“Creed’s going to kill me,” she sobs.
Creed? Creed?
Then she says, “Oh, Christ. I can’t be a mother! I can’t do that! How could we have been so stupid?”
Moth
er? I hate my mother. She left, and the Kid and I were alone, although not really. We had others. We had people. We had family. They weren’t blood, but blood doesn’t matter. They were ours and we were theirs.
I need. I need them now.
“Bear,” she cries. “I can’t be pregnant! I just can’t be!”
Oh. Oh. That. She’s pregnant. Creed.
“How far?” someone asks, and I realize it’s me.
“Six weeks,” she sniffs. “Creed’s Christmas break. The condom must have broken.”
And suddenly I can speak. “Anna. I love you. I love you. We’ll fix this, somehow. But if you don’t let me go right now and let me find them, I’m going to shove you, and I know you’re having a baby and that’s bad, but I’ve got to find them. They’re here and I don’t know where, but I have to find them.”
She looks scared. “Who’s here, Bear? How’d you know to come here?”
I don’t want to say it out loud, because if I do it’ll make it true. But I have no choice because I’m not in my right mind. I’m on the edge of everything, and I am about to float away without my tether. But somehow, I do it anyways. Ah God, it hurts. It hurts so much. “Mrs. Paquinn had a stroke, I think. The Kid is here with her.”
The tears spill over her eyes again, and she moans. “Otter?” she asks.
“Where is he? Tonight was supposed to be… tonight was….” She looks down at my left hand for some reason.
“Accident,” I say. “The hospital called and said there’s been an accident.”
She’s horrified, but then something happens to her. Something happens to Anna. The tears don’t exactly dry up, and she’s still hiccupping, but her face hardens and her eyes flash, and it’s like she’s alive, it’s like she knows.
She pulls me into her arms, and her lips are near my ear and—
you’ve broken my heart
—I want to collapse against her, to let her carry the weight because I can’t. I can’t—
but it was mine to give
—take it anymore. I can’t take gifts only to have them taken away from me. I can’t have something to call my own because it will always be taken back. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this woman holding me as she gathers her strength, as she gathers her courage to be the strong one, to be the one I can’t be right now. Everyone always leaves.
“We’ll find them,” she says harshly, in control. “We’ll find them all.”
THE Kid is first, as he rightly should be. I try not to think about the fact that he’s the only one out of the three that can probably hear me, that can actually know I’m there. Anna asked someone something, and we were led down a long hallway, the lights overhead buzzing. One of them flickered. I wanted to ask if they had someone to change that, but didn’t know why I should care.
And then I see the Kid, sitting in a plastic chair, a nurse bent down in front of him, talking to him quietly. His eyes are closed and his face scrunched up, and I know he’s been that way since I told him to do it. Anna lets me go, and I move quickly. The nurse sees me coming and takes a step back, looking like she’s about to say something, but I don’t listen. I don’t know who she is. The Kid is all I see. He gasps out and starts to shudder when he feels my arms go under his, and I pull him up, up, up, and he wraps himself around my neck and shakes and cries out. I try to tell him it will be okay. I try to tell him that everything will be all right, but I can’t seem to find the words. And it’s because I don’t know if things will be okay. I’m supposed to be the adult here, and I can’t even tell my nine-year-old brother that things will be fine because I don’t know if they will be. I’m ashamed, but it doesn’t free the words from my mouth.
“What happened?” I ask him finally.
“She just fell,” he says as he trembles. “She said something was wrong, and her face was wrong, and she fell.” This starts him off again, and I am finally able to whisper nothings to him, telling him I’ve got him, can’t he feel that? I look over at Anna and see she’s on the phone, and tears are on her face, and she says, “Otter,” and “Mr. Thompson,” so she must be on the phone with his parents, letting them know what little she does.
And that almost knocks me flat. I have Tyson and he’s safe, but I have a choice. I can find Otter. Or I can find Mrs. Paquinn. I can’t do both right now. It has to be one or the other, and my heart cracks a little as there really is no question.
“Where’s Otter?” the Kid says miserably. “Did he come with you?”
“Oh,” is all I’m able to get out. Where is Otter?