Elephant in the Sky (11 page)

27

Nate

The elephants are still chasing me and so I need to run even faster than I was running before except I cannot really remember how fast I was running before because I feel like my brain will not slow down.

I am laughing now because I wonder if my brain is working faster than my running legs or if it is the opposite and I think that is really funny for some reason. I do not know why. I laugh for a minute but then I make myself shut up because I am worried the elephant monsters will hear me laughing and my mommy is not there to make them go away.

I need to find Mommy before the elephant monsters get me. I see them flying all around me and they are growling like lions and they have dark grey shadows behind them that look like the dark grey shadows in the movie I watched with Noah right after Halloween. I need to tell my mommy about the shadowy purple growling elephants because she will help me and make me feel better. She always makes me feel better in a way that no one else can.

So I need to find her soon.

I need to find her soon.

Mommy tells me she takes a plane to New York and I know that you get on a plane at an airport so all I need to do is find an airport and then I can go to her. I have no idea how to find an airport but I know I need to find someone who will tell me so I need to look for a teacher because teachers are all very smart and they can tell me how to find an airport. It doesn't even need to be a geography teacher because I think all teachers will know where New York is.

I stop.

I listen.

The elephant monsters start growling again. Loudly. And they are showing their mean, sharp teeth. They are scaring me so badly. They are flying all around me.

I start running again.

I run and I run and I run and I run and I run.

The streets are dark and covered in leaves. Wet, yellow leaves that have fallen off the trees. It is windy so they are blowing all around me. The houses are all bumped up against each other and some of them have lights that look like warm, melted butter pouring out of them and suddenly I want to go into one of those houses but I will feel bad bringing the elephant monsters with me so I know I cannot go into them.

My lungs still hurt. They are burning. But I cannot stop until I find Mommy and she takes the elephant monsters away from me.

At the end of the street I see a school and I know that it is a school where big kids go. Julia goes there. She's Auntie Tay's daughter and Mommy told me she started grade nine this year. Maybe she is in the school and can help me or if she is not maybe I will find a teacher and for sure they will know how I can get to New York and how I can find my mommy.

I run to the school as fast as I can and pull on the door. It is locked. I pull on the other door and it opens. I walk inside and it makes me less scared to be inside because I do not think that monsters go to school so I really hope they are staying outside and leaving me alone until I can find Julia or a teacher and then I can go to New York to find Mommy.

The halls are empty. All I can see are rows and rows and rows of lockers but there are no students in front of them like I see on
Glee
, which is my favourite TV show because my mommy loves to watch it so that means I love to watch it too.

I find a door and go through it. At the front there is a large stage with no one on it but there are people filling all of the seats who are cheering and waving and have big signs above their heads. I look at the people screaming and cheering and waving signs and I notice it is all the people from my class. I see Tyson and all of his friends who always make fun of me and Tyson yells at me and calls me stupid and tells me to go on the stage so he can tell me I am stupid in front of everyone and I don't want to go but I know I have to.

I
have
to.

I walk towards the stage to the steps and start to walk up. I feel jittery and I am breathing hard and I do not want to go on the stage but I know I have to because Tyson told me I have to and if I do not he will push me into a corner and pull my pants down and call me a hyena just like he has done to me so many times before.

I make it on stage and look out to everyone looking at me but they all look a bit blurry and it is hard to tell if they are really there or not. I look at all of the people watching me and pointing and laughing and I see Tyson sitting in the middle of the aisle with his arms crossed. He is snickering.

I know what snickering is because my daddy was writing an article for a newspaper and he wrote about snickering and then he told me that it is when someone is laughing but only kind of laughing and they are trying to hide it a bit. So I think Tyson is snickering because he is only half laughing and I wonder if it is because he is worried that Mrs. Brock will give him trouble again but I do not see Mrs. Brock and I think that is weird because all of the kids in my class are sitting in chairs and pointing and laughing at me.

I know they all hate me. All of the kids in my class hate me.

I stop looking at the kids in my class and look to the side of the stage and see all of my hockey team and all of my coaches and realize they are laughing and holding signs and screaming just like Tyson and all of the kids in my class. Even my coaches are laughing at me. Pointing, and calling me names.

Auntie Tay is there as well but not Julia. I try to talk to Auntie Tay but she turns sideways and suddenly she isn't Auntie Tay anymore and I am so confused and so scared and I want my mommy.

But she is not here.

She is in New York.

28

Ashley

Just before midnight, two police officers returned to our house. I watched them park in our driveway from the family room window, where I had been perched for the previous twenty minutes. My heart constricted as they got out of the car, and I forced myself to breathe.

In and out.
Breathe
. In and out.
Breathe.

I could do this. I
had
to do this.

Incomparable angst shot through every nerve ending in my body, prickling the bottoms of my feet with each step as I lunged for the door. Pete was right behind me, and he gripped my shoulder as I opened the door to greet the police officers.

“May we come in?” the female police officer asked abruptly but warmly. Her name tag read Constable Matthews.

“Yes … yes. Of course,” I responded. I opened the door wider, and felt the cold wind from outside whip into our front hallway.

“Sorry we're so wet,” Constable Matthews apologized, stepping into the house. The two polices officers had wiped their feet on the mat outside our door, but puddles still formed at their feet the minute they walked into our home.

“Have you found him yet?” I asked, ignoring her apology. The last thing I cared about was a wet house.

“No. I'm sorry, Mrs. Carter. We haven't,” the other police officer replied gently.

“Then why are you here? Why aren't you looking for our son?” Pete snapped.

“We need to ask you some more questions. We think they will help us. And then we're going to call in more officers to expand the search. So we can keep looking for your son.”

I nodded. “Yes, of course. That makes sense. Please, come in.” I guided them to our kitchen table.

“Mrs. Carter, I'm Constable Matthews and this is my partner, Constable Baker,” the woman began, taking out a black pen and notebook from her chest pocket. I couldn't help but notice her bulletproof vest. “We'd like to start with you, if that's okay. We've had a chance to ask your husband several questions, but we want to start fresh with you in case there's anything we missed.”

“Yes, of course. By all means … ask me whatever you'd like.”

Constable Matthews launched into the same questions they had asked Pete. For the most part, I assumed I told them the same answers, given that Pete sat across the table from me nodding his head in a way that suggested he'd already covered what I was telling them.

“And he doesn't have a cellphone, correct?” Constable Baker asked.

“Right,” I responded. “No cellphone.”

“What about Facebook or Twitter? Any accounts we could access? It might help give us leads regarding where to look,” Constable Baker continued.

“No,” I shook my head. “He's only nine. He's not allowed to have a Facebook or Twitter account. We monitor everything he does.”

“And what about his behaviour? Has he been acting strange at all lately?”

I paused, unsure of what Pete had told them.

“It's okay, Mrs. Carter. You can tell us,” Constable Matthews urged gently.

“Yes, well … Nate … he … uh … he's been acting a bit unusual lately. Doing things we don't normally see him do.” My mind flew back to the night Nate stole the gum. I was slightly torn on whether to tell the police officers that my adorable son had turned into a thief. But I knew I had to tell them everything if it would help them find him.

“What types of things, Mrs. Carter?” Constable Baker urged.

I started by telling the police officers about Nate moping around the house and losing interest in things he had previously loved, such as hockey. I told them about how he acted strangely in class, jumping around like a hyena, and how he hit his head after he fell off the desk. I mentioned the panic attack, the sprained ankle, and even how he had sneaked out in the middle of the night to go to the park. Eventually I even told them about the stolen gum. Once the floodgates were open, I told them
everything
.

Both constables nodded their heads as I poured out the new information, and furiously scribbled notes into their memo books.

“Thank you, Mrs. Carter. This has been enormously helpful,” Constable Matthews said after she'd finished writing. She glanced up and looked straight at me. “I'd like to ask you more questions about the moods you described Nate having. Did it ever seem like he was depressed? Do you know if Nate might be suffering from some kind of mental disorder or illness?”

Upon hearing her questions, the world seemed to halt in front of me. I froze, taking in her stigmatic words, which were suddenly dancing all around me, like they were pointing and making fun of my son.

Having the police officer link mental illness to my son's name — out loud — was like getting smacked in the head by buried inner truth. While others surrounding us and watching our family from the outside had hinted at depression and delicately suggested that Nate's odd behaviour wasn't normal, I'd never considered an
actual
mental disorder.

It couldn't be that … could it? My sweet son couldn't be … crazy?

Yet, it was in that moment, with two soggy police officers and an angry-looking elephant on the fridge staring at me, waiting for an answer, that I saw the truth clearly for the first time: the innate infallibility that had bubbled just below the surface of my conscience for Nate's entire lifetime. Every maternal instinct I'd inherited since the birth of my son told me that Nate was living with mental issues we needed to deal with. But my ferociously protective nature had concealed what was right in front of me. What I had known all along …

I had ignored what my gut was telling me. And the contrast of the two … the juxtaposition between listening to motherly instinct and the need to protect a child from stigma and a lifetime of battle had ultimately caused the intense inner panic I'd been feeling for way too long.

With Nate still missing, there was no time for overthinking an already complicated situation. I knew the best thing I could do was answer the police officer's questions as simply and honestly as I could.

“I don't know for sure, Officer, but I think that maybe he does …”

29

Nate

It is raining. I am outside again. I had to leave the school when a person carrying a broom came up to me and asked me for my name. He wanted to know why I was in the school by myself. He wasn't blurry like everyone else.

I wanted to tell him my name and ask him for help but I got scared that he would take me back to the monsters. So I kicked him in the shins as hard as I could and ran as fast as I could out of the school and away from him.

The man carrying the broom tried to chase me but I am super fast so he couldn't catch me. My daddy says I am the fastest runner ever and that I am even faster than Spider-Man but not Superman because I can't fly.

The rain is pouring onto my face and suddenly I feel really cold. My mommy would say it is called
chilled to the bone
. I am soaking wet. I need to go inside again.

I see a building in front of me with a blinking sign that looks like a Christmas decoration. It says “Ian's Billiards and Bar” on the bright blinking sign. Beside it there is another bright blinking sign that says “OPEN.” It is red. I guess that means I can go in.

When I get inside there are big men everywhere with long sticks in their hands and they are all drinking beer. That is what my daddy drinks in the summer when people come over for a barbeque.

I crouch down in the corner beside a chair and watch the men. They are all laughing and saying words I know I am not allowed to say. One man keeps saying the F-word over and over again and I know my mommy would not be happy to know that he is saying it in front of me. We are not allowed to say that word in our house.

My legs start to feel all prickly from crouching beside the chair for so long. But I cannot move because if I do the men might take me back to the monsters and I know they will not help me find the airport or New York or my mommy.

A man in a red shirt asks me my name. He comes right up to me and asks me where my mommy is, and then says something to the other men that makes them laugh. Something about my mommy hookin' on the corner. But I don't know what hookin' means, so I don't find it funny.

They talk about calling the cops but decide not to. I hear them say something about being afraid of getting busted by pig sniffers for the skunk in their pockets.

And then they just ignore me.

The bar smells like throw-up and the floor is sticky, and I don't like it in here. But if I go outside the elephants will get me, so I have to stay here.

I slide back down into my spot beside the chair and watch the mean men with their long sticks and try not to think about the cold, wet clothes sticking to my skin.

I just keep watching.

And then I start to shiver.