Free Waiting For Sarah by James Heneghan

missed them and he missed his strong legs and it was like he was hollowed out and empty because so much of his life had been stolen from him.
    Thoughts of his father: William J. Scott. Will Scott. Husband of Joanne Scott. Proud father of Michael and Rebecca. Dad. When he was little he had sometimes visited his dad’s real estate office, Satur­day mornings, helping, churning out information sheets on the copy machine while his dad made preparations for open houses and appointments. Mike liked it there. His dad’s co-workers came and went, telephoned, faxed, e-mailed, talked to Mike, joked with his dad, complimented Mike on the good work he was doing, reminded his dad how lucky he was to have a son old enough to help. Mike enjoyed the praise, smiling up at his dad, waiting for him to praise him too — just a word would do — but it never came. When Mike was older, his dad watched him run at track meets. Mike would look out for him in the crowd and wave shyly when he saw him standing there. His dad always waved back, but carelessly, it seemed to Mike, without the same enthusiasm he thought he saw from other dads. His mom and Becky came sometimes, especially if it was an important meet, and they would yell and cheer him on. Becky was a neat kid; they all spoiled her, especially Dad. She could do an ear-piercing whistle as good as any boy and did cartwheels and cheerleader routines on the sidelines while yelling his name. She looked a lot like her mother: fair hair, freckles, wicked grin.
    Becky. Always a handful, their mother often said with a sigh, even when she was a little kid of four or five, when their mother used to take them in the summer to Granville Island Market to shop and eat ice cream and sit to listen to the musicians in the square. Becky, never still, was always spilling ice cream on her T-shirt or falling and scraping her knees. He remembered the way she used to sail intohis room without knocking, throwing herself onto his bed, bugging him with questions, criticizing his taste in clothes, indulging in long monologues about her life and her problems — freckles were a major concern. He never thought he would, but he missed all that.
    Now they were gone. He would never see them ever again. He wished he was with them, wherever they were.
    The Lysander airplane poster blurred and swam in front of his eyes. He felt sleepy. Usually, if he rested after school, which was most days, it was never for more than twenty minutes, enough time to rest his aching body and recharge his batteries for the evening ahead. Norma would soon be warbling her usual, “I’m ho-o-o-me!” as she came through the door.
    When his family had lived up on the Fairview Slopes, not far from the Leinster Co-op, Mike had known very little about his aunt. In those days she was simply a pleasant woman who had never married, who shopped and had lunch with his mother downtown a couple of times a month, who joined the family for dinner at Christmas and Thanksgiving, who had seemed to Mike quiet and undemonstrative. Now he knew Norma as a person who helped people — some of the seniors in the building, for example, picking up their prescriptions from the pharmacy, or food from the Safeway, or helping fill out their income tax forms. People came to her with their problems. As chairwoman of the co-op council, she had also put many hours into the problems of building repair and reconstruction.
    He rolled over on his side and reached for his Battle of Britain book on his bedside table. It was a big book with plenty of pictures and descriptions of British, German, American and Japanese aircraft. He turned to the first page and read, for the umpteenth time, Canadian John Gillespie Magee’s “High Flight,” the sonnet about the pilot slipping “the surly bonds of earth” in his airplane. Slipping the surly bonds of earth could also mean death, Mike now knew, though he hadn’t figured it out before.
    He