Page 88 of Only the Small Bones
“We miss you, Mally,” he said, and I whimpered his name even though it was muffled.
Asher nudged my leg, startling me, and the crates returned. I glanced over at him, seeing worry mixed in with his tears. I turned back to the crates, craning my neck to see around them. My mother and grandpa were gone. I fell back against the wall of the truck, closing my eyes. Asher rubbed his cheek up and down my shoulder to console me.
There was a loud boom, followed by the truck swerving and tires screeching. It sent me and Asher crashing to the other side as crates fell all around us. Declan and another man cursed from the cabin of the truck, while Asher and I groaned from the impact. I kicked a couple of crates off of us as we struggled to sit up.
The passenger side door slammed, and I could hear Declan yelling for the other guy to call for an extraction. The rolling door went up, and Asher and I squinted against the sunlight hitting us in the face. Satisfied that we were still alive, Declan slammed the door closed again, picking up his conversation with the other guy.
“Did you make the call?”
The guy answered in another language.
“English!” Declan shouted.
“I said I was about—”
“Give me the damn phone,” Declan growled.
A moment later the door rolled up an inch. Declan hadn’t locked it in place. Asher and I turned to each other, then I listened to Declan explaining that the truck had caught a flat. He yelled for someone to get there now.
“We’ve got a drop-off scheduled in two hours!” he shouted. “We can’t be caught out here on this road, do you understand me?” He continued to yell as I hurried out of the ropes again. I tip-toed around the crates, then lowered to my stomach to peek under the door. I removed Asher’s ropes next.
“What are you doing?” he whispered, panicking, when I pulled the cloth from his mouth.
“We have to go. Look,” I pointed to the rolling door. “Gargantuan made a way for us. We have to take it.”
He looked unsure but also curious.
“There’s a field straight ahead, with a tree line at the other end of it. We just need to make it into the trees.” The field was huge, the tree line so far away I could barely see it. We needed to make it much further than that too, but I just needed to get him moving. We’d run and figure out the rest later.
“O-okay,” he whispered, eyes wide with terror.
I lifted the door in small, slow movements, sweating by the time I got the gap wide enough for us to slip under. I went first, then helped Asher down. Declan was still shouting orders into the phone. I couldn’t see or hear what the other guy was doing.
Asher and I gripped each other’s hand as we started to walk slowly, moving faster when Declan’s voice grew more distant. After a while I stopped checking over my shoulder to see if they knew we were gone. All my focus went to the forest up ahead, tomy mom and grandpa standing there waiting for me with smiles on their faces.
“I knew you’d come,” I mouthed as my lungs burned and my legs started to ache. My mom reached for me, urging me to move faster, and my grandpa sat at my piano, smiling while he pretended he could play. He liked to do that.
The world around me moved in slow motion as the trees melted away and my bedroom appeared. My poster of Florence Price still hung above my bed, and my piano sheets had been changed to the ones with musical notes on them. My mom knew they were my favorite. Our kitchen, which could only hold the three of us comfortably, appeared next. My grandpa’s big silver pot sat on top of the stove, and I could smell the jambalaya on the breeze. I ran faster, even when my legs began to feel like noodles, even as Asher’s tiny hand began to slip from my grasp.
I turned back to find Asher on the ground, reaching for me, crying my name. Declan chased after us, screaming his fury. I looked back to the tree line, to my mother’s urgent shouts for me to hurry, to my grandpa’s body slumped over my piano. He didn’t have much time. I had to get back to him.
“Asher, you have to get up,” I begged, falling to my knees in front of him.
“I-I can’t,” he breathed, both of us watching as Declan, and now the other man, ran for us.
“Please,” I cried, helping him to his feet. “They’re waiting for us.”
His legs were much shorter than mine, and he was tired, weak, and still a little sick. We both were. He tried to run again, sweat and dirt soaking through his shirt, tears falling down his face as I shouted to my mother for help.
We trampled over wild flowers, purple and yellow and white. All beautiful, none of them ugly like this moment. Asher stumbled again, and I tried to carry him, tried to drag him homebut I couldn’t. I may have been bigger than him, but my bones were still small.
“I-I’m going to get us help, okay?” I stammered, seeing the two men get closer and closer.
“No!” Asher screamed, latching onto my shirt. “Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”
“I-I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll come back for you.” I peeled his fingers off me, my tears blinding me from the sight of his pain, but I could feel it. My heart broke under the force of it.
“No, no, no, no,” he pleaded. “We s-stay together.” He crawled toward me as I backed away, my gaze bouncing between him, the men, and my family waiting in the trees. “Malcolm,please!”
