Free Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan Page A

else now.
    The two people I need to get in touch with, the two people who most need to hear this most horrible news, are not here.
    My teeth start to chatter.
    I want to shut my eyes and make everything stop.
    I no longer care if my heart pounds in my chest or if my lungs move.
    Who are they even moving for?
    Mai sits next to me, and her hand grips my shoulder.
    She makes a low cooing noise. It is a drawn-out call like a dove makes. And it comes from somewhere deep inside.
    I try to focus everything on this sound.
    It makes me think, for just an instant, of the tiny squeak that the little green-rumped parrot baby made when he fell from the nest in our backyard years ago.
    I look over at her and see that Mai is crying too.

    The police officers, with Dell Duke at their jutting elbows, make phone calls. To the police station. To Social Services. To a dozen different workers and agencies as they look for someone who will tell them what to do.
    I don’t listen.
    But I hear them.
    I cannot count anymore by 7s.
    I hear a voice in my head and it says “Make this stop.”
    That’s all I know.

    Should they take me into something called “protective custody”?
    If they can’t locate next of kin, can they turn me over to a family friend?
    I have to go to the bathroom, and finally, that feeling is overwhelming.
    I take out my house key and give it to Mai, who opens the door.
    When I step inside, I feel certain that my mother will be in the kitchen.
    My father will be coming around the corner from the garage and he will be wearing my mom’s Peeper glasses.
    This has all been a big mistake.
    But the house is dark and no one is there.
    It is a house now of only ghosts.
    It is only a museum of the past.
    We
    are
    d o n e.

Chapter 18

    W illow was finally willing to go inside, to use the bathroom.
    Mai gave her a cold, wet towel to hold to her face.
    The teenage girl then found a paper grocery bag in a drawer in the kitchen. She went down the hall to Willow’s room, where she stood for a moment in the door frame and stared.
    It didn’t look like where a twelve-year-old kid would live.
    All the walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and they were full. There were more things to read in this room than in some bookstores.
    Just above the desk (which had a microscope and an elaborate computer setup) was a bulletin board covered with photographs of plants.
    Mai moved to the bed, where red pajamas were folded neatly on an espresso-colored comforter. She stuffed them into the paper bag. Mai turned to leave and that’s when she noticed the top book on the tall stack of reading material sitting on Willow’s night table.
    It was open and face-down.
    From the position of the spine, Mai could tell that it was almost finished.
    She moved closer and she saw that the book was from the Bakersfield public library and it was called
Understanding Vietnamese Customs and Traditions.
    And that was when Mai knew that Willow was coming with her.

    She lied.
    She told the police that she’d known Willow for many years, not for only weeks.
    She said that her mother would sign any paperwork because the families were very, very close.
    Dell Duke didn’t contradict her because Mai was so convincing that he now half believed her story.
    Quang-ha, unnerved by the police, had stayed the whole time in Dell’s car. He hadn’t moved a muscle.
    So Mai was taken as the authority on the situation.

    As Dell pulled his car away, he could see neighbors coming out onto the sidewalk. But Willow, with her eyes closed in the backseat, saw nothing.
    Dell drove as slowly as he’d ever maneuvered a vehicle, heading across town to the nail salon with the patrol car behind him.
    No one knew it, but they passed through the very intersection where Jimmy and Roberta Chance had been hit.
    There was still an official vehicle on the scene, but what was left of the pickup and the box truck had been taken away.
    There were four