That One About Us

That One About Us (Pt. 2)

I tried to hold my body stiff and still even though my face was freezing off, but I got so dizzy looking down at the pavement like that, that I started shrieking, which made them stop fighting and try to make me quit so Dad wouldn’t hear.

“Okay, okay, shut up, Kip.”  Drew said.  “El, give Kip a foot to hold onto.  Kip, I’m gonna climb down to you and then me and Ellie’re gonna throw you over.”

“Don’t throw me!”  I sobbed, but I reached up to hold onto Ellie.  Drew climbed down, still holding my foot, and I actually swung around just fine, and for a few seconds, Ellie was holding on okay at the top.  Drew’d even gotten a foot grip on the snow bank and was just about to push me up by my butt.  But then he started slipping because he didn’t have his boots on. He tried to grab onto me to save himself, and I grabbed onto Ellie, and all of us went crashing into the street. 

That part wasn’t so bad.  I scraped my face a lot on the ice at the bottom, but I didn’t die like I thought I would.  When we stood up and looked at each other we started cracking up, and then Drew and Ellie hugged me really hard between them, which would have been great if they hadn’t smushed my chapped face against their buttons.

Anyway, that’s when Miss Allen came speeding around the corner. 

The thing about the way they plow the streets here is that the snow doesn’t go off the road, it just makes walls on both sides of the street that make it so there’s only room for one car.  So, see, there was no where to go when we saw her, and no way to make her stop, and if Drew hadn’t been so smart that day, we definitely would’ve all died.

“Flat against the snow, Idiots!”  Drew yelled, and we jumped against it like cicadas on a wall—our arms all stretched out above us, and our hands dug in, trying to hold ourselves skinny against the snow.  I sucked in my stomach when I heard Miss Allen’s horn, and felt this big wind go up our coats when she whizzed past.  She ran over the spoon I dropped, which was Mom’s, but Ellie and me got lucky—not like Drew, who had bruises for months from Miss Allen’s door handle slid across his butt.

You’d think she would’ve been glad she didn’t crush us, but she was totally upset, all red and screaming, “Where are your parents?”—like we would ever even tell her that after she practically tried to kill us.  But then Dad ran out into the yard and was calling for us, and it wasn’t like we could hide him from her.

We ducked down behind the Weeping Willow to watch them.  I couldn’t hear any of the actual words, only how Miss Allen was talking really quickly and angrily, with Dad all interrupting her to say short and serious things.    Then all of a sudden we could hear exactly what he was saying, which is never a good thing.

“Where are my children!”  Dad screamed.

Of course we thought we were in trouble, and so we ran to Dad to tell our side.  When I saw him, I kind of wished I’d gotten a little hurt or something, so that he couldn’t be mad at us.  He pushed Miss Allen out of the way and ran at us fast.  He looked crazy, but instead of hitting us or yelling he just grabbed each of our shoulders, like he was counting us, and whispered, “inside, my darlings.  Inside.”

Miss Allen kept talking, but was a little quieter about wanting Dad’s attention. She kept reaching out to touch him and then putting a piece of hair behind her ear instead.  “All I’m saying,” she said, all chasing after us, whining like a little kid.  “All I’m saying is they’re your kids, and”—she stopped talking when she saw that Dad was about to slam the door.

We followed him into the TV room, still thinking, I guess, that he might be angry.  He sat down on the couch in the TV room and rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses—these could be angry things or tired things, we didn’t know.  So we just sort of stood in front of him, all dripping on the carpet.