Cancel Toby Chalmers!: Chapter 7
Well, since my novelette Cancel Toby Chalmers! (copyright me, now) has been sitting around, completed, for nearly 16 months, I’ve decided to share it for free, until it’s later released as part of a Toby Chalmers collection.
Here are Chapters 1-3: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here are Chapters 4 and 5: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here's Chapter 6: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here's Chapter 7.
Chapter 7
“Shadrach, get out here!” Joseph McCarthy Jr. hollered houseward, from the back patio. Another vibrantly sunny day. He’d never felt more virtuous. Perhaps he’d lock himself in his home office and masturbate later. Exhilarated, he bounced on his toes.
Moments later, his nephew materialized, wearing his TRANSYLVORIA PRIDE shirt. Sighting no cotton balls on the back lawn, he relaxed his posture, just slightly.
“You look frightened today, buddy. Is everything okay?”
“Um, I guess…I mean, yeah. It’s okay, sir.”
“Look me in the eyes when we talk, boy. And what’s with this ‘sir’ stuff all of a sudden? You’ve always called me Uncle Jojo. Don’t you love me anymore?”
Dragging his gaze toward his uncle’s beaming countenance, Shadrach uttered, “Uh…yes, I do.”
“Yes, you do…”
“Yes, I do, Uncle Jojo.”
“There now, isn’t that better? You’re trembling, boy. Are you comin’ down with a cold?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Excellent. Excellent. In that case, check out what I bought ya.”
With a few prancing steps sidewise, Joe unveiled his latest purchase: a kids’ ride-on utility terrain vehicle with off-road capability, electrically powered.
“You…bought me a jeep for toddlers?”
“You’re within its age range. Why don’t ya give it a spin? This baby’s got a steering wheel and a gas pedal, and can go seven miles per hour. Plus, it’s the best color in the world: hot pink.”
“Oh…okay.”
“That’s the spirit. Take a few laps in the backyard while I figure out our lunch plans. It’s all charged up and ready to go.”
Joe disappeared into the house. After sweeping his scrutiny across the backyard’s perimeter, so as to ensure that nobody was observing him, Shadrach climbed into the driver’s seat. He stomped on the pedal and the vehicle vroom-vroomed forward.
Well, I guess this isn’t so bad, Shadrach thought, turning so as to coast parallel with the back fence. It’s faster than I walk, at least. Plus, Uncle Joseph isn’t mad at me anymore, I guess. He honked the horn a couple of times, felt the breeze in his hair, and allowed himself to grin.
A few backyard laps later, boredom set in. How long do I have to keep doing this, anyway? he wondered. Suddenly, he heard an air horn, just behind him.
“Stop the vehicle, nigger!” his uncle shouted.
“Oh no,” Shadrach murmured, fantasizing about plowing the UTV through the fence and driving forever. Instead, he brought it to a stop and turned toward the shouter.
Huffing and wheezing, his face oozing perspiration, Joe hurried over. He’d exchanged his earlier attire for a policeman costume, complete with aviator sunglasses and a phony chest badge. Its dark blue hue made his pallidness all the more striking.
Pulling a plastic gun from his belt holster, he stuck it in his nephew’s face and shouted, “Get out of the vehicle now, nigger!”
“Please, Uncle Jojo, not today.”
“Uncle Jojo? You’re no relation of mine, boy. Are you high on crack or PCP? Who’d you steal this vehicle from?”
“Steal? You literally just gave this to me.”
“A liar, too. Can even one nigger ever tell the truth?”
Fighting back his tears, Shadrach climbed out of the UTV.
“Lie face down on the grass and put your hands behind your back.”
“But that’ll bother my allergies. Please, Unc…officer…sir. Can we at least do this inside the house?”
“Are you resisting arrest, nigger?! Should I shoot you right now and save the taxpayers the cost of your prison sentence?!”
* * *
Peeking between wooden fence slats, Clara and Cora Achebe, eleven-year-old twins clad in matching green sundresses, gasped.
“I thought Daddy was kiddin’,” Clara said to her sister, absentmindedly tugging her braids, as she did when she was nervous.
“No, that mean ol’ white man’s definitely gone crazy,” replied Cora. “Look, he’s puttin’ handcuffs on poor Shadrach.”
“Grindin’ his face in the grass, too. This must be the devil’s doin’.”
“We’ve gotta help stop this. Should we call the police?”
“Not unless you can turn us white first. I’m not tryin’ to get shot.”
“Should we tell Daddy then? He could snap that psycho like a twig.”
“And end up in prison. Nah, I’ve got a better idea.”
* * *
Amongst the exalted pantheon of individuals Joseph McCarthy Jr. deemed his pal-o-roonies, Jon McLood—who ran the horror fiction review site, Pfeffernüsse of Terror—ranked at the tippy top. If not for the fact that Jon was a racially challenged, cisgender, straight male, Joe would’ve offered the guy a position at Transylvoria every time they exchanged texts.
Perhaps two years prior, they’d met at Transylvoria’s Media Outreach Luncheon, an annual event wherein Joe offered horror fiction journalists far and wide an opportunity to chat with their betters for just fifty dollars apiece.
Flouncing from table to table—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one hand, an apple juice box in the other—Joe had held court, soaking in every last bit of the dippy, saccharine, overdone adulation that he felt he deserved. At last, his capering steps carried him before a potato-shaped man in a green fishing vest, whose long, rust-colored beard evoked inverted Troll doll hair, stretching in sharp contrast to his bald, spit-polished noggin.
Though the luncheon’s every glad-handing grubber recognized Joe on sight, he couldn’t resist introducing himself to each new face, anyway. To Jon, as per usual, he said, “Hello, hi, and hey. I’m Joseph McCarthy Jr. But don’t worry, my dad wasn’t that Joseph McCarthy. He was liberal to the bone, just like me. He even shook Nelson Mandela’s hand once.”
“Oh, I’ve read all about it,” Jon replied. “Me, I’m jovial Jon McLood. Here, how about a friendly fist bump?”
They bumped fists, causing Joe to accidentally squeeze his juice box too hard, squirting his little straw right on out of it. He met Jon’s eyes and they were giggling.
“So, what do you do?” Joe asked, claiming a chair. Jon lifted a finger and opened his mouth. But Joe had already placed both of his fists upon his own hips, to better declare, “Me, I’m Transylvoria’s Editor-in-Chief.”
“Oh, of course I know that, you big, beautiful, silly man. I’ve been reading your magazine since it was still Draculiterary. You’re a frickin’ hero to me, like Batman and Superman amalgamated. I’d wear underoos with your face printed on ’em if you sold them. As a matter of fact, believe it or not, I started Pfeffernüsse of Terror to be just like you.”
“Pfeffernüsse of Terror? What’s that, some kind of bakery? I’ve always had a weakness for cookies.” Joe patted his bulging stomach. “And muffins and cakes, too.”
“Oh, we’re cookin’ alright, but only with words.”
“You mean…”
“That’s right, we review horror fiction, just like Transylvoria does.”
“Whose books do you focus on? Not racially challenged, cisgender, straight males, I hope.”
“Never, my friend. How could I look at myself in the mirror if I did? How could I sleep at night? We do dedicate a week to every new Stephen King book, though.”
“Of course, of course. Stephen King’s our sole exception, too. It’s like, sure, cover the best of the best of the racially challenged, cisgender, straight males, but why bother with any others? Let historically marginalized voices be heard.”
“Right? How else can we atone for our own privilege?”
“I always pay mine forward. I’ll tell you that much.”
With that, they really got to talking, for the rest of the luncheon and beyond it. Their discussion spanned not only inclusive literature, but also music, television, films, dreams, aspirations, celebrities they’d paid to be photographed with, and autographs they’d framed. They pulled out their phones and followed and friended each other all across social media. They shook hands, fist bumped, hugged, patted each other’s backs, and played grab ass, so much so that each, a few times, wondered if the relationship that was forming between them was strictly platonic.
Joe invited Jon back to his house that night for a Jordan Peele marathon. Between films, they drank hot cocoa and gossiped about horror industry politics.
Declaring themselves “platonic twin flames”, both shed tears when Jon had to fly home to Ireland the next morning. As promised, they kept in touch, texting and direct messaging each other several times daily.
So, indeed, it came as no surprise when Joe, fresh from his latest assault on his nephew’s “ingrained racism”, encountered a lengthy text from his buddy the very moment that he picked up his cellphone. It read:
Hey-ho, JOESANNA IN THE HIGHEST, ruler of all that he surveys…
I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately (what else is new, right?). This approach that you’ve come up with to combat your nephew’s racism…my friend, it’s entirely revolutionary! I mean, holy Jean Piaget! With every step you take, you bring us one step closer to smashing white supremacy! Hip hop hooray!
Sadly, my own daughter, little Ginger, has expressed bigotry of her own lately. She actually said, with her cute little mouth, “People with penises can’t be girls, Daddy.”
I felt so ashamed of her then. Transphobia in my own house! So I asked myself, “What would the wokest bloke that I know, Gorgeous Joe, do in this situation?” I’m sure that you’ve already guessed the solution I arrived at.
That’s right, I’m scheduling gender-affirming surgery for little Ginger. Soon, she’ll have a penis where her vagina once rooted, and will know once and for all that gender is determined by spirits, not bodies. The other kids at her elementary school will learn from her example, I’m sure.
Due to brave, forward thinking men like us, this beautiful planet of ours might just have a chance after all. Otherwise, we’d just end up with a bunch of Toby Chalmers’ tearing everything down to satiate their destructive, bigoted ideologies.
You’ve heard about Toby Chalmers already, I’m sure, but on the off chance that you haven’t, he’s this bizarro fiction writer that thinks blacks should only come out at night, because every race, blacks included, hates people of African descent. He also wrote terrible things about black actors and rappers. What kind of monster doesn’t like “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”?
At any rate, here’s a link to his post, in case you want to make an example of the guy. Love you, buddy.
Joe had an erection, he realized. Lightly stroking it through his pants with his free thumb, he clicked the link and began to read.
* * *
“Hey, Shad. Yeah, you. Come talk for a minute.”
Sniffling, Shadrach glanced to the fence with eyes that itched terribly. Licking his lips, he tasted tears and snot. Joe had removed the handcuffs, but left him out back for hours. His parting words were: “Uncivilized niggers don’t belong indoors! Sleep outside tonight like the animal that you are!”
Drawing closer, Shadrach asked, “Is that Cora or Clara?” He’d conversed with the twins through the fence on a few prior occasions, their outgoing natures overcoming his own bashfulness.
“Clara. But my sister’s with me, too.”
“I sure am. Hi, Shad.”
“Hi, Cora. Hi, Clara. How’s it goin’?”
“Better than it’s going for you, that’s for sure,” Cora said.
“Be nice,” Clara chastised.
“I am being nice, sister.”
“Not as nice as I am.”
“Way nicer. Always.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“Come on, girls, don’t fight,” Shadrach pleaded.
“I’d like to fight that bitch-ass uncle of yours.”
“Clara!”
“Oh, like you weren’t thinkin’ it, too. We saw what he did to you earlier, Shad. We peeked through the fence cracks. It was so horrible, I almost cried.”
Though Shadrach’s first instinct was to deny everything, he swallowed those words down before they could emerge from his throat. Instead, he said, “Uncle Joseph is such a bully now. I think he’s gone crazy.”
“Doesn’t that man read horror all the time? He probably started out crazy.”
“Cora! She doesn’t mean that, Shad.”
“Don’t tell him what I mean. You heard those racist things he was shoutin’. A white devil, that’s what he is. He’ll probably kill Shad soon enough.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Shadrach admitted.
“Well, whatever’s happenin’ with that man, we need to get you away from him,” Clara said.
“But my mom’s in rehab and none of my other relatives want me. Until she gets better, I’m stuck here.”
“Actually,” said Cora, “my sister had an idea about that.”
“Let me tell it, Cora. You’ll go all mush-mouthed again if you try.”
“Will not.”
“Whatever, girl. Shad, I know of a spot where you can hide for a while, where your uncle will never be able to find you.”
“Yeah, where’s that?” Shadrach asked, disbelieving.
“Do you know that place next to the swap meet, where there’re all of those trees and boulders and stuff, and no one’s allowed to build houses, or even explore, because it’s protected land, or somethin’?”
“Uh…I think so.”
“Well, my friend Shareese’s brother and his homies used to get drunk and do drugs there. They left tents and sleeping bags behind. You could live there for a while. Cora and I’ll bring you food and stuff. That way, you’ll stay safe until your mama gets outta rehab.”
“You want me to be homeless?” Shadrach asked.
“At least you’ll be alive,” said Cora.
“It’ll only be for a while,” added Clara. “We’ll spy on your uncle’s house for you, too, and let you know if we see or hear anything about your mama.”
“Huh. Let me think about it.”
Here are Chapters 1-3: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here are Chapters 4 and 5: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here's Chapter 6: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Here's Chapter 7.
Chapter 7
“Shadrach, get out here!” Joseph McCarthy Jr. hollered houseward, from the back patio. Another vibrantly sunny day. He’d never felt more virtuous. Perhaps he’d lock himself in his home office and masturbate later. Exhilarated, he bounced on his toes.
Moments later, his nephew materialized, wearing his TRANSYLVORIA PRIDE shirt. Sighting no cotton balls on the back lawn, he relaxed his posture, just slightly.
“You look frightened today, buddy. Is everything okay?”
“Um, I guess…I mean, yeah. It’s okay, sir.”
“Look me in the eyes when we talk, boy. And what’s with this ‘sir’ stuff all of a sudden? You’ve always called me Uncle Jojo. Don’t you love me anymore?”
Dragging his gaze toward his uncle’s beaming countenance, Shadrach uttered, “Uh…yes, I do.”
“Yes, you do…”
“Yes, I do, Uncle Jojo.”
“There now, isn’t that better? You’re trembling, boy. Are you comin’ down with a cold?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Excellent. Excellent. In that case, check out what I bought ya.”
With a few prancing steps sidewise, Joe unveiled his latest purchase: a kids’ ride-on utility terrain vehicle with off-road capability, electrically powered.
“You…bought me a jeep for toddlers?”
“You’re within its age range. Why don’t ya give it a spin? This baby’s got a steering wheel and a gas pedal, and can go seven miles per hour. Plus, it’s the best color in the world: hot pink.”
“Oh…okay.”
“That’s the spirit. Take a few laps in the backyard while I figure out our lunch plans. It’s all charged up and ready to go.”
Joe disappeared into the house. After sweeping his scrutiny across the backyard’s perimeter, so as to ensure that nobody was observing him, Shadrach climbed into the driver’s seat. He stomped on the pedal and the vehicle vroom-vroomed forward.
Well, I guess this isn’t so bad, Shadrach thought, turning so as to coast parallel with the back fence. It’s faster than I walk, at least. Plus, Uncle Joseph isn’t mad at me anymore, I guess. He honked the horn a couple of times, felt the breeze in his hair, and allowed himself to grin.
A few backyard laps later, boredom set in. How long do I have to keep doing this, anyway? he wondered. Suddenly, he heard an air horn, just behind him.
“Stop the vehicle, nigger!” his uncle shouted.
“Oh no,” Shadrach murmured, fantasizing about plowing the UTV through the fence and driving forever. Instead, he brought it to a stop and turned toward the shouter.
Huffing and wheezing, his face oozing perspiration, Joe hurried over. He’d exchanged his earlier attire for a policeman costume, complete with aviator sunglasses and a phony chest badge. Its dark blue hue made his pallidness all the more striking.
Pulling a plastic gun from his belt holster, he stuck it in his nephew’s face and shouted, “Get out of the vehicle now, nigger!”
“Please, Uncle Jojo, not today.”
“Uncle Jojo? You’re no relation of mine, boy. Are you high on crack or PCP? Who’d you steal this vehicle from?”
“Steal? You literally just gave this to me.”
“A liar, too. Can even one nigger ever tell the truth?”
Fighting back his tears, Shadrach climbed out of the UTV.
“Lie face down on the grass and put your hands behind your back.”
“But that’ll bother my allergies. Please, Unc…officer…sir. Can we at least do this inside the house?”
“Are you resisting arrest, nigger?! Should I shoot you right now and save the taxpayers the cost of your prison sentence?!”
* * *
Peeking between wooden fence slats, Clara and Cora Achebe, eleven-year-old twins clad in matching green sundresses, gasped.
“I thought Daddy was kiddin’,” Clara said to her sister, absentmindedly tugging her braids, as she did when she was nervous.
“No, that mean ol’ white man’s definitely gone crazy,” replied Cora. “Look, he’s puttin’ handcuffs on poor Shadrach.”
“Grindin’ his face in the grass, too. This must be the devil’s doin’.”
“We’ve gotta help stop this. Should we call the police?”
“Not unless you can turn us white first. I’m not tryin’ to get shot.”
“Should we tell Daddy then? He could snap that psycho like a twig.”
“And end up in prison. Nah, I’ve got a better idea.”
* * *
Amongst the exalted pantheon of individuals Joseph McCarthy Jr. deemed his pal-o-roonies, Jon McLood—who ran the horror fiction review site, Pfeffernüsse of Terror—ranked at the tippy top. If not for the fact that Jon was a racially challenged, cisgender, straight male, Joe would’ve offered the guy a position at Transylvoria every time they exchanged texts.
Perhaps two years prior, they’d met at Transylvoria’s Media Outreach Luncheon, an annual event wherein Joe offered horror fiction journalists far and wide an opportunity to chat with their betters for just fifty dollars apiece.
Flouncing from table to table—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one hand, an apple juice box in the other—Joe had held court, soaking in every last bit of the dippy, saccharine, overdone adulation that he felt he deserved. At last, his capering steps carried him before a potato-shaped man in a green fishing vest, whose long, rust-colored beard evoked inverted Troll doll hair, stretching in sharp contrast to his bald, spit-polished noggin.
Though the luncheon’s every glad-handing grubber recognized Joe on sight, he couldn’t resist introducing himself to each new face, anyway. To Jon, as per usual, he said, “Hello, hi, and hey. I’m Joseph McCarthy Jr. But don’t worry, my dad wasn’t that Joseph McCarthy. He was liberal to the bone, just like me. He even shook Nelson Mandela’s hand once.”
“Oh, I’ve read all about it,” Jon replied. “Me, I’m jovial Jon McLood. Here, how about a friendly fist bump?”
They bumped fists, causing Joe to accidentally squeeze his juice box too hard, squirting his little straw right on out of it. He met Jon’s eyes and they were giggling.
“So, what do you do?” Joe asked, claiming a chair. Jon lifted a finger and opened his mouth. But Joe had already placed both of his fists upon his own hips, to better declare, “Me, I’m Transylvoria’s Editor-in-Chief.”
“Oh, of course I know that, you big, beautiful, silly man. I’ve been reading your magazine since it was still Draculiterary. You’re a frickin’ hero to me, like Batman and Superman amalgamated. I’d wear underoos with your face printed on ’em if you sold them. As a matter of fact, believe it or not, I started Pfeffernüsse of Terror to be just like you.”
“Pfeffernüsse of Terror? What’s that, some kind of bakery? I’ve always had a weakness for cookies.” Joe patted his bulging stomach. “And muffins and cakes, too.”
“Oh, we’re cookin’ alright, but only with words.”
“You mean…”
“That’s right, we review horror fiction, just like Transylvoria does.”
“Whose books do you focus on? Not racially challenged, cisgender, straight males, I hope.”
“Never, my friend. How could I look at myself in the mirror if I did? How could I sleep at night? We do dedicate a week to every new Stephen King book, though.”
“Of course, of course. Stephen King’s our sole exception, too. It’s like, sure, cover the best of the best of the racially challenged, cisgender, straight males, but why bother with any others? Let historically marginalized voices be heard.”
“Right? How else can we atone for our own privilege?”
“I always pay mine forward. I’ll tell you that much.”
With that, they really got to talking, for the rest of the luncheon and beyond it. Their discussion spanned not only inclusive literature, but also music, television, films, dreams, aspirations, celebrities they’d paid to be photographed with, and autographs they’d framed. They pulled out their phones and followed and friended each other all across social media. They shook hands, fist bumped, hugged, patted each other’s backs, and played grab ass, so much so that each, a few times, wondered if the relationship that was forming between them was strictly platonic.
Joe invited Jon back to his house that night for a Jordan Peele marathon. Between films, they drank hot cocoa and gossiped about horror industry politics.
Declaring themselves “platonic twin flames”, both shed tears when Jon had to fly home to Ireland the next morning. As promised, they kept in touch, texting and direct messaging each other several times daily.
So, indeed, it came as no surprise when Joe, fresh from his latest assault on his nephew’s “ingrained racism”, encountered a lengthy text from his buddy the very moment that he picked up his cellphone. It read:
Hey-ho, JOESANNA IN THE HIGHEST, ruler of all that he surveys…
I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately (what else is new, right?). This approach that you’ve come up with to combat your nephew’s racism…my friend, it’s entirely revolutionary! I mean, holy Jean Piaget! With every step you take, you bring us one step closer to smashing white supremacy! Hip hop hooray!
Sadly, my own daughter, little Ginger, has expressed bigotry of her own lately. She actually said, with her cute little mouth, “People with penises can’t be girls, Daddy.”
I felt so ashamed of her then. Transphobia in my own house! So I asked myself, “What would the wokest bloke that I know, Gorgeous Joe, do in this situation?” I’m sure that you’ve already guessed the solution I arrived at.
That’s right, I’m scheduling gender-affirming surgery for little Ginger. Soon, she’ll have a penis where her vagina once rooted, and will know once and for all that gender is determined by spirits, not bodies. The other kids at her elementary school will learn from her example, I’m sure.
Due to brave, forward thinking men like us, this beautiful planet of ours might just have a chance after all. Otherwise, we’d just end up with a bunch of Toby Chalmers’ tearing everything down to satiate their destructive, bigoted ideologies.
You’ve heard about Toby Chalmers already, I’m sure, but on the off chance that you haven’t, he’s this bizarro fiction writer that thinks blacks should only come out at night, because every race, blacks included, hates people of African descent. He also wrote terrible things about black actors and rappers. What kind of monster doesn’t like “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”?
At any rate, here’s a link to his post, in case you want to make an example of the guy. Love you, buddy.
Joe had an erection, he realized. Lightly stroking it through his pants with his free thumb, he clicked the link and began to read.
* * *
“Hey, Shad. Yeah, you. Come talk for a minute.”
Sniffling, Shadrach glanced to the fence with eyes that itched terribly. Licking his lips, he tasted tears and snot. Joe had removed the handcuffs, but left him out back for hours. His parting words were: “Uncivilized niggers don’t belong indoors! Sleep outside tonight like the animal that you are!”
Drawing closer, Shadrach asked, “Is that Cora or Clara?” He’d conversed with the twins through the fence on a few prior occasions, their outgoing natures overcoming his own bashfulness.
“Clara. But my sister’s with me, too.”
“I sure am. Hi, Shad.”
“Hi, Cora. Hi, Clara. How’s it goin’?”
“Better than it’s going for you, that’s for sure,” Cora said.
“Be nice,” Clara chastised.
“I am being nice, sister.”
“Not as nice as I am.”
“Way nicer. Always.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“Come on, girls, don’t fight,” Shadrach pleaded.
“I’d like to fight that bitch-ass uncle of yours.”
“Clara!”
“Oh, like you weren’t thinkin’ it, too. We saw what he did to you earlier, Shad. We peeked through the fence cracks. It was so horrible, I almost cried.”
Though Shadrach’s first instinct was to deny everything, he swallowed those words down before they could emerge from his throat. Instead, he said, “Uncle Joseph is such a bully now. I think he’s gone crazy.”
“Doesn’t that man read horror all the time? He probably started out crazy.”
“Cora! She doesn’t mean that, Shad.”
“Don’t tell him what I mean. You heard those racist things he was shoutin’. A white devil, that’s what he is. He’ll probably kill Shad soon enough.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Shadrach admitted.
“Well, whatever’s happenin’ with that man, we need to get you away from him,” Clara said.
“But my mom’s in rehab and none of my other relatives want me. Until she gets better, I’m stuck here.”
“Actually,” said Cora, “my sister had an idea about that.”
“Let me tell it, Cora. You’ll go all mush-mouthed again if you try.”
“Will not.”
“Whatever, girl. Shad, I know of a spot where you can hide for a while, where your uncle will never be able to find you.”
“Yeah, where’s that?” Shadrach asked, disbelieving.
“Do you know that place next to the swap meet, where there’re all of those trees and boulders and stuff, and no one’s allowed to build houses, or even explore, because it’s protected land, or somethin’?”
“Uh…I think so.”
“Well, my friend Shareese’s brother and his homies used to get drunk and do drugs there. They left tents and sleeping bags behind. You could live there for a while. Cora and I’ll bring you food and stuff. That way, you’ll stay safe until your mama gets outta rehab.”
“You want me to be homeless?” Shadrach asked.
“At least you’ll be alive,” said Cora.
“It’ll only be for a while,” added Clara. “We’ll spy on your uncle’s house for you, too, and let you know if we see or hear anything about your mama.”
“Huh. Let me think about it.”
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