HEART OF ICE

CHAPTER 21

At the bottom of the stone steps, a gaggle of familiar faces suddenly turned up toward Alejandra and me. It was the elementary school kids that had led the way in decorating the bushy evergreen tree in the vacant lot across the street. The simple game they had been playing accidentally turned into a uniting force for the neighborhood in the days leading up to Christmas. Moe and I had given them a box of discarded ornaments and glittered trinkets. But the credit for the wave of positivity created on the rundown block belonged to the five kids that were now standing on the sidewalk in front of my house. They were clustered around Moe and his bicycle like parts of a jacket-wearing barricade.

"Hey guys," I said, closing the front door behind me. "What's up?"

"Hey Christopher," spoke the leader of the assorted five: nine-year-old Selina, Spaghetti, Lewis. "Not much."

"Oh," I asked, descending the hard, cold steps with Alejandra.

"Come on, you guys," said Moe. "Tell him what you just told me."

"Why is it such a big deal to you," Selina asked.

"Yeah, why," her younger, half-brother asked. His name was Nolan Lewis. Around the neighborhood, since his sister was known as Spaghetti, he usually just answered to Noodle. "It was just the neighbors fighting."

"What? What neighbors," I asked. "Who was fighting?"

Chapman, Chips, Ruffalo, a head-strong ten-year-old and best friend of Selina, stepped toward me. "We were playing at Zee's house, Chris. Everything was good until things got really heated at the house next to hers."

"It's been happening a lot lately," the soft-spoken nine-year-old named Zelda, Zee, Park said meekly.

"Really," I asked.

She nodded her head. "At least since right after New Years."

"What are the fights about," I asked her, though I was looking at Moe. I didn't understand why this needed my attention.

Zee shrugged her shoulders. "There's a lot of yelling. I try not to listen to them."

"More importantly," said Moe, looking directly at me, "is who is doing the fighting."

"Who," I asked.

"Robert and his family," Zee answered. "Mostly his parents and him."

I blinked, looking back and forth between Moe and the group. My instincts ticked. I wasn't brought outside just to hear about random neighbors arguing. I heard the front door open behind me. The names of the dwarf brothers hovered at the back of my vision. They had most likely come outside to make sure we had gone across the street to Eleanor's. "Robert who," I finally asked. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

Nine-year-old Thad, Krispy, Camden looked at me strangely. I might as well have had the word "idiot" painted across my forehead given the expression on his face. "Robert Garrig, of course. You go to school with him."

I was looking at Alejandra before Krispy had finished talking. The expression on her face was easy to read. She had been absolutely right about him, but she didn't want to be. "What was the argument about," I asked the kids without breaking my gaze on Alejandra.

There was a pause that stretched a second too long for me. I turned my head to look at the group in front me, specifically the thin, blonde-haired girl with pale, pink cheeks that were made redder by the cold air brushing past us. "Zee," I said, encouraging her to answer.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not sure. I think he was trying to leave. They were mad he didn't pick up his brother from school."

"Did you guys hear where he might have been trying to go," Alejandra asked.