Where They Lie (Nora McTavish, #1)

by Joe Hart

You form calluses that look suspiciously like scars and you keep doing your job because there’s always another family, another kid who’s suffering through a special kind of hell, and you have to do what you can. I did what I could.

She’d had a frightening determination about her almost like an aura, something tangible that said, I am not a victim, and you better not treat me that way, or I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll make you sorry.

It was like if she could just steal enough or run far enough, she’d distance herself from what had happened to her. From what was inside her.

Child welfare—underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated, just like any other state service that actually was set up to do some good—and all the while the public wondering why things were so bad in the juvenile community. Wondering where exactly their tax dollars were going.

“We do what we do to help. That’s all. You look further than that and you’ll drive yourself insane.”

Their minds could shut down and leave them be for hours at a time, while mine always seemed to be in third gear, just waiting to drop the clutch and burn rubber the moment I surfaced.

The truth was the system was deeply flawed because people were. The law is one size fits all, while reality is a series of chaotic events we raft through like white water. The difference is some people get handed life jackets while others are told they should’ve learned how to swim better.

You never get used to the residuals of violence. The debris in the wake of anger. You just recognize it quicker, can identify a bruise that shouldn’t be where it is. We’re taught in training that little kids’ natural injuries are mostly focused around the head. It makes sense—their noggins are huge in proportion to their bodies. When they fall down, sometimes they can’t keep from hitting their faces, splitting a lip, bruising an eyebrow. But as people age they get better at protecting themselves. Natural injuries tend to show up on hands, arms, knees, legs. Abuse reverses the natural order. It flows against gravity and winds up on the head again.

Someone once said we don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system. I think about that. I think about that a lot.

People aren’t always ruled by their pasts, but they never really escape them either.

We forget how young some people are when they start carrying weight beyond their years, then wonder why they struggle.

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they begin wondering what the point is. If they’re making a difference or just treading water. What was the point of work if it only funded a week’s vacation in some paradise where you could only ever be a visitor, never a resident? What good was it to hate waking up on Monday morning only to yearn for Friday night? If purpose became a perk not a prerequisite, what the hell were we even doing?

“Nice to know people will give you their time,” he mused, watching out the window. “The only thing we really have to give, and it’s special. Time’s just another word for love.”

We’re told a life without pain is ideal. To avoid suffering as much as possible. But pain is where you grow. We cry with our first breaths because it hurts to expel amniotic fluid and take in air. No transition occurs without pain. It’s why liminal spaces are uniform and ambiguous—to lull before the change. Before the pain.

There are no words for what we do to each other. No words for what we are. Human beings are the strongest and weakest part of the world. And when they break, they shatter everything around them.