Mortal Raised

by Kit Bladegrave

  “It’s not a big deal,” I insisted. “We handle things just fine here, and nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  “Just like nothing almost happened to you tonight?” she challenged, and my blood ran cold. “Tell me, if that car had hit you, if you’d been severely injured or heaven forbid killed, what would happen to Mason?”

  I gulped and squeezed Mason’s hand harder. I hadn’t even thought about that. What would he have done? We had no emergency contacts, no one to turn to.

  Rosa whispered something to Officer Stenson, and he stepped out into the hall to make a call.

  “Hey, how about I have someone bring some doughnuts up here while we talk? Does that sound nice? I think they have some leftover at the station from earlier,” Rosa said. “We’ll get this all sorted out, promise.”

  That bull worked on Mason, but it wasn’t going to work on me. I glared at her. I knew the sort of thing that was about to happen. They were going to talk all sweet and calm, but then they were going to tell us to come down to the station. Then we’d have to sit and listen to them talk about how our situation was not ideal—how the state was going to be stepping in.

  Our game was over. My plans were ruined. I was angry and terrified all at once. Mason was quiet, and I knew he was feeling guilty for not playing by the rules we had established in case anyone ever asked where Mom had gone. He was just a kid. I guess, technically, I was too, but I was seventeen. I felt like I could take care of my brother just fine, but Officer Rosa didn’t seem to think so.

  And if I wanted to be honest, she was right. I could’ve died tonight, and Mason would’ve been left all alone in this crappy neighborhood, with no way to get money, no way to survive. We pushed our luck, getting away without Mom for this long.

  Another pair of officers arrived, and they brought doughnuts as promised. They gave one to Mason, and he smiled slightly. A chocolate-coated doughnut. That’d keep him happy for a little while, at least. They offered me one, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat.

  Officer Rosa had been sitting there talking for a while about her two kids, away at college, when the other two male officers arrived. By then she had learned very little, mostly from Mason, but she had managed to gather that he was looking forward to seeing the new Spiderman movie and that he had a small superhero action figure collection.

  “Say, Mason,” Officer Rosa said, and then nodded toward one of the officers. “This is Officer Phillips. He loves superheroes too. Why don’t you show him that cool collection you told me about while I talk to your sister alone for a second?”

  Mason looked to me for confirmation that this was okay, and I gave him a reassuring nod and a forced smile, but my insides were screaming.

  Once Mason was out of the room, Rosa—Officer Rosa, I reminded myself—turned to me. The other officers were snooping around my apartment. “You’ve done a good job, Everest,” she said. “I can tell you must work really hard for you and your brother to stay afloat, but you had to drop out of school and from the look on your face, you’re working far too much for someone your age.”

  “I’m working as much as I need to,” I argued, not wanting to look at her.

  “I’m sure you are. Why don’t you and Mason come down to the station so that we can try to figure some things out?”

  “There is nothing to figure out,” I insisted. “We’re fine. I’ll be eighteen next year, and I can take care of Mason. There’s food here, and the place is finally clean since she hasn’t been here. Really, we’re doing a lot better than we were before. If you make us leave here now, they’ll put us both in foster care, and it could take me years to get him out. If you just wait until I’m eighteen, the courts will be more likely to sign him over to me than if he’s not with a foster home.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been planning this for a while.”

  I finally lifted my gaze to hers. “Yeah? I’ve been planning on taking him away from our mom for a while. She doesn’t deserve him, but I can take care of him. Just leave us be, please.”

  “I can’t do that, Everest,” Officer Rosa said sadly. “You know I can’t.”

  “I know.” I tried to keep up glare, but the concern in her eyes was too much, and the walls I built to keep myself safe these past, however, many years started to crack. I started to cry, not bothering to wipe the tears dripping down my cheeks. “Why do you think I’ve tried so hard to keep this a secret? I’m sorry I stole the money, but I needed to pay rent. Besides, this is my mom’s apartment, so the money was going to her rent. I was just paying it for her with her money. Please.”

  “Everest, you’re not in trouble,” she promised me. “We just want to help.”

  I was crying pretty heavy now, feeling the eyes of the other cops on me and not caring, not anymore. I knew my resisting was not going to help the situation. She had made up her mind. I could make it worse for Mason by throwing a scene, or I could roll with it.

  “I hate you,” I told her, and wiped my tears, but that wasn’t really true, and when she pulled me into a hug, I sensed without a doubt she wasn’t offended by my outburst.

  She was just doing what she had to do.

  “He’s doing well here, you know? He has straight As. I paid for him to join a club too, so he stays away from the local gangs,” I rambled against her jacket. “I started a savings account this month for both of us to go to college. You take us away, and all of that is going away. What foster home is going to make sure he studies every night and spends his Saturdays at the library studying? I do that. Me. No one else is going to push that hard and work as hard as I do for him.”

  Rosa nodded. “You’re probably right. But, Everest, this isn’t just about Mason. It’s about you, too. Sweetheart, aren’t you tired? You have to think about yourself, too. Working like this, you’re more likely to wind up in an early grave than at college. Trust me, I’ve seen this before, and if someone doesn’t step in, it rarely ends well.”

  I was tired. I was exhausted. I kept wiping tears away.

  If that guy who had tried to run me down hadn’t died, I probably would have hunted him down and killed him for putting me in this situation. But, there was always the other one out there. I could make a go at him, too.

  “Fine,” I said, as though they were giving me a choice. “Let’s go down to the station.”

  Five

  Everest

  The talk at the station was brief, but thankfully Rosa—she said to call her that—stepped up and offered to take us in for the night. Better than the police station, I guessed.

  The chief had seemed uncertain at first, but she told him Mason and I needed time to let everything sink in before they started coming up with a game plan on where to place us.

  Truthfully, I was pretty grateful for it. I crashed on her couch and let Mason sleep in the guest bedroom down the hall. She tried to talk with me some more, but I curled up under the quilt she gave me and shut my eyes, wishing this would all just go away. But life was never that easy.

  In the morning, I woke to Rosa in the kitchen making coffee and breakfast. There’d be no school today for Mason, and before I even opened my mouth to ask, I was told I wasn’t going to work, either.

  “Mind if I use your phone?” I asked her, not liking being told what to do as if I hadn’t been running my life perfectly fine for the last three months.

  “Sure thing, hon.” She nodded to the cordless on the wall in the kitchen.

  I took it into the other room and called Jensen. “Hey, Everest. You missed your shift this morning. You alright?”

  “I’ve got some news,” I started and found myself crying all over again as I told him what happened last night.

  Everything came out in a rush, and he did his best to comfort me over the phone.

  “Do you need me to do anything?” he asked, when I finally calmed down. “Can I offer to take you two in at all?”

  “No, really, you’ve done enough for me. But I’m not going to make it into work for a few days at le
ast.”

  “Your job will be here, don’t worry,” he promised. “Maybe this will be a good thing.”

  “Like what? A blessing in disguise?”

  “You never know.” He told me to keep my head up and if I needed anything else to call him.

  I said I would, but I doubted he could do anything to help me now. I hung up and returned to the kitchen to find Mason already tucking in at the table and happily stuffing his face with eggs, bacon, sausage, and biscuits with gravy.

  Rosa smiled kindly at me as I joined the two of them.

  I picked at a few bits of bacon on my plate.

  “You should eat something.”

  “Just not hungry,” I mumbled.

  “It’ll all work out, Everest,” she promised, and patted my hand. “It will.”

  I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t shake the horrible worries weighing on me that things were about to get a lot worse before they got better.

  While we ate, the front door opened, and another officer stepped inside, but this one was her husband.

  She introduced us all, and he joined us for breakfast. Neither of them stared at us with pity, at least. I wasn’t sure I could’ve handled that.

  She asked him about his night, and he politely smiled at us and excused himself from the table, taking his wife with him. They moved down the hall towards the bedrooms, but I could just barely hear their whispered words.

  Curious about what was so bad they had to leave the kitchen, I told Mason I had to pee and quietly moved towards the hall to listen.

  “—tracked him all the way across the city,” I heard her husband whisper. “But then the trail just vanished.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, and I leaned closer.

  “I mean there were footsteps and a trail of blood and then… nothing. It’s like he vanished on the spot.”

  “People can’t disappear into thin air.” She sighed, and I braced myself to move away in case they came back to the living room, but then she was talking again. “What about the other guy? The one she said saved her?”

  “Nothing in the alley or the surrounding area. Whatever happened last night, we’re at a dead end. How’s she holding up?”

  “As good as can be expected I guess, considering what happened.”

  “Yeah, true. Anything I can do?”

  “No, I got this. Go take a shower. You stink,” she teased, and I heard his rumble of laughter.

  Tiptoeing, I made my way back to the kitchen, not wanting to listen to their intimate moment, and sat down just as Rosa stepped back into view.

  “Well now, you two eat up, as much as you want. You might be at the station for a while today, and food there is nothing compared to my cooking.”

  Mason took her at her word, but I only managed to eat a biscuit and a piece of bacon before I gave up.

  We drove to the station that morning in her patrol car, and Mason was ecstatic because she let him turn on the lights in the parking lot.

  I grinned, happy at least to see him having a good time. Once inside, she took us to this back room; I guess it was their break room or something. There was a couch, a refrigerator, a coffee maker, a sink, and a table with some chairs.

  Mason and I sat on the couch uncomfortably for a minute until a woman in a pencil skirt and suit jacket came walking in with Rosa.

  “Everest, this is Mrs. Norah Peddler. She’s in charge of the local foster care programs. She was hoping you two could have a private talk?”

  I nodded and stood up, but glanced back at Mason.

  “Don’t worry,” Rosa said with a wink. “I’ll hang out with the little man while you’re gone.”

  I smiled, admittedly half-heartedly, and thanked her before following Mrs. Peddler into an office toward the back of the station. She sat down at her desk and started going over some information with me—asking me mine and Mason’s birthdays, our social security numbers, and a bunch of other information about our identities.

  There was no point in not telling her what she wanted to know, and I was anxious to get back to Mason so I rambled off numbers and dates as quickly as I could. She asked about Mom, and I was honest. At this point, I didn’t see a point in lying anymore. I told her about Mom’s problems—her alcoholism, her tendency to disappear on occasion, and her sometimes running off with a boyfriend here and again. She asked some normal questions, but then her face turned serious, and her tone lowered.

  “Was there ever any abuse in the home?”

  “What? God no,” I snapped. “Mom might’ve been a drunk and yelled, but she never hit either one of us.”

  “I’m sorry, I know this is hard, Everest, but I have to ask.”

  “No, I know I just… we’ve been through a lot and life was hard, but no, she never physically abused us.”

  “What about mentally?”

  My mouth opened and closed a few times on that one before I finally shook my head. “No, we argued, but it was usually about me throwing out her booze. And she rarely yelled at Mason, I didn’t let her.”

  Mrs. Peddler jotted down a few more notes, nodding to herself, and I tried to get more comfortable on the plastic chair.

  The whole time she asked questions, she was kind and reassuring. She kept telling me how smart and brave I was for taking care of Mason for so long on my own, like I needed her approval.

  I wasn’t in the mood for this sort of thing. In fact, it was getting old really quick, and my decision to cooperate was starting to bite me in the ass the longer she kept me in here.

  “The good news,” she said while propping her elbows up on the desk, “is that the two foster homes that are going to be taking you and Mason in are only about an hour away from each other, so we’ll be able to work something out to where you’ll get to see one another often.”

  I felt as if time screeched to a halt and I stared at her blankly. Then her words echoed again in my mind, and I felt like my head almost exploded with a sudden burst of anger.

  My eyes widened, and I think if I wasn’t so shocked I would have jumped up and knocked her out right then and there. “Excuse me?”

  “The two homes are very close together,” she repeated. “The foster parents we’re talking to say they would be more than happy to meet up some weekends so that you and Mason can see each other often, at least once a month.”

  “You’re sending us to two different homes?” I slammed my palms down on the desk, and she calmly leaned back like she had been expecting it. “I won’t go,” I said firmly. “You can’t make me. I won’t be separated from my brother!”

  “I know this is all a big change, but it’s for the better.”

  “For who? Who says its better?” I snapped. “Find a foster home where we can go together.”

  “There is nothing available right now. We are looking, and as soon as something opens up, we’ll, of course, move you two. We try to do our best to keep siblings together, but there is simply not enough room right now.”

  “Find room,” I demanded. “You’re out of your mind if you think I will let you take Mason away from me.”

  She offered a gentle smile, and a terrifying thought hit me.

  What if that’s why they had just separated us? To make it easier to take him away? In case I caused a scene?

  I know that was a bit paranoid on my part, but I bolted.

  She yelled after me, but I didn’t stop. I ran out the door, flinging it open with such ferocity that the doorknob left a dent in the wall.

  “Everest,” Mrs. Peddler yelled louder, chasing after me. “Everest, stop!”

  I ran down the hall back into the break room, trying not to slam into any of the officers moving around the hall. Most looked at me confused until they heard Mrs. Peddler yelling and I heard one of them say something into their radio. By then I was in the other room and flinging the door open.

  Thankfully, Mason and Rosa were both still there. I doubled over from my sprint before I stepped inside.

  By my freaked-out l
ook, Rosa must have sensed something was amiss. “Everest, what’s wrong?”

  “They want to send us to different homes,” I shouted. “I thought they were going to take him without me getting to say goodbye. I wasn’t going to let them take him from me.”

  Mason’s bottom lip poked out, and he no longer looked twelve. He was a toddler again, scared about the bogeyman under our bed, or the monsters in the closet. Or tucking his head under the pillow when Mom started drunkenly screaming in the middle of the night, screaming things that never made sense to me.

  He jumped up and ran to me. I hugged him tightly, not about to let him be taken from me, not now.

  Mrs. Peddler arrived behind me and had the audacity to try to touch me on my shoulder.

  I flinched away from her, dragging my brother with me. He might be almost as tall as me, but I was supposed to protect him, and that’s exactly what I was going to do.

  “Don’t touch me. Mason and I are not going to two different homes. Find somewhere else that we can both go.”

  “Everest, there is no reason to be upset,” she tried to say.

  “Yes, there is. There is plenty of reason to be upset. We were fine until you all showed up.” I gripped Mason tight. “I’m not letting you take him away from me—I’ll… I’ll kill you,” I stammered, but no one reacted to my threat.

  Mrs. Peddler was still calm as ever, and Rosa looked torn on what she should do.

  I guessed Mrs. Peddler probably dealt with this sort of thing all the time and had found some way to keep herself detached from the kids who screamed threats at her for taking them away. I was probably not even the feistiest kid she had met. I held Mason like someone was trying to take him away that very moment. For all I knew, they were going to do just that.

  “We are here to help,” Mrs. Peddler assured me. “And, I mean that with absolute sincerity. I know this is difficult. I realize that. But, you have to think about what’s best for you and for Mason.”