Out In The Cold: Chapter Two

Connor lifted himself over his mother's back yard fence, landing lightly among broken garden tools and wood scraps.  The back light was on and it threw enough light across the lawn to see his way back.  He opened the French doors, helped himself to cake from the fridge and went to his room.  It was a mess.  The sight shook him each time he entered, but it was momentary and he adjusted; he had made it this way, this was how he liked it.

Moving to his cupboard, stepping over debris, unavoidably crunching some of it underfoot, he opened the door and stepped inside.  He hunkered down and wormed his way down into the mole hill of clothes, shoes, blankets until he disappeared into the mound.  Scratching at the floorboards below he found the one he had worked loose and pulled it clear, heaving himself in below the other boards, into the darkness.  Here he was free, safe from his mother's watch.  The boards opened into a dead space underneath the hallway and the stairs; he had room to move about freely and could fit at least another two people his size if he wanted, but he wouldn't, why would he.  He turned on his little light, powered by a lumpy 9v battery; the light's plastic casing was shattered long ago.  He had pulled out the metal parts fastening them back together and now a series of lights dripped out enough light for him to see the copper piping that ran overhead along the beams, the ruined webbing in the corners, his tools, the box of matches he had hidden.  Here he also had bedding and a pillow and it wasn't long before he decided to bed down in his hole.

Miranda left the school, her head held low, like so many times before.  The leather strap of her bag had given way to age and she fiddled with the fraying edge, sat in the car wondering why he caused her so much grief, so much trouble.  His teacher had told him to sit down, but instead he hung at the window, his hand against the pane, had slammed the window with the flat of his hand and, annoyed it hadn't given way, struck the nearest child.  She heard the story, so familiar, the words were like echoes skittering back across her mind to the last time and the time before that.  She simply nodded and apologised, finally abashed when the teacher finished on the part where Connor had lashed out at him too.

She drove to several playgrounds, the library, the supermarket; she walked along the canal and then up through the woods her breath momentarily clouding the way ahead before clearing above her slumped figure.  The police had checked all these places and would call the moment they heard something.  In her heart she wanted to disconnect the phone and disappear into the night's darkness.  She opened her coat, purged herself of the warm air trapped inside and welcomed the chilled touch of the black air, it was an embrace to the wishes and the prayers.

She sank to her knees and murmurred broken words between salty tears, each word drifting away into the darkness.

*

It was two days before Connor made himself known again, he knew it was the only way to gain enough sympathy from the school, from his mother and from the services that by now would be involved.  All those involved were well aware he could disappear, this wasn't the first time, but this was the longest time.  It hadn't become a media story, so certain was everyone that he would turn up.  Each day his mother disappeared to search for him; he used the time to feed himself from the tins she wouldn't miss at the back of cupboards; showered and brushed his teeth, read his books and mooched about in the garden collecting good stones, stones he could throw long and hard, or picked at the garden waste and the tools there at the garden's end.  In the night he lay in his hole relishing the tears he heard his mother crying, he knew though that they weren't for him, not really.

Scores of adults and children at school wanted to know where he had been, but he wasn't about to give away the best thing about the house.  He could go there any time and he knew it.  As long as his disappearances were his secret, he could vanish whenever he had a mind to.

Christmas was gaining momentum.  Decorations were in the classroom as well as an advent calender. Only the children who had performed well that day were allowed to open the doors to chocolates or riddles hidden there by the teacher. He didn't care to participate.  Instead, when Chrissie had won for the third day in a row he sneaked in at break at hid drawing pins in the cloth of his teacher's chair, he tore at the edges of display boards and sketched obscenities on Chrissies's desk.

By afternoon registration Chrissie was nowhere to be seen and his handiwork had been cleaned away, but if you looked carefully you could still make out a faint etching in the table's laminate.  The teacher had seen the pins, but the frayed boards went unnoticed.  At the weekend he disappeared for several hours and waited outside Chrissie's house.  No one paid him any mind and when Chrissie left with her parents, Connor took a well fingered stone from his pocket and aimed it at a window, each and every crash that accompanied the successful targetting met with an uncontrollable sense of exultation that ran, rippling though his core.

On the walk home he saw his mother pass in the car, she slowed.  She couldn't pass him without picking him up, but he ran into the wood and disappeared from view.  At home he had made himself a sandwich, leaving the fridge door open.  His mother left the car keys at the counter and closed the door, she began, silently, to pick at the mess her son had left for her.  He wouldn't allow her the slightest peace.

In the evening Connor sat in the box window completing his homework: he wasn't stupid and it wasn't hard.  He let his book flap loose on his lap afterward, idly watching it slip slowly to the floor.  The wind outside thudded against the glass, as if shouldering the window in frustration.  The wind's direction was indiscrimate, the trees outside were battered from a west-sided barrage, then an east.  Connor's eyes rounded, his pupils growing black and large as he sucked in the energy on display, for him.