Kingdom Keepers(20)
“What’s that? What happened? Honey?” She laid her warm hand on his shoulder.
Finn felt like telling her the truth, but he knew she wouldn’t believe him. So what to do?
They both were focused on the burn. He couldn’t very well say that he’d been in a laser battle with invisible pirates. She’d cart him off to the mental ward, or worse, their minister.
“A cigarette,” Finn said. He hated smoking more than anything on the planet. In her right mind, his mother knew this about him. Finn had once walked across a restaurant and boldly asked a smoker to put out his cigarette so that his own hamburger didn’t have to taste like an ashtray. This, at seven years old. But his mother wasn’t thinking right. To her, seeing was believing.
“You? What?” she gasped.
He felt awful, both for lying to her and for using smoking as his excuse. He’d crushed her. “Mom…”
“Who? How’d you get it?”
“Mom…”
“And don’t you lie to me!”
He tried to think of how to explain this without lying, because not to lie was one promise he had made to his parents that he hated having to break. “I didn’t smoke it, Mom! A cigarette…burned me.” He bent and picked up his shirt off the floor and held it up to show to her. The hole was obvious enough. “It was this guy—a bully, you know.”
She collected herself. “A bully? Who did this to you, Finn?”
“A pirate,” he heard himself mumble.
“What?”
“He’s…called ‘Pirate’ because he’s so mean.”
“He should be arrested.”
“No! It’s nothing.”
“Nothing? That’s a—criminal act—burning someone. Finn.” She spun him around to face her. “Breathe.”
“What?”
“I want to smell your breath.”
“Mom!”
“Now, young man!”
He breathed toward her groping nose.
She blinked rapidly. “So after all we talked about, you sneaked out anyway?”
He’d forgotten about that part of his explanation. “I…ah…”
“Well!” she brightened. Her eyes went soft and her eyebrows danced, and he thought that this was the way she looked before she cried. “Oh, Finn. Thank you for not lying to me. It’s so important not to lie.” She added matter-of-factly, “Give me his name, please. His real name. Right now.”
“I don’t know his real name. Just some kid. I don’t think he meant to burn me, just scare me a little. It’s just one of those growing-up things, you know?” She often talked to him about “growing-up things.”
She held him at arm’s length now, studying him thoughtfully. He didn’t like the look on her face. This was her best imitation of a lie detector.
“Did you sleep in your clothes?” The dark cloud in her eyes concerned him. “This is the same shirt—these are the same clothes you wore yesterday, for goodness’ sakes!”
As she pieced it together, Finn tried to think of something to distract her. But she was too quick for him. “I don’t remember that hole in your shirt at dinner.”
“Hands beneath the table, Mom.”
“Finn…”
“I can’t help it if you didn’t see it.”
“I should have known, with your going to bed so early last night.” She was thinking aloud. “We can’t tell your father.”
He breathed a huge sigh of relief.
She eyed his wound, “But this did happen to you last night, didn’t it? After you went to sleep.”
He had no choice but to nod. Being grounded for life was better than continuing to lie to her.
“How late were you out?” she asked, heading for his bedroom window to inspect it like a detective.
“Midnight.” This was the truth.
“How’d you do it? Your father and I were downstairs until eleven or later.”
Finn’s window looked down on an area of the driveway in front of the garage. There was no roof below him, just a tiny apron of flower bedding and then the driveway’s black asphalt. He had a brain freeze trying to think up a way to explain his nocturnal escape, knowing from previous experience that the more of the story he made up, the more difficult it would be to keep it straight.
Then he remembered the room’s window box. “The fire ladder!” he said. His grandfather had installed a chain fire ladder several years before. In the event of an emergency he was to block the bottom crack of his door with clothes or bedding and wait for instructions from firemen to use the stow-away ladder. He’d promised a long time ago to never use the ladder to sneak out.