Plunge.

Division Three

My ears are ringing as Shane pulls me on the way to a few buildings down, where our moms were having their book club – along with the other members. Shane explains along the way, but I can barely register what he’s saying.

I’m losing my mom.

I hold Shane’s hand and he doesn’t flinch.

Even though he isn’t really a best friend, he’s here. He’s helping me. I’m scared of losing him now that I lost everyone else.

Shane squeezes my hand. “My mom said a bunch of guys in black took your mom. They busted down the doors and they were armed.”

Anxiety crawls up my spine. What are we going to do? Two eighth-graders in sweatshirts and sneakers against armed men in black.

“Has your mom called the police yet?” I ask.

His silence is assenting.

We see a few police cars parked in front of the driveway on Shane’s brownstone apartment building. No sirens are wailing because it’s three in the afternoon and the sun has gone contrastingly bright. A woman with fair skin and streaming russet hair stands a few steps away from the front door. Her arms are folded cheerlessly and she and a police officer with rusty-colored hair are having a heated but hushed conversation. It suggests itself that Shane Ellis gives the impression of being a male edition of his mom.

“Shane.” Kaila Ellis sighed in a mixture of utter relief and imbedding exasperation. She hooks her arm around Shane’s neck and kisses his forehead. She looks at me with poignant deep-green eyes that are a step away from rupturing into tears.

And incidentally, I am too.

The officer turns to me with a notebook and a pen, “I assume you’re her daughter.” His plaque shines the word Andrews in the tiptoeing sunlight.

I keep silent in consent.

“You don’t have that same, uh –” He points his pen to his eyes.

I display no reaction as to why that is. I don’t want to bring up my father, who is away traveling for research – he’s a microbiologist and specializes in discovering new species of protozoans. I just want to know where my mom is.

He shrugs. “Do you have any idea who would want to take your mom for hostage?”

“Hostage?”

His pen hovers on his notebook, read to jot down. “Well, they didn’t kill her on the spot. And they didn’t take the rest of the ladies.”

I turn to Shane. His eyes reflect contraception of doubtful conviction that my mom’s disappearance is linked to Rein’s.

My first thought is to tell this Officer Andrews everything. Something unidentified sits at the back of my mind, releasing cries of hesitation. And before I could hold my breath to consider why I am vacillating, a phone rings.

I flinch at the sound of it.

Officer Andrews answers the phone, and stalks off a few steps away from us.

“They just went in, got my mom and went out?” I ask Mrs. Ellis.

“That part, I don’t really get.” She rubs her finger on her chin. “I wonder why. Or how they knew she would be at our place at this time of day.”

“It’s planned,” Shane says. “I think everything was,” he adds in a murmur.

Mrs. Ellis seems not to have heard. “You can stay with us, dear. As long as you need to. Unless, your father is coming back when he hears the news?”