Free Torn Away by Jennifer Brown

would be worth saving. But still I nodded.
    I followed Ronnie outside, bringing along my backpack, inside of which I’d stuffed Marin’s purse.
    Together, we walked around the leaning front wall of the house, to the side where our bedrooms used to be. To my surprise, two interior walls remained standing. One in Marin’s room, and one in mine. Of course, the outside walls were gone, so most of our stuff was tossed and spun and pulled out and torn.
    I scaled the mountain of mess to get into my room, and Ronnie walked around the interior wall to where his and Mom’s room would have been. I heard some muffled exclamations, and clanks and thuds as if he was pushing or kicking or throwing things out of his way.
    I pulled on some boards and tossed them, the way I’d done with Kolby the day before. I found a couple of old CDs, some clothes that had been stuffed in the back of my dresser, and—thank God—my cell phone charger. I found some old ribbons from elementary-school field competitions, but those didn’t seem important to me anymore—or at least not important enough to keep. In fact, not much of anything in my room seemed all that important anymore. Not after everything that had happened.
    But as I stepped over my bookshelf, which had tipped and spilled books everywhere, something shiny caught my eye. I bent to pick it up.
    It was a porcelain kitten—a black-and-white one with great staring blue eyes and a big, curvy 6 across its chest. I wiped the grit off it and held it up. It was in perfect condition, which seemed impossible.
    I’d had sixteen of them—one for every birthday. Each kitten was different. Each one fragile and shiny, and each holding a large number across its chest. They came in the mail, always a few days before my birthday, always in a plain manila envelope, always wrapped in the comics section of the newspaper, and with no return address.
    Marin never got a single one.
    Mom’s mouth turned down at the corners every time one showed up, her face deepening into a bitter frown. I assumed they were from my father. Guilt gifts, I’d come to think of them. His way of pretending he hadn’t abandoned me after all.
    But secretly I loved those kittens, and hung on to a warm hope that maybe the kittens meant my father did care a little bit. Like maybe they were a secret message that he still wanted to be connected. That maybe he’d only meant to leave her, not me. Sometimes the kittens felt like the only connection I had to half of myself.
    “I want a kitten,” Marin had screeched when I’d gotten the last one. “I want a real kitten. A gray-and-white one with blue eyes. Can I get a kitten, Mommy?” My mom had rolledher eyes as, for the next two months, Marin had begged and begged for a kitten of her own.
    “Ronnie’s allergic,” Mom had always said. “We can’t afford a kitten. And they puke in the house. Who’s gonna clean up the hairballs and the litter box? Not me, and certainly not you girls.”
    I could understand why Marin wanted a kitten of her own. I had a whole collection of them.
    Carefully, I set the kitten down with the CDs, then used both hands to right the bookshelf it had once been sitting on, hoping to find the others. Instead, all I found was broken porcelain. Shiny pieces of trash. Six was the only survivor.
    I heard the wooden clonk of boards being flung on top of boards over where Ronnie was, and decided I’d looked enough. I was tired and thirsty and I wanted out of there. I stumbled over a sneaker, which set me on a frantic search for its twin. I found it a few feet away, under a plastic-coated wire shelf that was normally housed in the hall bathroom. I cradled the shoes in my arms, excited for them to dry out so I could take off Ronnie’s boots. Then I gathered up the clothes and the phone charger, pushed the kitten into my pocket, and headed to Ronnie.
    “I’m ready,” I said as I rounded the wall. “I didn’t find much.…”
    But I trailed off when I saw my