to trust him. Oh God.

  I held up the blouse, the front pretty good, the back and arms like the skin on a Shar-Pei. My cell buzzed. “Yeah?”

  “We’re in,” Jerod said, his tone was incredulous. “How the hell do you know this stuff, Alex?”

  “Someday… maybe a week when you’ve got the time, I’ll tell you. So where did they take her?”

  “It’s an emergency youth shelter on Twenty-Second between Seventh and Eighth. That Lydia woman did not want to tell… your mom where they were taking her. If you hadn’t given me that statute to cite.”

  “Mom had her full custodial rights restored,” I said, zipping into what Alice called my lawyer mode. “Even in an emergency, they have to make reasonable accommodations for her to have contact with her children. If they don’t, it’s like kidnapping.”

  “So you’ve got these things memorized?”

  “Pretty much. The important ones, anyway.” I didn’t want to share how I could cite entire chapters of state and municipal code. “Until a judge says otherwise, they’ve got to let her see Alice, even if it’s supervised.”

  “She said we’ve got till seven. After that, it goes from being reasonable to unreasonable. She also said we should bring clothes… that it was unlikely Alice would be released without a full case review.”

  “Jerod, you did good.” I glanced at the clock—five fifteen. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  My mind raced. Everything I’d built to keep Alice safe had just been blown apart. If I didn’t tread carefully, this would get far worse. “Give me the address, and I’ll meet you and Mom there.” I glanced at the partially ironed blouse.… No time. “Try to tidy her up, and see if you can get some real shoes on her.”

  “I’ll get something from my mom’s closet,” he said. “She’ll never notice. Are you planning to break Alice out?”

  “I wish…. Get there fast. At least Alice will know I’m working on this. It’ll make her less scared.”

  We hung up, and I shifted into hyperdrive. I had an awful pit-of-my-stomach feeling as I filled a black plastic bag with Alice’s clothes. The nightmare we went through five years ago was always with me. The car ride to the McGuires’, our stuff in garbage bags, a feeling of helplessness. I swore this would never happen again. I also knew that OCFS had all the power. May’s words popped to mind: “You have little power here.” Every word out of my mouth… out of Mom’s mouth, was going to be weighed and potentially used against us.

  I opened the filing cabinet next to my bed and pulled out copies of important paperwork—the signed order giving Mom her custodial rights back, our report cards with school attendance records for both Alice and me—hers perfect, mine a bit fuzzy. A copy of our lease and Section-8 voucher proving we had secure housing. Bank records, copies of the utility bills—all paid on time. Then Alice’s birth certificate and social security card, her medical records showing she’d been immunized and saw our pediatrician annually.

  As I tore through my carefully labeled files, trying to think what obstacles they’d throw in front of me, it was like dealing with another version of Queen May. Right down to her wanting to take Alice.… Not going to happen.

  I stepped back, my fingers over Mom’s social security disability files. I felt sick. This had to be a coincidence. Right? Alice getting hauled in by OCFS was related to… dominos falling. My thoughts raced over the last couple days… the catastrophic disability hearing, the trip to the hospital, Mom going AWOL, Lorraine ratting us out. Dorothea’s resemblance to that Clarice woman at the DSS hearing. Then all the rest of it.… Something’s going on here, Alex. This can’t be coincidence. And if it’s not…. I glanced at the clock—5:35. Got to move. I shoved the papers into a Manila envelope, tossed them into the garbage bag, and like Santa, hoisted it over my shoulder.

  I tried to figure which would be quicker: subway, running, or…. I grabbed Clay’s skateboard. Then down the six flights, back onto the street. Right foot pumping, the city blurred as I tore up Avenue A. Something fluttered over my right shoulder as I zipped past Tompkins Square Park. Nimby had returned. “You left me,” I whispered.

  She tittered. “Jerod has dreamy eyes.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “He kissed you.”

  “Also true.” Realizing that if anyone looked at me, they’d see a gangly teen on a skateboard with a garbage bag over his shoulder, talking to himself. Something nagged at my thoughts. “You said whole creatures can’t travel between the worlds. Jerod did… he seems okay.”

  She giggled.

  “Stop that! Just tell me. Is he okay?”

  “No.”

  My foot faltered, and I nearly took a nosedive over the curb. I corrected and tried to catch my breath. “What’s going to happen to him?” In my head, all I could think was that I’d ruined this beautiful boy, who’d only wanted to help.

  She giggled again. “Jerod is fine, and no, I won’t stop. You’re mean to me, Alex.”

  She was right. For years, I’d done my best to make her go away, and now…. “I need your help, please.”

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  I whipped my head toward her and gritted my teeth. “I’m sorry.”

  “Like you mean it.”

  “Look, please.” I was shouting. “I’m sorry, and I need to know the rules. You’ve got to help me.”

  Nimby startled. “Yes, truth. I am here to help you.” Her tone changed to a scold. “About time you figured that out. Everyone says you’re so smart, Alex, but you can be dumb… and blind.”

  “Enough riddles. Please, one straight answer.”

  “Ask the right questions, Alex. I tell the truth… unlike you.”

  “Yeah, weird fairy truth.” And timing the light, I hung a wide left onto the north side of Fourteenth heading west. “How come Jerod is okay?”

  “He was protected when he entered Fey.”

  “By what?”

  “You.”

  This was worse than I thought. I wanted to scream. “How did I protect him?”

  She muttered, “Really dumb. This is why you shouldn’t look a gift fairy in the mouth. You love him, Alex. You protect those you love. It’s what you do.”

  As she said it, something clicked. Yeah, I loved Jerod, and maybe… those kisses were real. Maybe he felt something for me. Cheesy love songs flipped to mind, all that crap about the power of love.… What if it wasn’t crap? “But Mom’s in love with Ced
ric. Why didn’t that protect her from going mad?”

  “He was a trap,” she answered. “One you avoided.”

  “Liam,” I whispered, remembering his eyes, his touch as we danced, the sense of something powerful and predatory.

  I felt like my head would pop. Too much information and not enough. I swerved around a pothole and hung a left onto Twenty-Second Street. As I crossed Seventh Avenue, I spotted Jerod and changeling Mom a third of the way down the block in front of a gray brick building.

  “You did good,” I said, jumping off Clay’s board. Make-believe Mom looked… normal. Her hair was pulled back, her floral dress replaced by jeans, a button-down yellow blouse and flats. She even had a pocketbook—something I could never get real Mom to carry.

  “Blanca helped,” he said.

  “She’s perfect.” I was out of breath.

  “Hello, Alex,” she said.

  “Hi, Mom. You look nice. This is what we need to do.” I tried to think through all the ways this could go down. Everything was at stake.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Jerod said.

  “I know.” And I rang the doorbell.

  A woman’s voice came through the speaker. “Yes?”

  “It’s Marilyn and Alex Nevus to see Alice.” I braced for being told they’d changed their mind or that only Mom could go in—no way in hell that was going to happen. But instead, the door buzzed and clicked open.

  With Alice’s clothes over my shoulder, I held the door for Mom. “We have to go in,” I said.

  She smiled and looked back at Jerod, who was holding Clay’s board. “Of course.… Your fairy’s smitten with your boyfriend.”

  I let go of the door and grabbed her hand.

  Her expression was startled. “Something is wrong.”

  “Two things you are not to mention—fairies, of any sort, and me having a boyfriend. Can you do that?”

  “Of course.”

  The door slammed behind us. We were in a brightly lit corridor. In front of us was a horseshoe-shaped desk, and behind that a uniformed guard. There was a dome camera overhead, and I spotted another behind the guard. In front of the officer was an open logbook.