David Farland - Nightingale

He hurried from the room. He found Jenny in the hall, and he felt a surge of relief. She'd seen what had happened.

"I love you," she mouthed.

Bron smiled sadly. He didn't want to encourage her, or hurt her feelings. He just wanted to leave. He didn't know where the state would send him next, but he was eager to get out of this place.

The little ones were crying, and Sarah, stricken, called at his back, "Where are you going, Bron? When will you come back?"

He knew the truth. Leaving a foster home was like dying. You never got to go back.

"You'll be all right, Sarah," he said. "I'll come visit you when I can." Most likely, he thought, that won't be for a couple of years, and by then you won't know who I am, or care.

He stepped out the front door. Here so close to the mountains, the land was still in shade, even at nine in the morning, and so he stood in the shadow of Mount Timpanogos, and waited until the social worker's dusty-green car pulled into the driveway.

Bron threw his things into the back, and then slid into the front passenger seat.

Mr. Bell was talking on the phone. He was a handsome black man with a voice as soothing as a massage.

He finished the phone call abruptly and went to the house to have Melvina sign some papers. Mr. Bell stood talking to her on the porch. All seven Stillman kids came and peeked over her shoulders or between her legs, watching Bron, but too afraid to approach. Doug, the oldest boy, was only fourteen. He'd have to be the man of the house. The other kids were too young to take care of themselves, much less anyone else. They all milled nervously, wanting to say goodbye, but they didn't dare try to pass Melvina's barricade of flesh and incur their mother's wrath.

Bron closed his eyes, trying to shut them all out. He wanted to feel nothing for Melvina. He fought back his hurt and his rage, until he felt able to stare at her as if she were an object, a chair or a melon. He felt nothing for her. It was that way with all of his foster parents. He'd learned to feel nothing long ago.

The children were different, though. Seeing the kids in pain, that hurt.

Mr. Bell finished talking and ambled back to the car, waving to the kids cheerfully, as if this was just another day's work. He was short, with a build that had once been athletic, but was now going soft.

There had been a time when Mr. Bell was just a naiive caseworker, but over the years, he'd grown wise. In the past dozen years he'd placed Bron with six different families. Now he acted casual as he put the key in the ignition, turned it, and the engine came alive. "You all right?"

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. Your face is pale, breathing shallow. You feel like you been punched in the gut?"

"A little," Bron admitted.

Mr. Bell didn't put the car into gear, just let it run for a second. He gave Bron a gentle look. "You wave goodbye to them kids now. I know it's not a proper goodbye, but if you don't give them at least that, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

Bron had been wondering about that. He'd never see the Stillman kids again. He wanted the little ones to forget him quickly. It's easier, he knew, to let go of your feelings, if someone leaves you with a little hurt.

Bron gritted his teeth. He waved and forced a smile, and Jenny lit up like she'd just been touched by a ray of sunshine. All of the sudden, the kids began shouting, "Goodbye," and waving like mad. Melvina grimaced and herded the kids inside. For an instant, four-year-old Sarah had a clear view. She blew Bron a kiss, as if he were just heading off to school.

Then the blue-gray door slammed shut, and they were gone.

Bron sat for a moment, clearing his mind, letting them all go away forever, purging his feelings. In a moment, he reached a comfortable, hollow state.

Mr. Bell pulled out onto the road, driving through the picturesque neighborhood that made up Alpine, with its expansive yards and custom homes. Mr. Bell weighed his words. "Leaving those kids has got to be hard."

"Not really," Bron said. "You learn not to get attached. I could tell that it was time to go."

Mr. Bell gave him a long look, his nostrils flaring just a bit. "After three years, I'm sure that you love them."

"I was never part of their family. I never could be."

Mr. Bell's dark eyes bored into Bron. "You can't really be so cold."

Bron didn't dare speak his thoughts. If I am a monster, it is because you—and the world—have made me that way. He joked weakly, "Hey, it's a talent."

Mr. Bell waited for Bron to say more, but he just let the silence hold as they rolled past the Kencraft Candy Factory, the little town's only manufacturing plant.

Alpine was a pretty place, nestled between the folds of the Wasatch Mountains. Most of the storms blew in from the south, and when they butted up against the mountains, they hit an impenetrable wall and were forced to release their moisture.

So Alpine had a lushness to it that was perhaps unmatched for hundreds of miles in any direction, and it remained verdant most of the year, but the green zone was small—only about a dozen miles square. They began driving away from it now, along fenced pastures where golden grass graced the fields and cottonwoods lined the banks of the American Fork River.

Now, in mid-August, the black-eyed Susans grew wild in the fields on the outskirts of town, reaching heights of eight or ten feet, becoming huge bushes with hundreds of enormous golden sunflowers bobbing in the wind, the dark hearts at their center as deep brown as a doe's eyes.

Mr. Bell broke the silence and finally demanded, "Did you really tell Melvina that it looked like she was hiding those peaches in her butt?"

Bron admitted, "Something like that. It was kind of a ... metaphor." He waited for Mr. Bell to chew him out.

"Good one," Mr. Bell said after a second, and laughed.

As they drove west toward I-15, the number and size of the flowers dwindled, and the cottonwoods along the creek surrendered to fields of stubby tan salt grass that rolled on for miles.

"Most people are crazy, you know," Mr. Bell said absently. "I mean, most people are just a little bit crazy. The/11 admit it, if you ask." Bron nodded, suspecting where this was going. "But most crazy people are pretty harmless, you know? Like we have this one foster mother, she believes that crystals carry encoded messages left by the people of Atlantis. She'll hold them up to the light and meditate, and she'll 'read' all kinds of messages from them—things like 'Go buy celery today.' It doesn't matter if I dug up the crystal out of my backyard, she's convinced that all crystals have hidden messages in them, and that the Atlanteans just left them lying around for our benefit."

"But not all crazy people are harmless," Bron said. "Melvina is getting mean."

"That they are not," Mr. Bell agreed. "You and I have both seen this coming—Melvina hiding in her room with all of that food, getting fatter by the hour. Do you know what she told me?"

"What?" Bron asked, glad to hear him confide such secrets.

"She said that she was hiding from you. She said that from the day you moved into that house, you started sucking the energy out of her."

Bron shook his head, pained by the thought. He knew that the accusation would end up on his personal record, and such words—no matter how incoherent or crazed—could cost him dearly.

When he was a child, a preschool teacher had said that Bron was "dreamy," and one of his foster parents, Mr. Beardley, had demanded that the state run a battery of tests for schizophrenia. The tests had come up negative, but the Beardleys had given Bron back to social services. Because of their concerns, he'd had a hard time finding another home. That had been what? When he was four or five?