76 The Meadow “You’re going to be fine, Mik. Let’s just wait for Mom and Dad. How about we—” “Where’s the scorpion?” “It’s fine.” She shook her head. “It’s gone. I took care of it.” “Did you kill it?” I asked. I wanted the thing crushed and also wanted to know that it was off living a good life with its little scorpion family, somewhere far away. “No,” she said, looking away. “But you don’t have to worry about it anymore.” A memory drifted up in me then, an opaque image of a tooth, a bloody nose. My brain sputtered as I tried to understand why it wanted to connect these two events. We sat together on the couch, my sore foot up on the arm, leaning back against her. She kissed the top of my head. In less than a year, Brigid would go to rehab for the first time, where she would stab another girl in the ribs with a fork. Because she was white and my parents found a good lawyer, she got off with community service. Once she came home, everything made her angry. She was never my protector again. It’s still dark when Judah shakes me awake and I burrow under my pillow. “Move back into the house already and stop hurting yourself.” A few weeks ago I had to drive him to the emergency room because he tripped in his yurt in the middle of the night and sprained his ankle. The place was wall-to-wall people—bleeding, screaming, taking ragged breaths. We sat in the waiting room until well after the sun came up. Judah lifts the pillow and simply says, “Come.” I follow him into the living room and he points to the TV. There on the screen is the library, my library, burning. I blink at the image. “They said it looks like arson.” I call Lupita.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQ3NA==