The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

I pull it out and return to the kitchen where I drop the knife into the sink before collapsing onto a chair. My body has turned to Jell-O, but as much as I can’t seem to stop shaking, a tiny part of me is relieved.

LINDELL DRIVE, THE STREET WHERE I grew up and where my mom still lives, is a quiet street that butts up against the north end of the ravine. There weren’t many kids sharing that short stretch of road during my childhood — just me and Ricky, the Nessor girls, and the Kinzie’s baby. Later, there were twin boys, but I never knew their names. Most of the kids in our neighbourhood lived behind Lindell Drive, in the subdivision closer to the school, where the streets loop in cul de sacs, and where I used to play cops and robbers, although I stopped playing after Derek Weberson’s accident.

The two of us were pedaling furiously down the same street, hearts pumping, when Derek veered toward the side of the road and crashed into the back of a parked pick-up truck. I watched him hit it and for a split second, there was no sound other than the echoing clash of metal on metal. Then Derek started to howl. In between wails, he took great shuddering breaths that terrified me more than the sound of his crying. I skidded to a stop and ran over to where he was lying sprawled on the asphalt, but I didn’t know what to do.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He didn’t answer; he just kept screaming.

I tried to lift his bike off him, but he screamed even louder as soon as I touched it, so I backed up and stared at him, waiting for someone else to come and help. It didn’t take long. Mrs. Thompson, who lived on the corner, came scurrying toward us with a tea towel thrown over her shoulder. She scooped up Derek’s bike so quickly he didn’t have time to protest. Then she sent Mike and Tommy, who had just come tearing around the corner on their own bikes, to get Derek’s mom.

“What happened?” she said, turning to me.

“He ran into the back of the truck. He turned around to look behind us, then —”

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” she said to Derek, who was still sprawled on the road. He hadn’t even tried to sit up.

As more kids began to crowd around, Mrs. Thompson ordered everyone away. “Get on home,” she said. “He doesn’t need you gawking. Go on now!”

Derek’s mom came racing down the sidewalk in her socks. “Is he okay? Oh god, please tell me he’s okay.” Mrs. Weberson knelt beside her son and smoothed his hair away from his forehead. At her touch, Derek began howling again and the sound swirled inside my head, making me dizzy.

I sank down onto the curb.

“The boys said he’d been hit by a truck,” Mrs. Weberson said. She swung her head toward me, eyes frantic.

“No, no,” Mrs. Thompson interceded. “He hit the truck. Right, Zoe?”

I nodded. I could feel hot tears dribbling noiselessly down my cheeks.

Mrs. Thompson helped Mrs. Weberson lift Derek into a sitting position and I watched as they hoisted him to his feet. His arms, which I later learned were both broken, dangled at his sides and he made the most pitiful sound as he stood. Mrs. Thompson steered Derek’s bike to her lawn and laid it gently on the grass.

“You can come back for this later,” she told him. “Or one of the other boys can bring it to you.”

No one asked anything more of me. I waited until after Derek and his mother had gone before rising from the curb and walking my own bike home with the sound of Derek’s pain-filled shrieks reverberating in my ears.

My bike was getting too small for me anyway so it was easy to pretend that was the real reason I stopped playing cops and robbers. Instead, when I was outside, I spent most of my time hanging out on Lindell Drive, collecting rocks or bouncing a ball against the side of our house or just watching the neighbours from the safety of our porch.

The Nessors lived three doors down from us. They had two girls, Amy and Sabrina, who were both younger than I was and, as a result, not very interesting. I often saw Amy playing on her front lawn, or riding her tricycle down the sidewalk, while her mom sat on their front step bouncing Sabrina on her lap. If Amy hadn’t been so little, I might have made more of an effort to get to know her, to play with her, even. I might have paid more attention. And if I had? Would that have changed anything?

By the time Amy started grade one, I was in grade four. We both followed the same short route to school and back, but we never walked together. I might have been too shy, or maybe she was; whatever the case, I usually ended up trailing a few paces behind her as she sashayed down the street, her blonde pigtails swinging.

ON THE TUESDAY BEFORE THE Thanksgiving weekend, when I was walking home from school, Amy was about half a block ahead of me. Certain details about that afternoon are etched permanently into my brain; I remember that it was gloriously warm outside. As I meandered down the sidewalk, the sun shone hard and bright, turning the trees that lined the street into a brilliant canopy of fiery colour: orange and red and glowing yellow. I was clutching a paper turkey that I’d made at school using a tracing of my left hand with my thumb as the turkey’s head and my four fingers as feathers. On each of the fingers we had written something we were thankful for. I was excited to see Mom’s reaction when she saw her name on one of those fingers, carefully spelled out in my best printing.

Amy Nessor strolled ahead of me, braids swishing.