“Get back here! You can’t just leave! I’m going to call the police.”
“Mami, don’t!” Liz cries out.
I turn to look over my shoulder and see Liz’s mother reaching for the truck’s door. In a second, she’s pulled out her cell phone—that’s what she must have come back for—and is yelling again. I have no choice. I start to run. She’s not chasing after me, but I need to get away.
“I’m calling the police right now!” she shouts. Liz is at her side, biting her lip and looking pained. That’s when Liz’s eyes go wide with fear. She points in my direction, her finger jabbing at the air with some kind of urgent message.
“Officer!” Liz’s mom calls out.
I whip my head around just in time to see, one block away, a cloud of blue, a flash of gold, and a surprisingly familiar face.
“Jason D!” yells Officer Khan.
That’s when I run.
Thirty
I can hear shouting behind me, but I don’t turn back. There’s no talking my way out of this situation. It’s not like the time I galloped off on Friday. This time the whole world has come crashing down, and I’m running for my life.
The backpack is slapping against my body as I run. It’s slowing me down, and I can’t afford to be slowed down a single beat, so I wiggle my way out of the straps and let the backpack fall to the ground. I’m faster without the bag on my back but it hurts to have to let it go too.
I turn at every corner, hoping to confuse Officer Khan and lose him along the way. I turn around and see him shouting something at me, but there’s a solid block between us, and my ears are buzzing so I can’t hear what he’s saying.
I pass an older woman with her hair wrapped in a scarf. I pass two toddlers tugging on their mothers’ arms. I pass a man leaning against a storefront drinking a bottle of juice. If they are giving me curious looks, I don’t notice it because I’m trying to figure out my next move.
I turn left again, my chest burning because I’m running my hardest. I’m running past buildings of tan bricks, five stories high with black fire escapes and windows with bars. I pass by a store called Farmacia and another called Gourmet Deli. I make a right. There’s a redbrick building, music blaring from one of the ground-floor windows. There’s a church with a narrow steeple and stained-glass windows.
I make another right.
How much farther can I go? I turn around and don’t see Officer Khan or Liz’s mother. The buildings here are of different heights, some taller and some shorter. There’s nowhere to hide on these streets, no small alleys to duck into. I see a moving truck with its back door wide open. It’s parked in front of a tan building with the number 345 in white scrolled numbers on the glass door entrance. Just outside the entrance are a few big pieces of furniture wrapped in fabric. One looks like a kitchen table. Another is almost certainly a sofa.
I look around. The block is empty. My eyes scan upward to the fire escapes. Some are bare, but others are like small gardens with pots of green-leafed plants and some flowers.
My brain races, calculating the possibility. Can I do this? I have to try. The table is positioned right under the ladder of a fire escape. I quickly hop onto it, hearing voices echoing in the lobby of the building. I jump up, my fingers making contact with the last rung of the fire escape, but I don’t have enough of a grip. I slip back down to the table and land with a thud.
“Come on,” I mutter, glancing up at a rung that looks painfully close. I make another leap and fail again, my fingers slipping once more.
“One more try,” I say through gritted teeth. This time, I manage to hang on with my right hand. I dangle for a couple of seconds, then get my left hand to hook on as well. With a grunt, I swing my legs up and tuck them close to my chest. The soles of my sneakers catch onto the bottom rung and I hang there like a caterpillar curled on a twig.
The voices from the lobby get closer, and I hear a police siren in the distance. I push off with my feet and start to climb, one rung at a time, hand over hand, until I reach the first landing. I look down just in time to see two men come out of the building. They’re wearing yellow T-shirts that match the logo on the truck with the open back.
“Let’s grab that sofa first,” says one of the guys.
I have my back against the bricks of the building, in a narrow space between two windows, in case anyone inside happens to look out. The movers, one at each end of the covered couch, disappear into the lobby. As soon as they do, I scramble up the ladder and onto the next landing on the fire escape. This one’s got a long narrow planter with chili pepper plants. I tuck myself between the two windows of this third-story landing and look down. There’s a long way to go from here to the sidewalk.
Officer Khan comes running around the corner, looking left and right and panting. The movers are back on the sidewalk, looking at him curiously.
“Hey!” he shouts at them. “You guys!”
“We’ve just got this last piece to get in there and we’ll move the truck. Cool, officer?”
“Have you seen a kid run past here?” Officer Khan puts a hand against the middle of his chest. “He’s about this tall, wearing jeans and a green polo shirt.”
“Nah, but we’ve been in and out of the building. Sorry, can’t help ya.”
There’s a loud ring, and Officer Khan pulls his cell phone off a clip on his belt and presses it to his ear.
“Yeah?” he says breathlessly. “I’m on 174th. He’s got to be somewhere around here.”
174th Street? Somehow in my many left and right turns, I’ve wound up on Auntie Seema’s street. I try to stay calm.
“How far away are you?” Officer Khan asks. He’s pacing in front of the building’s entrance. Any second now, he’s going to look up and see me staring down at him. I get up slowly, careful not to make the fire escape rattle and clang with my movement.
I climb up the ladder to the next landing, as stealthy and nimble as Max was when she picked up the nurse’s badge and freed us from the locked unit. Once on the fourth floor, I look down again and see Officer Khan still pacing, still with the phone pressed to his ear. It’s harder to hear what he’s saying from here. There’s a rolled-up carpet in the corner of the landing along with a small potted geranium.
I have an idea and grab the carpet, doing my best to carry it under one arm as I make my way up to the last landing on the fifth story of the building.
When I arrange the carpet the way I want it, I can breathe a little easier. That’s when I hear the movers back on the sidewalk.
“I told you we’d be done before five. Dinner’s on you, brother.”
“You got it. I saw a hot dog cart down the street.”
“Man, did you get up on this table? Look at these footprints.”
“Why is everything my fault?”
Their voices are getting louder.
“Not everything’s your fault. Just the stuff you do! And why are you so defensive, dude? If this is about the hot dog . . .”
“What in the world are you guys arguing about?” That’s Officer Khan’s voice. I know it well by now. I hold myself as still as a statue and wait to see if they will figure out that the footprints lead to a boy hiding on the fire escape.
Thirty-One
“Nothing. Nothing,” says one of the movers. He sounds grumpy.
I watch Officer Khan move farther down the block. He looks like he’s waiting for someone.
“Seriously,” says one of the movers. “Why are there footprints on this table?”
If the movers have bothered to look upward, I can’t tell, because as soon as I got to this landing, I unspooled the carpet, using it to make a solid floor on the fire escape. Anyone looking straight up won’t be able to see me. I’m still visible, though, to anyone looking this way from down the block.
“I don’t know, maybe you stepped on the cover before you put it on the table.”
“Or you. Maybe you stepped on the cover before you put it on the table.”
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s just finish this job.”
I’m as far up as I can go, finally getting a chance to catch my breath. I look up and see wisps of clouds in a sky that goes on forever with layers of pink and orange.
Do you know why people look to the sky when they pray, Shah-jan? Do you know why we hang flags so far above our heads? Because we want to touch that sky, the sky that turns from blue to purple to pink and orange. You can find all colors in the sky. The sun, the moon, the stars, and the clouds—it has room for them all. That’s why we love this country, my king. It is like the sky at our feet.
Here I am, as close to the sky as I can get, but feeling like there’s no room for me in it.
“Where do I go from here, Mom?” I whisper. “I just want to go home. Why can’t we just go home?”
A pigeon lands on the fire escape. He doesn’t seem the least bit frightened of me and coos as he looks for the perfect perch on the metal railing. A moment later, a second pigeon joins him. Their voices are gentle, like wind chimes. They are not my pigeons, but they make me feel like I’m closer to home.
I know Auntie Seema’s building is on this street, but I don’t know which one it is. It might even be on this block. I peek out and try to match these buildings up with the one I remember seeing on my mom’s cell phone. The movers are still going in and out of the building. I see them struggle with a brown leather sofa. They’re snapping at each other as they move forward and back a few times, trying for the right angle to fit this couch through the entrance.
“Turn to the left a little more. The left. The left, I said!”
“My left or your left?”
“My left!”
“So typical. It’s always about you.”
They disappear into the entrance with the sofa, their voices muffled by the walls. It’s just me and the pigeons again.
The two of them coo at me together now. I look at them carefully, since I’ve trained myself to tell pigeons apart. One has gray feathers with two black stripes running across his back. The other is the same shade of gray but with darker, mottled feathers in the middle of his back and a shimmery purple area right around his neck. They both have fiery orange eyes with a central dark spot and reddish feet that look like lizard skin.
They look up and I follow their gaze. There are six or seven other pigeons on the rooftop, just a few feet over from where I’m crouched.
“Is this your home?” I whisper. It was the stories my mom told me about pigeons in Afghanistan soaring miles through the sky but always returning home that pulled me to the roof of our building. I wondered why pigeons wouldn’t just keep going if they were free to fly. What would keep them coming back? I learned that they come back because they learn to trust that home will be a place that treats them well, that feeds them, that will reunite them with their family and friends.
And I want, more than anything, to flap my wings and go back home to Elkton. That’s where I belong.
That’s when I spot four people coming down the block. I pull myself into a tight ball. Are my eyes playing tricks on me? I poke my head out by a hair. It’s true. I see Liz and her mother walking down the sidewalk along with Officer Khan and a woman in baggy blue jeans and a dark-orange sweater. Her gold earrings catch the light and swing as she walks.
Auntie Seema! My heart jumps. How is this possible? I can hear them talking but can’t make out the words until they are almost directly beneath me.
“Look, I think you and your daughter can go on home now. No need for you to walk around with us.” That’s Officer Khan’s voice. He’s caught his breath but still sounds frustrated.
“Fine, fine. But I just want to make sure you find him,” Liz’s mother insists.
“Mom, I don’t think . . . ,” Liz says, but I can’t hear the rest of what she says. In a second, her mother cuts her off.
“Liz, amor, it’s in the hands of the police now. We need to let them do their job.”
There is more talking, and then I spy Liz and her mother walking down toward the end of the block and turning the corner. That leaves Auntie Seema and Officer Khan below me. I wish I could signal to Auntie Seema that I’m here, but Officer Khan has been after me since I left the hospital. I can’t throw myself into his arms now.
“I don’t know what else to do to help you,” Auntie Seema says. Her voice makes me want to shout. I’ve been so desperate to find her, and she’s only a few feet away from me.
“We’ll find him soon. He’s in the neighborhood, and he can’t possibly run forever.”
“I can’t believe he’s gotten all the way here. I never would have expected that.”
I’m proud to hear her say that. I didn’t think I’d get all the way here, either, but I had to try. And I did make it this far. It just might not be enough.
“Once we find him, we won’t bother you for anything else. We appreciate all your cooperation so far. And you have my card. Please call me the second you see or hear from him.”
“Of course, Officer!”
My stomach does a somersault. Auntie Seema’s ready to turn me over. She’s just promised to call Officer Khan the second she hears from me. I feel betrayed and a little dumb for not seeing this coming. Maybe I was mistaken to think Auntie Seema would be on my side and willing to look after me. It looks like I’ve gotten everything wrong.
“I’m going back to my apartment in case he turns up there,” Auntie Seema says. Officer Khan mumbles some kind of reply that I cannot hear. I watch as Auntie Seema flings a multicolored scarf around her neck and lets it drape down her back. She walks with her hands in her pockets but her head is turning left to right. She’s probably looking for me, wanting to turn her delinquent nephew in to the police.
Officer Khan gets back on his phone.
“Yup, yup. Got it. Be there in five.” I see him take off too. The movers grunt and tell each other to move in one direction or the other. One of them wonders if the police officer is going to make them move the truck that’s been taking up two parking spots in front of the apartment building.
With two beats of their charcoal wings, the pigeons float to the rooftop to join their friends. There they are, closer to the sky than I am. Actually, they’re closer to the sky than I’ll ever be. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone.
I cover my head with my hands. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about giving up until this moment. Even thinking of how far I’ve come, into a city that terrified my mother, doesn’t help me right now. Maybe, just maybe, I should walk down this fire escape and march myself over to Officer Khan. He didn’t seem like such a bad guy after all. I think he is just trying to do his job. I should have done my job when my mother was taken away. I should have been her son, sticking with her no matter what.
I’ve made up my mind, I realize. I’m tired of feeling ashamed. I’m tired of running, especially since the person I’ve been running to has just said she’ll turn me in. There’s a small sense of relief in making this decision, even if it’s the opposite of what I want.
The pigeons are cooing again, their heads wobbling about. I look back at the street when I hear another car approach. It’s a police vehicle. I bet it’s going to be Officer Khan but I can’t see inside. After a couple of minutes, I hear the car door open. Ready to start the long climb down the stairs, I wait to see if it’s Officer Khan. But the policeman who gets out of the car is not Officer Khan. It’s someone I’ve never seen before, although he’s wearing the same blue uniform. He scans the block up and down, then taps on the rear window of the car. He points at something in the distance and then walks away, leaving the car.
I know it’s silly, but I don’t want to turn myself in to anyone but Officer Khan. I started with him, and want to finish with him too. Maybe I won’t have to answer as many questions. Maybe he will help me figure out how to send a message to my mom. There was a kindness in his eyes that I hope will still be there when I end this.
I see a shape move closer to the rear window of the police car
. There is a person inside. I strain my eyes to see who it is. The person, as if sensing my interest, moves closer to the window. I see one hand and then another pressed against the glass. Then I see a face.
I nearly scream.
My mother is in the back of the police car.
My mother! I am on my feet. How quickly can I get down there?
The pigeons take off, gray wings against a rainbow sky.
I won’t leave her this time.
I race down the fire escape as quickly as I can. I’m on the fourth story, then the third, then the second. I look at the police car. My mother’s staring straight ahead, probably looking to see if the police officer is coming back for her.
I need to get to her first.
It’s a long jump from here to the ground, but the movers still have furniture laid out between the truck and the building’s entrance. There’s a set of chairs, a wardrobe, and a mattress covered in plastic. I look down. I’m at least ten feet off the hard sidewalk, but this is no time to be afraid. I climb onto the railing of the fire escape, spread my arms out, and launch myself off like a pigeon going home.
I land on the mattress, the plastic crinkling beneath me. I tumble off onto the sidewalk and explode into the street, my hands on the door of the police car before my mother can figure out what’s happening. I see her jump backward in the car until she sees my face.
“Shah!” she cries.
“Madar!” I shout. I’m pulling at the door from the outside, but it’s locked. She pulls from the inside, with both hands, and can’t get it open. I’m not surprised but I am disappointed. I was hoping for a break, just this once.
My heart is aching to see my mother in a locked police car.
“Shah-jan, you’re okay! Where have you been? I was so worried!”
“Madar, we have to get out of here!” I’ll answer her questions later. Right now, I’ve got to figure out a way to get her out of the police car. And I’ve got to make it quick, before the movers come back out for their next round and before the police officer comes back to his car.