“Do you feel ready to do this?” Nora rested her chin in her hand, studying Isaac’s face. “You don’t have to start back yet, if you don’t want to.”
He nodded. “Mmmhmm.” He did not sound excited.
She bit her lip. “Are you sure?”
He didn’t look up. “Mmmhmm.”
“You would tell me if you weren’t?”
Isaac’s voice was small. “Yep.”
Nora sighed, shaking her head. “No you wouldn’t.”
Isaac swallowed, tracing a pattern on the tabletop with his finger. He didn’t say anything.
“You do want to go, right, Ike?” Taylor prompted, his mouth full of Cheerios.
Isaac blinked. “What?”
Taylor rolled his eyes. “School. Do you want to go to school?”
Isaac looked startled for a moment. “School? Oh. . . yeah. School.”
“Honey. . .” Nora put her hand on top of his. “Stay home.”
“I’m okay.” Isaac stood up, slowly. “I really am. I just-”
“He wants to go.” Taylor was growing impatient. “He said so. Come on.”
“Taylor. . .” Nora took a deep breath. “Ike,” she said, “why not stay home today and try again tomorrow-”
“No.” He shook his head, picking up his backpack. “I’m good.”
“You sure?” Nora asked again.
He nodded. “Okay.” He didn’t really know what he was saying.
Spring break was a week away, and Dr. Farrigan had told Isaac he could go back to school. In fact, he’d recommended it. “Take a few days now, and then you’ll have a week off before you have to go back.”
If the doctor said he was ready, Isaac guessed that he must be. Early morning sunshine bathed the world in golden light. Only a few patches of frozen snow clung to the saturated grass.
“Aren’t you glad that you’re going back to school?” Taylor inquired.
“Um,” Isaac answered.
“I am,” Taylor grinned.
“Honey, if you want to go home, call me or call Dan,” Nora told Isaac, as she pulled up in front of the school. “One of us will come and get you. It won’t be a problem at all.”
He sighed. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Are you sure you’re ready?” Nora asked again. “We can turn around and I will take you home right now.”
“Don’t you have to go to work?” Isaac asked.
Nora rolled her eyes. “You’re more important.” She saw Isaac’s expression. “Honey. . . you are.”
“No I’m not,” Isaac murmured. “It’s okay.”
She caught his arm before he stood up. “Isaac, you are more important to me than being on time for work. It’s a fact. I am not going to send you off to school unless you know that you can call us any time you want and we will come and get you. That’s a fact, too. All right?”
He grinned, embarrassed, but happy. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Nora told him, hugging him good bye. “Have a good day at school, sweetie.”
Isaac felt as if he had never been to school in his life. He was surprised that he remembered his way back to his classroom. Everything looked bigger than he remembered. He felt a lot smaller.
The beige-tiled walls felt smooth beneath his hand, cool and solid but somehow not quite real, as if everything around him- the walls, the ceiling, the floor he was standing on- could suddenly disappear and leave him hanging there in space. For a moment, Isaac didn’t move. He was scared it might happen.
A lot of things had changed in his classroom. There was a row of styrafoam cups at the window, with plants growing in them. All the pictures on the wall were different. Isaac felt as if he had changed. He couldn’t remember what he’d been like before. He didn’t really know what was different about him now. He was different, though. He didn’t even feel like a third grader any more. He felt about a hundred years old. Maybe two hundred.
Kids trickled in, and some of them noticed that he was back. “You were gone for a long time,” one girl observed.
“You’re going to be in trouble for being absent so much,” another girl obsered. She had round glasses and ponytails tied with purple pompoms. Her name was Jenny, Isaac remembered. The other girl’s name was Veronica.
“Oh,” Isaac said.
“You are,” Veronica assured him.
“Big trouble,” Jenny agreed.
“Oh,” said Isaac.
Maria came over, the girl who had a crush on him. “Erin N. moved to Tucson,” she said, as if she’d planned this specially. “Too bad she can’t be your girlfriend any more.”
Maria batted her long eyelashes. Isaac swallowed, studying the surface of his desk. “Oh.”
“I can’t be your girlfriend either,” Maria told Isaac. “I’m going out with Ronnie now.”
“Oh,” said Isaac.
“Don’t you care?” Maria asked.
Isaac shook his head.
Rolling her eyes, Maria stood up. “Fine,” she said. “Be that way.”
“Isaac,” said Ms. Kincaid, when she came to his name in the roll book, “we’re glad to have you back with us.”
Everybody turned to stare at him. Isaac didn’t believe her.
“Open your desks,” Ms. Kincaid directed, “and take out your dictation notebooks.”
Experimentally, Isaac opened his desk. He didn’t think he had a dictation notebook, but maybe he’d forgotten.
The inside of Isaac’s desk was overflowing with papers. No one had touched them since before winter break.
He wondered what would have happened if he’d died. Would they have left his stuff there? Would they have taken everything out? Would they have thrown it away?
Isaac wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if he wanted to.
On the top of his stack of books was a spelling test from mid-December. “Corrected by Kiara Germaine,” read the girly scrawl along the bottom. He’d gotten most of the words wrong. He knew how to spell some of them now. “Pajamas,” for example, was not “pijamaz.” Other words, like “photograph,” he still wasn’t sure if he could spell right. All he knew was that it wasn’t “fotograf,” because that was the way he’d spelled it before.
Kiara had made lots of x’s on the paper. “+3,” she’d written at the top. “-17.” Isaac swallowed. He remembered why he didn’t like school.
“Isaac, take out your dictation notebook,” Ms Kincaid directed.
His voice, when he spoke, was whispery and uncertain. “Um. . . I um. . . I don’t think that I. . .”
“Use a sheet from another notebook for now,” Ms Kincaid suggested. “Do you have a pencil?”
He nodded. He’d found one in his desk.
“Good.” Ms. Kincaid stood up to address the class. “Sea anemones are very interesting creatures. . .”
Isaac bit his lip. What was dictation? What was he supposed to do? Everyone around him was writing busily.
“Isaac, please participate in this activity,” Ms Kincaid glanced up at him, then back down at her book. “Sea Anemones are very beautiful. . .”
Isaac hung his head, swallowing. He didn’t know what to do.
Kids rushed back and forth on the playground, screaming. Isaac walked along the edge of the chain-link fence, running his hand along metal that was rough and gritty beneath his fingers. If you slid it along the fence as you walked, your entire hand tingled with a delicious pins and needles feeling. Isaac wasn’t thinking about anything. He watched a gum wrapper skitter along the ground, blown by the wind.
“Hey.” The boy who stepped in front of him was tall and burly, his eyes like asphalt. “I want to know something.”
Isaac sighed, glancing up at him before training his gaze on the ground again. “What?”
The boy narrowed his eyes. “How many times did your mother stab you?”
Isaac swallowed. His palms prickled with sweat. “My mother didn’t stab me.”
The boy clenched his hands into fists, taking a step forward. “Yeah, right.”
“She didn’t,” Isaac whispered.
“She did so,” the boy countered. “Don’t bother lying about it, because everybody knows.”
Isaac didn’t say anything.
“Why’d your mother stab you?” the boy asked, his voice a needling singsong. “What did you do?”
“My mother didn’t stab me,” Isaac whispered again, and turned to walk away.
“Kid. . .” the boy appeared in front of Isaac again, rolling his eyes. “Don’t bother lying. Your mother was so screwed up we knew she’d do it eventually anyway.”
“She wasn’t really my mother,” Isaac said. It was all he could think of to say.
At lunch, Isaac sat down by himself and opened the paper bag he’d brought from home. It had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in it and a juice box and some carrot sticks. He had some cookies, too, and a note.
“Call if you want to leave!” Nora had written. “Remember, you have to see the nurse at 10:30 and 1:00.”
Isaac winced. He remembered. Ms Kincaid had stopped class at 10:25 that morning to tell him to go to the nurse. The entire class had been looking at him, and he knew what they were thinking. There’s the kid whose mother stabbed him. Isaac wished Ms Kincaid hadn’t announced it to the whole world.
The nurse had given him a funny look when he appeared in the doorway and reminded her that he needed to take his medicine. She, too, knew why he was there, and she did not know quite what to make of a little boy whose mother had stabbed him. “Here,” she said, handing him two pills and a glass of water. He looks like any other nine year old, she thought. The fact, to her, seemed incredible. She couldn’t quite believe it.
Now, Isaac stared at Nora’s note and didn’t feel like any other nine year old. He wanted to go home, crawl into bed and never come out again. He couldn’t, though. He needed to face things instead of hiding from them.
He needed to face that this was how things would be for the rest of his life.
On the playground after lunch, Isaac found a hole in the fence.
He was dashing down the street, faster than he’d known he could run. The sky was thick with rainclouds, cool air burning the back of his throat. Isaac darted into an alley, cut through a backyard. Dimly, he remembered crossing railroad tracks, running down a hill and between massive buildings.
He ended up beside a little creek, when he couldn’t run any longer. The water trickled through leaf-logged rocks and under a little bridge before it disappeared beneath the street.
Isaac sank to the ground, his chest heaving. Neither he nor the creek was really supposed to be there.
Ms Kincaid, calling roll after the third graders had been called back inside after lunch, paused when she came to Isaac’s name. “Where is he? Is he here?”
The little boy who sat behind Isaac squinted, scanning the room. “No?” he volunteeered, questioningly.
“Nora?” Dan received the phone call shortly after one in the afternoon, while he and Zac were watching “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Immediately, Dan had called Nora.
“Nor?” Dan’s voice was level, almost as if he had been expecting this for a long time. “They lost him.”
Nora almost dropped the phone. “What?”
“Taylor, can you think of anywhere your brother might have gone?” Mr. Martinez’s voice was gentle, serious. “Think hard.”
Taylor squeezed his eyes shut, scratching the side of his head and swinging his legs. “I’m thinking,” he promised Mr. Martinez, then cracked one eye open and whispered conspiratorially. “When you scratch your head, it means you’re thinking very hard.”
“Think very hard,” Mr. Martinez agreed.
“I know!” Taylor exclaimed, triumphantly.
Mr. Martinez jumped. “What?” he asked.
Taylor grinned. “Ike went to Disneyland!”
Dan bit his lip. He knew how easy it could be to lose a little boy, thought of the myriad of places Isaac might have gone. He wondered if Ike would try to go back to the apartment where he’d been stabbed, wondered if it was likely.
“If you were Ike,” he asked Zac, “where would you go?”
Zac sighed. “He wouldn’t go the same place as me.”
Nora did not overlook the meaningful glance that passed between the two police officers who had been called to the school. “You say he is in an abusive home situation?” one asked, tapping a ballpoint pen against the corner of a report he was filling out.
Nora shook her head. “He was. Not now.”
“And his mother is in prison?”
Nora nodded. “Yes.”
“What would you say. . .” The second police officer took a deep breath. “What would you say is the likelihood that Isaac would run away in hopes of finding his mother?”
Nora bit her lip. “I hadn’t thought of that, but I doubt that it would be likely.”
“Does he have anyone else he might try to run away to?”
“No.” Nora clenched her hands into fists, trying to keep them from shaking. “Not that I know of.”
“Not that you know of,” the second police officer repeated.
“Do you think he planned this?” the first one asked.
Nora sucked in her breath. “You know,” she said, “I would tend to think that. . . based on what I know about Isaac. . . that this would be something spontaneous. A reflexive action, rather than something he planned.”
“Dr. Conway. . .” the second police officer spoke gently. “When a child who has been abused runs away, it’s usually an act they’ve been contemplating for a long time.”
“I’m sure he’s contemplated running away,” Nora agreed. “But I doubt that this scenario. . . running away from school, I mean. . . would be the type of plan he’d come up with.”
“Is there any reason you would believe that?”
Nora paused, thinking. “I just think. . . if he was seriously attempting running away. . . he would try to take Taylor and Zac with him.”
“Both of his parents abandoned the family,” one police officer stated.
Nora nodded. “His father left when he was four. His mother. . . her absences were sporadic, during the few years after that.”
“Would you describe him as being in touch with reality?” the first police officer prodded.
Nora couldn’t hold back a sardonic smile. “He pretty much raised his two little brothers on his own,” she said. “He was the one who took care of his mother when she was too incapacitated to do so on her own. He’s in touch with reality.”
“He wouldn’t harbor any. . . fantasies. . . he might try to fulfill by running away?”
“None that I know of,” Nora insisted. “As I’ve been saying. . . this isn’t characteristic of the way he usually behaves, or even makes decisions. I don’t think this is part of some elaborate plan he’s carrying out.”
“Does he have any way of contacting you or your husband?” the second police officer asked.
Nora nodded. “He has my pager number.”
It had been raining for the better part of the afternoon. School had ended a long time ago, Isaac sensed. It was definitely late by now.
He had crawled into the culvert beneath the bridge that ran over the creek, the bridge that cars ran over. Braced around the trickle of water that flowed through the bottom of the corrugated iron tube, Isaac stared out at the raindrops that danced on the surface of the creek when they hit it, creating little ripples. He’d been sitting in the rain for a long time before he realized he was getting wet. Now he shivered, freezing.
Isaac had realized something. He’d run away. Just like his mother. He was worse than she was. He’d promised Taylor and Zac he wouldn’t do this. He’d done it anyway.
Isaac swallowed, his eyes stinging. All he’d been thinking about was getting away from school. It hadn’t even occured to him what else he might be abandoning.
Dan didn’t know where to look. It was the element of this whole thing that bothered him the most; the fact that he had no idea where Isaac might have gone, what he might be doing. He didn’t know where to look.
The world was huge, and there were so many bad things in it.
Isaac pushed open the door of the tiny drugstore, fingering the quarter in his pocket. The woman behind the counter eyed him suspiciously. “Can I help you?”
Isaac willed himself to form the words. “Is there a phone?” he whispered.
The woman pointed to the pay phone next to the door. “Right there,” she said.
Isaac stood in front of it for a moment, blinking. He fingered the slip of paper on which Nora had written her pager number. The ink had smeared across the saturated paper, the writing barely visible.
He could have called anyway, but Isaac couldn’t work up the courage.
“Do you need help using the phone?” the lady asked.
Isaac shook his head. His thoughts were racing, and he rested one hand against the wall to counter how dizzy he was feeling. “I know how to use it,” he said, whispering again.
Suddenly, Isaac knew what he was going to do. He swallowed hard, turning back to the lady. “Do you have a phone book I could use? Please?”
Mr. Lincoln pulled up in the car that was as sleek and refined as he was, painted an understated, creamy tan. He met Isaac’s eyes with a level, knowing gaze that saw everything and betrayed nothing. “Hello, Isaac.”
He turned up the heat when he saw how Isaac was shivering.
They drove through the rainy streets, neither of them saying anything. Every time Isaac opened his mouth, his throat closed over and he felt as if he might cry. “Thanks for picking me up,” he managed, finally.
Mr. Lincoln nodded. “I’m glad you called.” He didn’t say anything more, not for what felt like a long time.
They pulled up in front of a house, the car idling in the driveway while Mr. Lincoln chose his words. “Isaac,” he said, “you’re going to have to call them once we get inside.”
Isaac nodded, his voice shaky. “I know.”
“You pick up the phone,” Mr. Lincoln told Isaac, when it rang. They both knew it was Nora, returning the page.
Isaac shook his head, nervously.
Mr. Lincoln gave him a look. “You pick up the phone,” he repeated, calmly.
Isaac swallowed. “Okay.” He picked up the phone. “Hello?” he whispered.
“Hi!” Nora exclaimed, too overwhelmed by relief at that moment to be mad at him. “Honey, where are you? How are you? Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Isaac whispered. “I’m at Mr. Lincoln’s.”
“Mr. Lincoln’s?” Nora sounded surprised. “Did you call him?”
“Yeah,” Isaac chewed at his cuticle. “I’m. . . I’m really sorry.”
“That’s okay.” Nora took a deep breath, phrasing her next words carefully. “We’re not mad, honey. What happened?”
For the first time, there was conviction in Isaac’s voice. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“Couldn’t what?” Nora asked, mildly, but Isaac didn’t answer her.
Mr. Lincoln sent Isaac into the next room while he talked to Nora. Isaac could hear his voice, but he couldn’t hear what Mr. Lincoln was saying.
Isaac perched on the edge of the couch, afraid to move. He was still shivering, the inside of his chest still raw with the feeling of running outside in the cold air. Mr. Lincoln’s house was modern and bright, spacious in that way of high ceilings and walls of windows, everything clean and white. There was an enormous painting behind the couch, photographs neatly arranged on each endtable and amid the books, painted masks and woven bowls of the shelves at the end of the room. Skylights flooded the room with the diluted gray light of the sun hidden behind rainclouds. Everything was neatly, perfectly arranged.
Isaac leaned over the arm of the couch and studied the framed family picture nestled next to the lamp on the table next to him. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln sat on a bench, their faces composed and serious, a small boy nestled serenely between them. Grouped in the background were the five older kids, two girls and three boys.
James was the oldest, Isaac knew, the one named after his father. He was twenty-four. Mahalia was twenty two, and Raun was twenty one. Olivia, the one who was about to graduate from high school, was eighteen. Antoine, who had gone with his mother to England, was sixteen. Jamal, the youngest, was nine. He was in England, too.
Isaac looked carefully at Jamal, with the type of interest usually generated by the knowledge of a person as old as yourself. He wondered what it had been like to grow up in this house, with the people in the picture. He wondered what Jamal was like.
Jamal wore glasses like his father, was dressed in a white shirt and tie with a sweater vest over it. He wore dark colored shorts, with white socks folded around his ankles and shiny dress shoes. He looked a lot like his brother James, but James was older, more sturdily built, with intelligent, chiseled features and incredibly focused eyes. He wanted to be a doctor, Mr. Lincoln had explained, a neurologist. He was still in school for it.
“Isaac,” Mr. Lincoln said, appearing in the doorway, “now that we have that taken care of, is there anything else you want to talk about?”
“Do I have to talk about this?” Isaac asked, worried.
Mr. Lincoln shook his head. “You can if you want to, but you don’t have to.”
For a long time, Isaac was quiet, deciding what to say. When he spoke, his voice was distant, as if he wasn‘t quite aware of what he was saying. “I didn’t even know I was outside the fence,” he volunteered, “until suddenly I wasn’t inside the fence anymore.”
Mr. Lincoln waited.
“And then I was running.” Isaac’s voice trailed off, and he looked down. “I know I shouldn’t have done that.” He swallowed. “Did Nora sound really mad?”
Mr. Lincoln shook his head. “She was more worried than mad, I think.”
Isaac blinked. “She was worried?”
Mr. Lincoln nodded. “She was worried.”
Isaac was quiet for a moment. “Do you think she really was.”
“I know she really was,” Mr. Lincoln assured him.
Isaac sighed. “I’m sorry that I did that.”
“What were you running away from?” Mr. Lincoln asked.
“From school,” Isaac sighed. “I didn’t want to stay there.”
“Why didn’t you want to stay?” Mr. Lincoln’s questions weren’t prodding.
“Because,” Isaac sighed. “Everybody knew. . . what had happened.” He stared down at the floor. “And I didn’t want to stay.”
“But you didn’t plan on running away,” Mr. Lincoln surmised.
“No.” Isaac shook his head. “I was actually trying not to.”
“You were trying not to,” Mr. Lincoln repeated, levelly.
“Yeah.” Isaac nodded. “Because I knew. . . running away wouldn’t change anything.” He smiled, a small, embarassed smile. “And then I ran away anyway.”
“Was there anything you could have done besides running away from the playground?” Mr. Lincoln asked.
“Yeah.” Isaac sighed. “I could have called Nora or Dan. They said they’d come and pick me up, if I wanted them to.”
“Do you think that would have been better than leaving on your own?” Mr. Lincoln asked.
Isaac nodded. “I know it would have been better, but it still would have been running away. And I was trying not to.”
“That’s admirable,” Mr. Lincoln pointed out, “but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to leave a situation in which you really aren’t happy. You had two ways out, Isaac. No one was forcing you to stay, and so you could leave. You did.”
Isaac winced. “I know.”
“There was nothing wrong with leaving,” Mr. Lincoln emphasized. “But you could have done it differently.”
Isaac swallowed. “I wish I did.”
“There’s no harm done,” Mr. Lincoln assured him. “I’m glad you called me when you decided to come back.”
“I didn’t want to be like my parents,” Isaac whispered.
Mr. Lincoln hugged him, feeling Isaac’s muscles tighten with the effort of holding back tears. “I know you didn’t. And you never will be.”
“Why?” Isaac asked.
Mr. Lincoln paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. “You did come back.”