Mason turned to his opposite side to face his father, trying to appear half-asleep.
“Huh?”
“Hey, buddy, I gotta tell you something.” His father walked to the side of his bed and stood for a moment, looming over him. Sweat covered his neck. As he twisted to sit on the edge of the bed, Mason noticed dirt on his tan arms. Streaks of mud crisscrossed the t-shirt that had seemed so white a few hours before. The stink of swamp filled his nostrils.
Did they go frog giggin’?
Mason couldn’t picture his momma agreeing to that.
“Where’s Momma?”
His father slapped the bed with his palm as if calling over a dog. “That’s what I gotta talk to you about. Sit up.”
Mason scrooched up against his pillow, distrustful of his old man’s unusually gentle tone. He spoke staring forward, his back turned to Mason.
“Your mama left us.”
“What?”
“She left us. You ain’t gonna see her no more.”
“She wouldn’t—”
“She told you she was goin’, didn’t she?”
Mason fell silent.
She did.
“But she told me to pack.”
His father sniffed and Mason thought he heard him mutter a single word.
“Yeah, well, she changed her mind ‘bout you goin’. Thought you’d be better off with me.”
Mason’s chest constricted. “With you?”
“Yeah. A boy should be with his father.”
“But—”
“Look, no buts. You’re with me and she’s gone and that’s the way it is.”
His father stood and headed toward the door.
Mason found it hard to breathe. Something was building inside of him. He felt like a shaken can of Coke.
His father turned.
“Did your momma give you anything?”
Mason gasped for breath like a landed fish, his mouth wide. He’d forgotten to breathe.
“What’s wrong with you?” His father’s familiar sharp tone returned, as if he’d been released from whatever held him back before.
“Nothing.”
“I asked if Momma gave you anythin’.”
“Like what?”
“Like anything. Rocks?”
“Rocks? Why would Momma give me rocks?”
His father took a step toward him and Mason recoiled on his bed.
“Are you sassin’ me?”
“No.”
“She didn’t give you nothin’?”
“No.”
“She didn’t tell you to hide anythin’?”
Mason’s eyes pulled toward the front of the house where his sneakers hung from the telephone wire. He turned his face toward the back of the house to keep from exposing his thoughts, his mother’s words echoing in his brain.
Don’t tell your father those are yours.
“She said we were goin’ to Disney World.”
His father exploded with one, loud, cannon-shot laugh. “She did, huh?”
Mason nodded.
“See? She was mean as a polecat. She wasn’t takin’ you to no Disney World and now she left us.”
Mason remained silent, watching the right corner of his father’s mouth pinch up until it made his corresponding eye squint.
“Where was she right before I came home?”
Momma had been with him, helping him pack, but Mason felt sure if he said that his father would remain in his room looking for whatever he thought she’d taken.
“She was in her bedroom.”
“You mean in my bedroom.”
Mason nodded.
His father wiped his brow on the back of his forearm. “Okay. You go back to sleep.”
Mason slid back under his sheets. His father left and closed the door.
He stared into the darkness of his room.
The clock glowed three-fifteen.
It had only taken fifteen minutes to lose his momma forever.
&&&
Chapter Ten
Mason sat in a hard wooden chair beside an unoccupied police station desk. He assumed it looked like him sitting in the chair. The body and the face resembled him down to the last freckle, but the real part of him, the part that felt like Mason, had gone somewhere else.
Maybe with Momma.
The remaining hard shell looked like him.
His center had gone hollow.
“You want a Coke, sweetie?” asked a pie-faced lady in the biggest police uniform Mason had ever seen.
He shook his head. He didn’t know much about this new Mason, but he knew he didn’t drink soda. Nothing sweet. Nothing that reminded him of before.
“Well, if you want anything you let me know,” said the lady.
He nodded and let his gaze bounce over desks and chairs and trashcans until he spotted a girl about his age sitting on the opposite side of the room. She sat in a chair as scratched and rickety as his own. A man in a white uniform stood beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder. She didn’t look scared. Her face turned to the man and she smiled, but he could see her eyes pressed to the right, looking at him.
The man in the white uniform patted her on her head before following a policeman to another part of the station. They entered a room and closed the door behind them.
The moment the door clicked shut, the girl jumped to her feet and walked to him and if she’d been waiting all day to do it. She wore red sneakers and shorts with orange flowers splashed across them.
“Hello,” she said. Her dark hair pulled from her temples toward a ponytail tucked once, so it made a loop hanging from the back of her head.
“Hi.” Mason was glad his new self didn’t cry. She didn’t seem scared to be in the police station. He would have been, but he’d run out of fears and tears a day earlier.
“Did you rob a bank?” she asked.
He scowled. “No.”
“Did you pull a museum heist?”
Mason shifted and looked away. “No. You’re stupid.”
“No, I’m not. I’m smarter than just about anybody I know.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a girl.” He didn’t know why he’d said it. He didn’t think girls were stupid. There were three girls smarter than the
