Going Underground by Susan Vaught

Author:Susan Vaught
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens

Three Years Ago: Vanishing

The man who drove Marvin and me to the police station was Detective Henning. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, just jeans and a white shirt. He looked like he was about as old as my dad, same color hair but less of it, and he probably works out. A lot.

The place where he brought us, it doesn’t look like police stations on television, and I’m in a holding cell, and Mom’s right outside, and I feel like something heavy’s standing on my chest.

One of Marvin’s favorite songs keeps running through my head. “Bank Job” by Barenaked Ladies. It’s about a bunch of guys who try to rob a bank but screw everything up because when they get there, the bank lobby’s all full of nuns, and they can’t make themselves pull guns on nuns.

That would be my luck.

But, I’d never rob a bank even without nuns, or do anything even close to robbing a bank, so why is this happening to me? What did I do?

Mom’s sitting outside the bars in a folding chair one of the detectives found for her. There’s nothing in the cell but a desk and the folding chair—and us.

I don’t like the bars. They look too big. Too thick. Too forever. I’m being stupid, yeah, but I really don’t like the bars, or being inside them. I never thought about how that would feel, because I never planned to be in jail or worried about doing something and going to jail, but here I am, and here are the bars.

The cell smells like piss and bleach and pine cleanser. It’s enough to make my eyes water, but that’s not why my eyes are watering. I’m sitting on the cell’s cot, huddling against the bars, where I can hold Mom’s hand, and the metal feels cold on my face and shoulder.

Every few minutes, Mom checks to see what’s happening.

Stupid, and a big, big baby.

Holding Mom’s hand definitely makes me feel like a dork, but I try to convince myself I’m doing it more for her than for me.

“Marvin didn’t steal any cookies,” I tell her, not sure what else to say, but talking helps me breathe a little better. “And we didn’t try to leave the gym, or get in any fights—nothing. We were just talking.”

Mom squeezes my hand. “Whatever it is, we’ll get it sorted out.”

She sounds confident, but the corners of her eyes are wet like mine, and her jawline looks way tight, like it does when she’s about to ask my father if they can “go somewhere private to discuss this.”

I wish I had Marvin’s iPod. I wish I had an iPod of my own. I could pick out some music and share the earbuds with Mom, and maybe we could both stay calm.

“How’s that parrot?” I ask Mom, still fishing for something to talk about.

Her look of surprise would make a funny poster, but she says, “Lonely, I think. When you’re not there, the bird sort of droops, you

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