Free Storm by Virginia Bergin

that, he points this big gun at me. There is glass between me and that gun, but I don’t suppose ice-cream vans come with bulletproof glass, or at least they probably wouldn’t have in Dartbridge.
    I’ve seen films. I turn the engine off, and I raise my hands.
    â€œAnd turn that off!” he yells.
    I kill the jolly tune. Raise my hands again.
    â€œGet out!” he yells.
    I get out. Raise my hands again .
    This sniggering murmur goes through the crowd; even the soldiers look like they’re trying not to laugh. Hilarious, no? A witch-fairy driving an ice-cream van. Hilarious? NO.
    I see soldiers prowl around the van—and behind them, there’s a whole crowd watching, fingers hooked into wire for this evening’s entertainment. The back door of the van gets yanked open. Guns and torches get waved into the back of the ice-cream van…where Saskia lies, pale and sweating. Her blood filling the floor where a jolly person once stood asking, “Sauce? Sprinkles?”
    â€œShe needs help!” I shriek.
    The crowd at the gate falls silent.
    My brain kicks up a desperate gear, and I realize what the soldiers must be thinking.
    â€œShe’s not sick !” I gibber. “She’s not sick sick!”
    Yeah, Ruby, P-R-O-B-A-B-L-Y?
    Ignoring all those films I’ve seen, I start to shout.
    â€œShe had her foot chopped off! It happened hours ago! She’s going to bleed to death! SHE’S NOT RAIN SICK! SHE NEEDS HELP!”
    â€œSHUT UP,” says a soldier on a walkie-talkie.
    When he says what he has to say to the person on the other end of the line, any normal, kind person would just say, “Oh my goodness! Those poor girls! Let them in immediately!” (“The driver must obviously be a brave hero,” etc.), but the person at the other end of the line… Oh, I can SO tell—they do NOT want to be bothered by this drama.
    Know what it reminds me of? When you overhear parents talking to other parents about some kind of situation and TOTALLY FAILING TO APPRECIATE the seriousness of it.
    â€œWe’re kind of busy here,” I hear the person at the other end of the line say. “It’s a one-oh-one.”
    In the silence, the crowd at the gate register that.
    A terrible booing and hooting and hissing starts up. I do not know what a 101 is, but they obviously do. I’m guessing it’s NOT GOOD.
    â€œOne-oh-one!” the walkie-talkie soldier shouts over the din.
    The soldiers, guns at the ready, step up to the gate I just came through—the booing crowd quiets and backs off, snarling. You don’t have to be Einstein—and I guess you know by now that I’m not—to realize—
    â€œWe cannot assist you. You must leave,” the gun wielder tells me.
    I FLIP OUT.
    â€œNO! SHE’LL DIE! YOU HAVE TO HELP HER! HER FOOT WENT IN THE POND AND…AND”—I see fish, nibbling—“HER FOOT WENT IN THE POND AND WE HAD TO CHOP IT OFF!”
    I see my mom; I see my mom’s hand reaching out into the rain, trying to help someone.
    My mom…my mom…my mom.
    I am thousands of breaths away from you.
    I cannot…I cannot think…if we had known to chop off your kind hand, would you have lived? Oh, Mom…my mom… These thousands of breaths? Every one of them hurts.
    I am not so lost in this terrible thought that I am not mad with myself for thinking it right now. I am Ruby. I VOW I WILL NOT CRY! I am strong. I am fierce. I am—
    â€œSHUT UP,” the walkie-talkie soldier tells me. Realizing I’m not going to, and that the crowd is starting to join in, he walks away from the racket so he can discuss whatever he wants to discuss—probably whether there’s any chance of a cup of tea after all this—in private.
    A cheer rises up from the crowd of the useless as the second set of gates is opened.
    â€œGet in and shift over,” a soldier tells me, scowling because his mates are