I promise it gets better than this.

by Alexander Holcomb

I was ready to tell the police I wanted to go. This time would be not like the other times, the times when the police officers would stand on our porch and ask our parents to come outside, and my parents would lie and then the officers would ask to talk to my brother and me, but they would lie again and say we were asleep and in fact they didn’t really understand why the neighbors had called anyone since their own children weren’t disturbed by any noise.

My brother and I would listen to all this from below the window on the low couch that had long lost its supports, and when our parents came in, they would badger us and look at the home phone’s recent calls to check that I hadn’t been the one who ratted them out, and they would tell us that we had sat too close to the window and that if the police had seen us, they could have come inside and put us in jail just for being kids without good parents because that’s what they do these days, don’t you know? Then they would spit out the gum they had chewed to mask their alcohol breath.

But this time, when I saw the familiar blue and red lights, my books and my notebook were in my drawstring bag. My homework was done for Monday, which gave me all of Sunday to get used to child jail before going back to school because surely they didn’t kick you out of school just for going to jail. Maybe I could get a toothbrush there and get the sweaters off my teeth. I had misplaced the toothbrush that the dentist had given me when they came to school, which was my fault really for being stupid, I was told. So, I was excited to go to jail to get the sweaters off my teeth.

I begged my brother to come with me, but he thinks kid jail would not be fun, and besides he’s supposed to go over to his friend’s house tomorrow if he can get his friend’s mom to pick him up. Over there he gets lots of food but not like our food like stale cheese balls but like apples and peanut butter, and you can have all you want, so I guess I understand why he doesn’t want to go to kid jail with me, because sometimes he gets apples and peanut butter and even a big meal with a toothbrush when he spends the night there. Plus, after I went off to kid jail, he would have the whole mattress to himself.

The police walked onto the porch. Dad told him to watch the hole in the wooden floor, said he’d been too busy fix it this weekend, like he always said. Mom laughed, admitting to a long honey-do list, and then my parents made their regular promises that my brother and I were perfectly fine and needed no help and hadn’t been exposed to any domestic violence or poor treatment or neglection or all the other words I’ve heard the police ask about.

I crouched under the window, ready to reveal myself to the police. My brother sat beside me. Would they use handcuffs? I hoped not. My parents would be mad, but it’d be best for everyone if I got out of the way. I gave my brother a hug because I wasn’t sure when I’d see him again., I said I loved him, but he stayed quiet.

When I looked down at him, he looked up at me with wet eyes. And I decided to stay.

Photo of Alexander Holcomb

BIO: Alexander Holcomb is a writer in Virginia. His publishers include Wrong Turn Lit, The Crawfish Collective, and Bright Flash Literary Review. He’s writing a literary mystery novel about death and identity in Appalachia, and his other stories can be found on acholcomb.com.