A Room Away From the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma

Author:Nova Ren Suma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Published: 2018-07-25T22:56:19+00:00

City of Strangers

A couple days later, I spotted the blue van again.

It was parked at the end of the block, when before I swore it had been around the corner near Waverly Place. Someone had moved it, even though its tires were still locked by the city and its parking tickets still wriggled in the wind. Now it was much closer to Catherine House. I could see it from the front stoop.

I left the gate and crept closer. Wrinkled stickers, rust swirls, and dents made it seem urgently out of place, a desperate girl screaming into a stone-faced crowd with everyone looking the other way. The porthole windows were covered by curtains or, it occurred to me as I checked more closely, loose and soiled clothes pressed up against glass to keep curious eyes out. Murmuring came from inside, an argument of some kind. Heated and furious, then shushed, then contained. I rested my weight ever so gently against the side of the van, trying to get my ear closer. A hubcap was missing, and one of the tires was bald.

The van door could have slid open with a roar, and any monstrous thing could have happened, but I stayed put, listening.

Placing my ear against the side of the derelict vehicle, dirty and sticky with some unidentified city substance, was like cupping my ear to a seashell. Ordinary, earthly voices stopped, and something else made itself known. A rush of wind could be heard coming from the belly, the air whipping itself into a frenzy, battering against walls and breaking branches, as if a forest of trees crowded inside. Then it calmed, as if it knew I was there listening, and I recognized the sound. I knew the exact timbre, the swell and hold, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the rustle, the whisper. It was the sound of home.

I pushed off, went running. Not for the boardinghouse but beyond it—I didn’t even know where. Uptown or downtown, east or west, closest avenue or any beyond. I was far away from the van in no time—and some passersby, probably tourists, saw me running and seemed alarmed, but others, surely locals and used to minding their own business, didn’t bat an eye.

━━━━━

I slowed to a walk, and then I was walking for a while. A stretch of blocks came and went. At some point, I stopped. I’d come this way for a reason, and I didn’t want to let myself know it yet, but things were taking shape. Something clicked.

I knew that lamppost. A yellow storefront on the corner pulsed with familiarity, and I found myself pulled toward it. I stood beneath the yellow for a long moment, under the protruding awning that kept me out of the sun, until I saw the flowers lining the block. I remembered.

The only time I’d visited the city, I’d come here, to this place. That lamppost, this awning, and my memory shrank my hand to child-size. I sensed the ghost of my mother’s hand in mine.

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