Living in Suspension by Winifred Morris

Author:Winifred Morris [Morris, Winifred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B016V4H7TK
Goodreads: 27237781
Publisher: Eastside Gal
Published: 2015-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Mom still drives me to school, but I get home on my own. Slowly. I usually walk through the park, which seems so different now.

And I’ve been hanging out in that park all my life. But I never noticed before how the moss grows right up the trunks of the trees. I never saw the ferns growing up in the branches too. All sorts of things are growing up there, just like on the ground. It’s as if a whole other world is living above my head. And there aren’t just deer here in the park, and birds and raccoons—and possums, of course. Miss Hart was always pointing out all sorts of really little guys, under the bushes and in the creeks. Sometimes I squat down by a creek and just watch all the critters in there.

Brett used to do that a lot.

He didn’t look so scared in the park. Everybody seemed to change. Angela and Deanne didn’t seem so dumb.

But now the class is back in the room, droning through the textbook, I guess. I haven’t even checked in with Hart to get her assignments. I never read the textbook before. Why would I start now?

Sometimes I stop at Dex’s. Sometimes he has some new friends there, other guys with guitars and drums jamming so loud in that basement room we all stick wads of toilet paper in our ears. They don’t mind if I just sit there and listen. They don’t sound too bad.

There’s no reason to hurry home since Death Squad is stuck.

So one day I’m walking by Julie’s just when she’s getting home from one of the many after-school activities she’s in. I have to walk right by the Lexus that’s dropping her off.

And I’ve rehearsed a scene like this, where I run into her, alone, without her friends. I still think about her a lot. I think about that ride with Richards. He could’ve crashed into a semi-truck. He could’ve missed one of the curves coming down from the Heights, and all of us would’ve careened off into nowhere.

I should’ve told her not to get into the Escalade. I should’ve told her to get a ride with someone else. She wasn’t thinking straight that night.

For some reason.

But when I see her, all the words I’ve practiced for a situation like this, they abandon me. I keep my head down as the Lexus drives away. A chunk of gravel from the side of the road thunks into my ankle.

She calls, “Hey, Sky.”

So then I have to stop and wait while she comes up to me. “Have you heard from Garett?” she asks. “How is he? What’s going to happen to him?”

Which isn’t at all a part of this scene the way I planned it.

“He’s okay,” I say. I know Garett would want me to say that, and the juvenile court has finally made its decision. “Since he’s still a kid, and he’s never been arrested before, they’re going to release him to live with his dad.

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