“Maybe that’s when we noticed there were new places opening up in our bodies, each just big enough to hide a dream.” She lifted her right boot and stomped out an ash twister that was getting unwieldy. It collapsed into a small pile but still shuddered and jerked like a dying insect.

“And then, when they tossed us into boarding schools to kill the Indian in the child…well, then we had to hide them so we wouldn’t just shrivel up. So we’d still fight for the things that made us who we are. And now, here we are again…”

“Mom, are we going to get out of here?”

She looked me in the eye for the first time, and I saw infinite mourning there. It made my heart race and then slow to a heavy thump in my temples. “No, son, we are not. But you might.”

“I’ll take you with me! We can leave together.” I was crying.

She smiled, tight and small, holding back more than she put out. “Too late, buddy; they know someone is up here, just not how many someones.”

“Buddy?” I grabbed my head; it was throbbing something terrible now. And I was remembering: the room, Mitch, the mad dash to get to my mother, finding what turned out to be nothing more than a storage closet and a hallucination…

“Mitch.” I said it out loud.

✦✦✦ ✦✦✦ ✦✦✦

“I’m here, French.” He put a hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was his hand or my shoulder that was shaking. Maybe both.

I woke up back in the medical room, in a narrow bed, hooked up to another IV, with more bandages on my head.

“What…what…happened?” Everything was in pieces, and none of them fit together.

“Well, I’m told you pulled a runner.” Mitch was standing by the bed, wearing that ridiculous suit and that stupid tie he couldn’t stop fidgeting with. “Which makes no sense. Why would you run in the direction you were going to begin with? You ran pretty much all the way back to your own room. Apparently you’re terrible at getting away.”

“When…”

“What happened? Were you trying to escape and got turned around?” He chuckled. The sound made me angry. Anger brought the pieces together.

“I was not trying to escape. I was trying to find her!” Raising my voice only made my head hurt more.

“Who, French? Who were you trying to find?” He leaned over me, ready to take in any information I was willing to part with. Unbelievable. Here I was, laid up, again, with a busted head, again, and he was still trying to extract intel?

I strained and pulled my neck off the pillow, getting as close to his face as I could before I spat it out. “Mom, you jackass. I was trying to get to our mother.”

Our eyes were locked now, and it made me happy to see my words hit him like a slap, like paper airplanes whipped at close distance. He took a deep breath and pulled away, lowering himself into a metal chair beside the bed. He crossed his legs at the knee and folded his hands on top of them, like a proper gentleman. But that was wrong. There were no gentlemen left in the world.