The Magic at the End of the World (Do You Remember, Book 5)

Wednesday, January 3, 2001

OK, so two days have passed since the New Years Day Massacre; the entire city of Lochland is still in lockdown. At this point, though, I'm beginning to wonder if everything I went through in 2000 is a waste of time, especially since there are several people protesting the arrest of 19-year-old Lucas Harrison, who many believed was another angry young man. But the fact that he had autism was what had really sparked the protest, seeing as most people believed that no autistic person had the capacity to commit murder.

Really? People with autism can't murder anyone? That's like calling the family of Sandra Olson liars and dismissing her death as just another tragedy. (In case you forgot, Sandra Olson had been the missing mom from Minnesota who was later found dead at the bottom of a ravine. Her 11-year-old son Raymond is currently in a psychiatric hospital; he was initially charged with murder soon after.) You’re lying if you don’t believe that Raymond didn’t kill his mother in a fit of rage and/or trying to pin the crime on someone else.

That fact that people are willing to write off those dead 53 people as people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time is making many people, both Black and White, very angry. Also, the fact that Lucas's parents George and Mary have been charged with murder as well as child cruelty seems to speak volumes to a community that had traditionally forced families to put their disabled children in the hospitals and had arrested people who failed to do that.

But George and Mary didn't kill those people. Their son Lucas did.

Anyway, with that in mind, I find myself cleaning my perpetually clean room. Hadley is sitting on a large sheepskin rug playing with her toys, completely unaware of how this incident is going to further restrict the life she deserves to live. Mary is in her own room cleaning. The rest of the family is currently doing game night, with Jem and Adeline complaining about the news in the living room.

After all, it was just another boring Wednesday.

Very soon, I heard a tap at the window. Kaprice and Emilia were there, and they had something to share with Mary and me. Mary opens the window and lets them in, with Emilia saying, "We finally found out the truth about what happened to Kaprice's family."

"Did Kaprice talk to their ghosts?" I said. "Because that's not how it works."

"Far from it," said Kaprice. "In fact, I saw the ghosts of the victims of the massacre, and you won't believe what I just found out..."

"What did you just find out?" said Mary.

"One of the victims of the massacre was a Dr. Leslie Carlsen, who had helped destroy the marriage between Zachary Hamilton and Winona Lloyd," said Kaprice. "At the same time, though, the story about Freddie has reached all four corners of the country, with Freddie's father claiming that he realized that Freddie had moderate autism and was trying to get her sent to a children's hospital for treatment when Winona took his daughter and left him."

"I see," said Mary.

"And what does this have to do with Kaprice's family?" I said.

"Everything," said Kaprice. He shifted nervously as he continued, "Shortly after Winona was forced to leave Zachary, she took Freddie and Zoey and moved to Kansas, where she worked in a hospital. While Zoey appeared to thrive there, Freddie did not. One of the people Winona was treating was a woman who had allegedly abandoned her son and husband in a segregated town."

"And that woman was your mother," said Mary.

"Exactly," said Kaprice. "Anyway, the boy she had with her, my brother, mind you, was rude and cruel to Zoey, which prompted Winona to leave Zoey at home and just bring Freddie to the hospital. Travone was not happy about that; he hated Freddie and liked Zoey. Plus, Freddie had said some cruel things to Dalanie regarding me and my dad, which made everyone there hate Dalanie. But when Zoey tried to smooth things over, things only got worse for the Lloyd family."