Sophie Littlefield - Banished

“Chub,” Anna repeated. “Let’s get boy to bed, okay? You and Chub have Kaz’s room tonight. Prairie will stay with me, I have big bed. I will take good care of her-I am studying to be nurse, so no need for worry.”

“I can’t take your room,” I protested, but the hitch in my voice was obvious even to me.

“Oh. Oh, ukochana . You poor child, go with Kaz now.” Anna pursed her lips as she settled in the chair next to Prairie. Then she took Prairie’s arm gently and began to cut away the shirt I had knotted in place. Prairie stayed silent, but her skin was pale and shiny with sweat, and she had purple circles under her eyes. Her hair hung in greasy clumps and her mouth was set in a bunched line.

“Come on,” Kaz said. “Do you want me to take him?”

Before I could protest, he lifted Chub out of my arms and laid him over his shoulder, Chub’s face tucked into his neck. I slid my backpack off and dangled it in my hand, my muscles numb from carrying Chub. Anna was dabbing at Prairie’s wound with cotton, and there was a strong smell of antiseptic in the air. The skin around the wound was black with blood, but the cotton came away bright red. I shivered and turned away.

I hoped Anna knew what she was doing.

The hall was narrow. At the end I could see a tidy living room. On one side were a bathroom and another room, with its door slightly ajar and a lamp glowing softly inside. Kaz opened a door on the opposite side.

“I’m, uh, sorry about the mess,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of time to clean before you got here.”

It wasn’t cluttered or even messy, like kids’ rooms on TV shows or in the movies. I had been a neat freak my whole life, but I knew it was due to the rest of my life being so out of control, and Kaz’s room wasn’t like that either. It was comfortably disordered, with an iPod and books lying open on the desk and an empty soda can on the floor near a big bean-bag chair.

On the shelves, books were lined up neatly along with lacrosse trophies and a compact set of speakers. Posters of lacrosse players lined the walls, as well as pennants from Johns Hopkins and Syracuse and a few other teams. Crates on the floor held gear-gloves twice the size of an average person’s hand, rolls of tape and elbow pads and other things I could only guess at. A blue and white helmet sat in a place of honor on top of the dresser along with more books and a Mac laptop. The bed was made-barely, a quilt pulled crookedly over a lumpy comforter and pillow.

“If you pull back the covers, I can set Chub down and maybe he won’t wake up,” Kaz said.

“You’re good with him,” I said as we got Chub settled.

“I babysit for a family down the street,” he said with a shrug. “They have four kids. I like this age. They’re so… determined, you know?”

I did know. It described Chub perfectly. And suddenly I wanted to tell Kaz all about him, about our life with Gram, about the way it had all ended. I felt like I could talk to him for hours, without the staggering shyness I usually felt around kids my age.

Maybe there would be a chance, later. But right now I had other things to focus on. “I need to go see how Prairie’s doing.”

In the kitchen, Anna had finished cleaning the wound and stopped the blood flow, but I had to look away-the sight of Prairie’s torn flesh was more than I could handle.

I knelt in front of her, grabbing her free hand and squeezing. I wanted to do something more-but I didn’t know what. I knew that if all the bad things hadn’t happened, she would never have let me see her weak or scared, the way she looked now.

But what was I supposed to do? Prairie and I had saved each other-well, mostly she had saved me-over and over again. She had proved herself to me.

“I’ll be good as new soon,” she said, trying hard to sound cheerful. Anna clucked under her breath and poked black thread through the eye of a curved needle. The smell of antiseptic was almost overpowering. “Anna took the bullet right out. It was just a little thing.”

Bullet -that word did it. I laid my face on Prairie’s knee, my shoulders shaking. Prairie patted my hair, my neck, whispering that it was going to be all right. That made me cry harder, but I was afraid that I would jostle her when Anna was taking a stitch. And besides, my nose was running all over her pants, and even though they were grimy from the past two days, I still couldn’t stand the idea of messing them up. So I got to my feet, shaky and stumbling, wiping my nose on my sleeve and swallowing my tears down hard.

“Hailey, there are tissues on counter,” Anna said, her voice calm but kind. “Please help yourself.”

I did. I blew my nose and splashed water on my face from the sink, and washed my hands and dried them on a pretty yellow dish towel. And then, even though I was afraid to look, I sat down and watched Anna close up the wound with tiny, careful stitches, the line of black x ’s the only proof that Prairie had been shot just a few hours before.

Kaz had wandered in without me noticing. “Chub went right to sleep. I left your backpack in there. You can, uh, use the bathroom or go to bed or whatever when you’re ready. You can use my mom’s stuff.”

“Yes, of course,” Anna said. “Thank you, Kaz. Hailey, please make yourself home. There are towels in closet in hall, okay?”

“Thank you.” I knew I was filthy and that I probably smelled, and I was embarrassed for Anna and Kaz to see me like this. But I wasn’t ready to leave Prairie. I stood behind her chair and watched as Anna finished up.

“So, Hailey, you are sophomore in high school?” Anna asked, glancing up from her work and giving me a smile.

“Um, yeah.” Though it seemed unlikely I’d ever be setting foot in Gypsum High again.

“Kazimierz is junior at Saint Michael’s. That is Polish name, we call him Kaz. Saint Michael’s is nice high school, lot of good teachers. You do good in school?”

“Me? I-No-”

“Hailey’s smart, like her mom,” Prairie said, her voice soft. She had closed her eyes and rested her head against the chair back.

“Is she going to be all right?” I asked, worried.

“Oh yes, there is nothing to worry about. I think she is just very tired. This little wound, mostly I just make sure no germs, no bone chip. Bullet comes very close to bone here, see.”

I looked where she was pointing, at the neat stitches in Prairie’s arm.

“But all good. I have to poke around a little, that does not feel very good for Prairie. But I give her something strong to drink, make her relax, make her feel little bit sleepy.”

I watched Anna finish the stitches and carefully bandage Prairie’s arm. I wished I could just put my hands on her and heal her like I had with Milla and Chub, but the rushing urgency wasn’t there, and I knew it was true-I couldn’t help her. Anna, Banished like us, was using thread and a needle and medicine, traditional tools, and in comparison they seemed so… inadequate. And I understood how Prairie could have been tempted to try to use her gifts to heal as many people as she could, how she could have gotten dragged into Bryce’s crazy scheme if she believed that she was going to find a way to share the powers.

I had Prairie’s hand in mine, and I could feel her pulse slow and steady in her wrist. I thought she might have gone to sleep, but when Anna started to pack her supplies back into the case, Prairie sat up and blinked a few times.

“Anna, I don’t know how to begin to thank you.”

“No need to thank-we are family.”

I figured that whatever had caused their rift, it couldn’t have been that bad if Anna still considered Prairie family.

Anna turned to me and patted my knee. “Your aunt has told me all about your grandmother Alice. I am so sorry you had to live with her. In Poland, there were stories among the Blogoslawiony -”