Citizens of Logan Pond Box Set

by Rebecca Belliston

  Carrie felt herself going numb. She couldn’t think fast enough. She was legal. She had her house. Her feet slid on the cold tile, unable to halt their progression.

  Six feet.

  Four.

  In an act of mercy, they suddenly stopped. Carrie’s bus-sized officer halted in front of the glass doors.

  “What are you waiting for?” he yelled at his partners. “Get them out of here!”

  “But, Giordano, sir,” the young patrolman started. “What about—”

  “Go!” he roared.

  Then the huge patrolman shoved Carrie outside. Carrie tried to grab the door, the handle, anything, but it was too late. Rain fell on her.

  Petrified, she only cared about two things.

  “Amber!” she shrieked back through the glass. “You have to take care of Zach! Amber!”

  Carrie couldn’t tell if her little sister heard because, faster than should have been possible, the patrolman dragged her out into the rain, away from everything that had ever meant anything to her.

  “Amber!” she screamed again.

  She tried to lock her feet against something, throwing as much weight to the slick sidewalk as she could. Her knees scraped the wet ground, her hands wrenched behind her, tearing the flesh of her wrists, but it did nothing to stop their furious progress.

  “Please!” she begged, a sob ripping through her. “Please let me say goodbye. I’m all they have!”

  The patrolman threw her, head first, into the back of a patrol car and slammed the door.

  seventeen

  AMBER COULDN’T MOVE.

  She stayed frozen in the township lobby, staring at the empty doors as Carrie’s words repeated in her mind:

  You have to take care of Zach.

  You have to take care of Zach.

  The words kept circling in Amber’s head, refusing to stop because as soon as they did, she had to think about what they actually meant.

  Carrie wasn’t coming back.

  The young patrolman gripped her arm as he argued with his partner, words too fast to understand.

  You have to take care of Zach.

  How?

  Carrie was like the air, always there. People couldn’t live without air. They needed it to survive. As if to prove it, Amber’s chest suddenly caved in on itself. She started hyperventilating.

  Shallow breaths. Too fast. She forced her lungs in and out. Breathe! With a huge gasp, the air unleashed Carrie’s plea for the hundredth time.

  You have to.

  Zach.

  Take care.

  Zach.

  The other person imploding in her world.

  Blinking, Amber turned her head. Where was Zach?

  A sudden rush of sound filled her ears in the ever-shrinking lobby. She heard her little brother before she found him. He knelt on the floor, half-sobbing, half-shouting Carrie’s name. How she hadn’t heard Zach before seemed impossible, because once she heard his wails, she couldn’t rid them from her ears.

  “Carrie! Carrie!”

  Zach’s patrolman yanked him to his feet. “Let’s go, brat.”

  “Carrie!” Zach screamed again, voice growing hoarse.

  You have to take care of Zach.

  You.

  An astonishing sense of calm overcame Amber. She could take care of her brother. Somehow. She would grow food, stay home alone at night, wash Zach’s nasty clothes, and keep him safe. The clan would help. They would. She didn’t let herself think much beyond this moment, because right now, she knew her next step.

  And it was easy.

  Turning, she looked up into the face of the officer who held her. He was younger than she expected him to be, close to Braden’s age.

  “I’d like to go home now,” she said calmly.

  “Wouldn’t we all.” He turned to his partner. “I’ll take her in Simmons’ car.” Then he started walking her across the lobby toward the doors. The same doors Carrie had been dragged out of.

  “Make sure I get my cut!” the old clerk called.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  The whole thing felt surreal, like swimming through mud. So much so that it took forever to dawn on Amber: these officers weren’t taking them home. They wouldn’t return them to Logan Pond or Braden or anything. She and Zach were going to jail—or at least Carrie was. She had no idea where they sent kids. Some place worse. Some place that wasn’t home.

  Panic seized her. Her feet turned to cement, stopping her.

  “Move!” her patrolman said, yanking on her.

  Against her will, she stumbled forward.

  “But…but I have to go home,” she said.

  Zach’s red, swollen eyes found her as if he too had just remembered she was still there. His expression mirrored her own horror, but beneath, she saw something more, a glint in his eyes like hardened steel. The same look he had when he and Amber argued, signaling that the fight was far from over. It had only just begun. A look that meant he was about to—

  Zach rammed his shoe into the shin of his patrolman. With a shout, the patrolman fell back. Unprepared for the release, Zach fell forward and plummeted into a row of metal chairs. He collided, shoulder first, slamming into the corner of the nearest seat. Scrambling up, he grabbed the chair, and hurled it at his patrolman.

  “Run!” he yelled at Amber.

  The chair bounced before it hit the patrolman’s legs. Cursing, the officer picked it up and hurled it back. Zach’s arms flew up to shield himself, but the chair smashed into him, sending him back into the next row of chairs.

  Things fell like dominoes.

  Zach.

  Chairs.

  Zach’s patrolman stormed over, grabbed his red t-shirt, and threw him against the wall. Then he whipped out handcuffs and had Zach locked up in a blur. Once Zach was restrained, he flung another set of handcuffs at Amber. She screamed as they hurtled in the air toward her. Her patrolman snatched them mid-air.

  “I don’t need them,” her patrolman said, tucking them into his belt. “She’s not the fighter her siblings are. Let’s go, miss.”

  The room spun around his face—his young face that was strangely covered in white, swirling blotches of light.

  Amber blinked slower and slower.

  A dream.

  This had to be a dream.

  “I want to go home,” she said in a small voice.

  A flash of guilt flickered across his eyes, but it was the old clerk who answered.

  “Oh, you’re going home alright,” she said behind the counter. “Only your new home will have friends who won’t get you into trouble. It’ll be a lovely place where your sister can’t hurt you ever again.”

  “Carrie!” Zach wailed again.

  He thrashed around, teeth snapping like a wild dog as he tried to sink his teeth into the arm of his officer.

  Amber’s patrolman stopped. “Want to trade?”

  “No,” Zach’s patrolman said, struggling. “I like this one.”

  Amber’s patrolman gave her one last look, a look that was almost sad. If she didn’t have Braden, she might have tried to cheer him up. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice screamed, Spit in his face! Claw his cheeks! Yank out an eyeball! Yet her head grew unbearably heavy. It began to droop backward.

  Through a cloud of haze, she heard the woman behind the counter say something, but more and more, Amber was understanding less and less. The last words she heard were from her own patrolman.

  “Don’t wait up. This might take a while.”

  eighteen

  CARRIE TRIED BEGGING IN THE patrol car.

  Begging.

  Pleading.

  She couldn’t see the patrolman through her blurred tears. A metal grate separated the front from the back seat as he drove down a deserted county road. They were headed north, but she didn’t know anything more specific.

  The huge patrolman made two phone calls while he drove, muttering angrily. As he finished the second call, she forced herself to calm down until the only so
unds in the car were the soft rain on the roof and the windshield wipers swishing back and forth.

  Once she trusted herself to speak, she tried another avenue.

  “Please, sir. Officer Giordano,” she said, using the name the other patrolman had called him, “I know Chief Jamansky.” She closed her tear-swollen eyes, willing a first name to clarify in her thoughts. “David Jamansky. He’s your chief, right? He knows me. He actually came to my house last night. He can tell you that I’m legal. Please.”

  The patrolman didn’t answer.

  “Can you tell me why my papers were revoked?” she tried. “I have a right to know why I’m being arrested.”

  Still no answer.

  “What’s going to happen to my brother and sister? Can they go home?”

  It was like he didn’t even hear her.

  “Will you at least tell me if they’ll be allowed to stay together?” Her voice broke on the last word.

  His silence was just another blow.

  “Please,” she begged, voice growing raw. “What’s going to happen to them? I’m all they have. I’m all they have.”

  Though the metal meshing separated them, she saw his eyes flicker to the rearview mirror. “Your brother and sister will be taken care of.”

  Taken care of. Not taken home to May and CJ, where they could be protected, watched, and fed by people who loved them. They would become wards of the state, raised by those who would turn them against Carrie in a place rumored to be worse than the municipalities.

  Her stomach rolled.

  How would she even find them, let alone release them?

  She struggled to keep hold of herself.

  “For…” She took a shuddering breath. “For how long? My sister is sixteen. When can she go on her own?”

  “Her eighteenth birthday,” he said.

  Two years for Amber.

  Five years for Zach.

  An eternity for Carrie.

  Blinding terror came flooding back. She squirmed, twisting her hands back and forth behind her. The handcuffs cut the skin, but her hands were small and petite. If she could just…get free. She twisted harder, collapsing her thumb joints to shrink her hands. Pain stung where her skin scraped off raw. The harder she twisted, the more her joints swelled. The cuffs were too tight. Too tight. She’d have to break bones, which she was more than willing to do, but she couldn’t even make a millimeter of progress.

  “Don’t waste your energy,” Officer Giordano said. “They’re not coming off.”

  She fell back against the seat, and she could no longer hold back the torrent of tears.

  Jamansky was behind this.

  She didn’t know how or why, but David Jamansky had done this to her.

  He’d done this to all of them.

  Why? Why insist she be home tomorrow if he’d planned her arrest today? She hadn’t even told him she was going into town. He had no idea she needed to get Zach and Amber legal. How had this happened?

  Greg.

  His name was the final blow.

  What would Greg do when he found out?

  A crushing weight squeezed her chest, her ribs, her lungs, like she’d been dropped in a vise that tightened slowly around her, squeezing the life out of her. Her body, damp and cold with rain, began to shake with all-consuming shivers.

  The drive wasn’t long—although it could have been for all she knew. As the patrol car slowed, she lifted her head to witness the finality of her arrest. A large, gray building was surrounded by endless, high, barbed-wire fences. A sign out front of a smaller building read Rochelle’s Penal Institution for Women.

  The patrolman parked along the curb and walked around to open her door. The second it was open, she kicked out, trying to hit his huge gut, but he was ready. Sidestepping, he grabbed her arm and yanked her up.

  Through the rain, she suddenly remembered something.

  “Wait.” She dug in her heels. “Wait, I have money! A lot of money. I can pay you if you release me.” Her rain-soaked hair hung in her face. She didn’t have available hands to push it back, but that didn’t matter. Her heart raced with hope. “I can pay you.”

  The large man stopped and eyed her. “How much?”

  It took her a moment to recall the amount CJ had given her. “Several hundred. I have it with me, but you have to release me first. Just let me go free and you can have all of it.”

  Greed filled his beady eyes as he glanced at the guard tower. She didn’t care. As he considered, she scanned their wet surroundings. The prison work camp was out in the wide open. No trees. No other buildings to hide behind. But she’d walk—no, sprint—all the way home. She didn’t even know the way, but she could figure it out. Then she’d find a way to free Amber and—

  Sudden pain wrenched her arms as the patrolman jerked them back as far as they would go.

  “Where is it?” He dug through her pockets. “Where did you hide the money?”

  She tried to knee him, but his three hundred pounds blocked her. It only took a minute of digging before he had it. Then he smiled.

  “Thanks for this, princess,” he said, waving CJ’s thick wad of cash. “It’s our little secret, eh?”

  She kicked out again, only that time her foot found purchase. She felt the impact all the way from her toe to her knee. So did he.

  Yelling, he swore and, in his distraction, loosened his grip.

  She dropped to the sodden gravel. Without her hands and with her already-unsteady balance, she struggled to right herself, feet sliding on the rain-soaked pebbles, but then she was up, running.

  She only made it three strides before he caught her and yanked her back. A blur of movement, and pain exploded in her cheek so hard her vision went dark.

  “And here I thought we were friends,” he hissed.

  Her vision swirled. Her ears rang. Her cheek throbbed with every heartbeat. By the time she could think straight, he had dragged her to the building and heading inside.

  A federal patrolman stood behind a counter, hands up. “Whoa. We’re not taking new prisoners. We’re full. Try Crystal Lake.”

  “Not my problem,” Giordano said, still huffing. “Commissioner’s orders, so deal with it. Her computer work has already cleared, from the Kane County District.”

  Sighing, the guard pointed. “Fine. Take her down there for processing.”

  Three guards in black met them down the hallway. They turned off the TV and grabbed their rifles.

  “What’s going on?” one asked, standing.

  “I’ve got a new recruit for you.” Pulling keys from his pocket, Carrie’s large patrolman undid her handcuffs. “Have fun with her, boys. She might not look it, but she’s a feisty one.”

  Giordano shoved her forward.

  Carrie’s hands were free, but she wasn’t prepared for the release. She stumbled straight into one of the guards.

  Catching herself, she backed up and rubbed her raw wrists. Hot tears ran down her throbbing cheek. High-pitched ringing filled her bad ear. Her wet clothes clung to her and her hair was plastered to her face. She didn’t even have the presence of mind to be scared. That is, until the first guard spoke.

  “Everything off,” he said to her. “All the way down.”

  Her head lifted. “What?”

  “We’ll dispose of your clothes later. Just leave them on the floor.”

  She clutched her mom’s wet, blue blouse. “No. No!”

  The prison guards closed in around her.

  “There now,” Giordano said. “They’ve got to make sure you aren’t hiding anything under all that…wet stuff. But don’t worry. They’ll give you a cozy jumpsuit that should fit you quite nicely.”

  The taller guard glared at him. “You can leave now, Giordano.”

  “Oh, I’m in no hurry,” he said, leaning against the wall.

  Another guard advanced on Carrie. “I’m sure you don’t want those handcuffs back on, miss, so do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?”

  * * * * *


  Greg tucked his slingshot back into his pocket and mopped the rain from his face, happy to finally be under the shelter of Richard’s porch. He wouldn’t have guessed Illinois could rain as hard as North Carolina could. He felt sorry for Carrie, Richard, and the others. Even with a coat, it couldn’t have been a fun walk into town. Then again, Carrie loved a good storm.

  Stomping his feet, he entered Richard’s house and started for the stairs, already dreading his long guarding shift.

  “Hey,” a voice called out. “Is that Greg?”

  Greg backed down the stairs and peered into the family room. “Richard? Sorry to barge in without knocking. I didn’t expect y’all to be back already. How’d it go in town?”

  “We didn’t end up going,” Richard said, coming into the front entry. He eyed Greg’s wet clothing. “Some of us weren’t in the mood to get soaked today. How was hunting?”

  Greg rubbed his wet arms, trying to work some warmth into his skin. “It took forever to convince Dylan, the village idiot, that no animal should willingly be out in this storm—including us.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” Greg braced himself to ask, “When are you headin’ into town?”

  “I haven’t spoken to Carrie yet,” Richard said. “Once the storm lets up, I’ll track her down and find out.”

  “Just not tomorrow, alrighty?”

  “Most likely not.”

  Greg looked at him pointedly. “Not tomorrow. Or the next day. Really, Jamansky could be there any day after today, so y’all are just gonna have to suck it up and go in the rain this afternoon. Don’t wait too long, either. The township office closes at 5 p.m., whenever the heck that is.”

  Smiling, Richard shook his head. “You have issues. It won’t hurt to wait a few days—or even a week—to get Amber and Zach legal. Carrie is still recovering. If she doesn’t feel up to spending the day drenched, I’m not going to force her to go—and neither are you. It’s her call.”

  Richard O’Brien was as close to a father as anybody Greg had known in twenty years, but Greg thought of him more as a friend. An older, usually-more-wiser friend.

  He sighed. “Fine.” Hopefully the rain would let up anyway and they could still go this afternoon. “Got a towel I can use to dry off?”