Attic Ward by Bill Gourgey

Author:Bill Gourgey [Gourgey, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Jacked Arts via Indie Author Project
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Flower on a Ledge

It all looks eerily familiar: ancient headstones arrayed randomly like flowers in a field, but these flowers have lost their firm, polished bloom. They’re withered, tilted, and crumbling back into the earth. The farther I look, the older, thinner, and frailer the slabs become, their epitaphs weathered beyond recognition. It’s like distance is time—with each step I wade deeper into the past. Despite the gloom, and despite being all alone, there’s a golden glow to the sky that lifts my spirits. I know this place. I’m not frightened. It’s as familiar to me as home.

Home.

The strangeness of the word takes me by surprise, and the cemetery fades unexpectedly. A house looms before me. It’s a familiar house. I recognize the sagging, low-slung roof with its rusted metal stovepipe. I shrink from the rotting clapboard siding and want to sprint back into the cemetery, but a thicket of thorns bars my way.

I hear someone shout my name.

It’s my father. I would know that voice anywhere. A screen door slams, and I hear his heavy boots trudging toward me. My instinct is to run, but I’m trapped—hemmed in by the thicket. My father comes around the side of our house. He’s wearing grimy brown overalls, a flannel shirt with holes at the elbows, his hunting boots, and he’s carrying his shotgun.

His eyes are bloodshot, like he’s been crying, but I know that it’s because he’s dead drunk. He sways and teeters toward me. He looks old. Not old—tired and defeated. Deep creases line his brow and cheeks. It’s grief and worry and hard drinking that have aged him so.

I feel a pang of sorrow for my dad that I’ve never felt before.

“Where are you, Brooke?” he bellows.

I’m standing directly in his path.

Can he not see me?

He stops a few feet away, swaying and squinting, searching for me.

That’s when I realize my mistake. This is not my dad, it’s Mr. Paul—the lech. He’s been lusting after me ever since the Pauls took me in. His seven kids (three of them foster) and wife avoid him like the plague. They seem happy that I’m the focus of his attention. I tried to tell Roxanne about him, but she just told me to get my head out of the clouds.

“This is the real world, Brooke,” she said. “The sooner you start living in it, the sooner you’ll see that there’s no such thing as a perfect home. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t good ones. The Pauls met all our requirements. And their other foster kids don’t complain. You’ve got to give them a chance.”

But Roxanne hasn’t seen that look in Mr. Paul’s eye. If she did, she would agree with me. The other fosters don’t complain because they’re all terrified of him.

I sketched that look for her once. After admiring my artwork, she folded it, stuck it in her bag, and repeated her refrain about getting my head out of the clouds. That was the first time I decided to run away.

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