Page 27 of Breakneck Hockey

I wished someone had been there to help me. I wished someone had been there to help him.

Barging in it is. The door isn’t locked. It damn well should be. There aren’t enough locks on this door anyway—that’s getting rectified immediately.

Footsteps patter. I catch the wooden bat in my fat palm mid-swing—mother fucking, ow!—and tug the assailant toward me. I meet two scared green eyes. Charles. His chest rises and falls, rapidly.

“Shit, Mitchell. I thought you were a robber or somethin’.”

“Lock the fuckin’ door, kid.”

“Yeah, uh. Sorry. I’m not thinking straight.”

He steps into the only light available, moonlight, spilling over us from the open door. His bloodshot eyes and fresh tear tracks tell me what he’s been doing the last hour. His Nikki Six haircut’s flopping all over the place. Everything about his expression says,thank fuck you’re here.

“This, um, this way.”

I step over piles of shit toward their quaint living room—piles of books, clothes, empty Tupperware containers—where the space opens to worn carpet, more clutter, and an old couch. A thin woman sits on the couch against the arm, staring, watching a movie none of us can see. There’s a little boy with a mop of messy dark hair falling in his face at her feet, on his knees, perched over the coffee table, coloring.

A furious crayon moves back and forth. He’s wearing it down to the bone.

Surrounding his notepad are plates of food in various stages of decay.

“I can’t get my mom to respond. She won’t eat. She won’t eat!” Charles repeats. The little boy flinches, curls over his coloring, probably wishing he could disappear. It’s hard to work out what’s going on in his little mind. “Please get her to eat, Mitch.”

This is way outside my wheelhouse, but I’ve been to enough therapy myself to know a good therapist is what she needs. Looking around, it’s clear they’d never be able to afford it. Whatever I do is better than no one doing anything at all.

Anything, anything at all would have been something. Something might have scared them off.

“I’m gonna get your mom some help,” I promise, knowing that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The scrape of a crayon in that little hand fills the silence for several of my hammering heartbeats. When it was just me and Ma, it felt exactly like I’m feeling now. The blanket of hopelessness wrapped around us. I was the one who spiraled, not Mom. What if it had been my mom?

I’d be a minor criminal like Lane and Company because that’s the way I was going. I’d feel the same level of utter desperation in Charles’s eyes.

“No.” Charles breaks the silence. “Why the fuck do you think I called you? I wantyouto help her. If you get her ‘help’,” he says using quotations around the word help. “They take us to foster care and then who knows where the fuck Stevie will end up.”

Little boy must be Stevie.

Lane has the same views on foster care as Charles, but they’re a generation apart. Surely things have improved by now?

I run a hand over the bandana covering my hair, pulling a deep inhale. Fuck, the air in here’s so fucking stale. We need to open a window.

“What’s your mom’s name?”

“Shelly West.”

“Shelly, my name is Mitchell Sutter. I’m here to steal all your belongings.”

Nothing. No response. Just droopy eyelids and a sagging facial expression.

The longer I’m here, the more my demons reach their claws from the shadows.

Dead screams—ones that never hit the air—wake from their long sleep inside my head.

But I don’t know what the right thing to do is. It should be obvious, because a foster home has to be better than this, but ripping someone from the only family they know’s a heavy fucking decision. It’s not straightforward. It’s also not one that needs to be made tonight.

“When was the last time she ate?” A mild tremor moves through me. Dammit.Get your shit together, Sutter.I take a slow breath to steady myself, hoping Charles is too panicked to see my mild panic.

“Yesterday morning. I’ve been able to force water down her throat.”

I’ll bet that’s a fun time.

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