Back by Norah McClintock

Author:Norah McClintock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2009-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I hear shouting and look out the front window. It’s coming from across the street, from Ardell’s house. A lot of people are outside. Their heads all turn in the direction of the shouting, but whatever is going on is going on inside the house. Because I have nothing else to do, I go outside too.

The front door of Ardell’s house opens and Ardell’s father is propelled out, backwards. He stumbles and almost falls down the porch steps. Ardell comes out of the house.His face is twisted with anger. He pushes his father. His father grabs the railing that runs up along the steps so that Ardell can’t knock him down.

“No way,” Ardell yells at him. “No way.”

Ardell’s mother comes out of the house behind Ardell. She is wiping her eyes with a wad of tissue. She grabs one of Ardell’s arms and says something to him. Ardell shakes her off. She grabs hold of him again, and again she says something to him. Ardell shoves his father, but his father hangs on tight. Ardell kicks one of the plastic chairs his mother has set out in a row on the porch. It flies up over the railing and lands in one of the rose bushes his mother is so proud of. Then he storms down the steps, shoving his father again, hard. Heads turn to watch him stomp down the street and out of sight.

Ardell’s mother goes to Ardell’s father and says something to him. Then she starts to cry. He puts his arms around her. It’s the first time I’ve seen him do that since he moved out. They go back into the house together, also a first.

I walk down to the sidewalk, where Megan Dalia’s mother is standing with a watering can, watering the pots of flowers that sit alongside her front walk.

“Is everything okay?” I say, nodding across the street to Ardell’s house.

“The hospital says that Eden is brain-dead,” she says. “There’s no hope. They want to turn off the machines.”

“Are they going to do it?”

“I don’t think they have any choice.”

I look up at Jojo’s mother’s house. The front window is open. A curtain flutters in the breeze. I wonder if Jojo knows what’s going on. If he does, I wonder what he thinks. Does he care what he did to Eden? Does he feel bad? Does he think he’s paid for what he did? Two years—it never seemed like much for putting Eden in a coma all this time. It seems like even less now.

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