Blood Brothers

The edge of the blade is warm against Kennedy’s skin. It’s not the first time he’s been cut, probably won’t be the last either, but this time, it’s different. This time, it means something.

“Ready?” Rachel whispers. Her face is half shrouded in the darkness, her hands illuminated by a moonbeam coming through the shed window.

They’re not supposed to be outside, not supposed to be awake, and the consequences would be severe if they’re caught: third strike, you’re out.

“Ready,” he whispers back.

Rachel nods and draws the knife across his palm. He winces as a hot line oozes up. She hands him the knife and he quickly cuts across her palm too. She watches him, not her hand, and he doesn’t see any sign of pain, any change in her expression.

“Okay, now hold up your hand.” Rachel holds up her own hand and he presses his bloody palm against hers. “We’re blood brothers now.”

“You’re a girl,” he quickly interjects.

“Yeah, but ‘blood brother and sister’ doesn’t sound as cool.” She rolls her eyes but smiles a little. “We’re blood brothers. United for life. I’ll protect you, and you’ll protect me. Till death do us part.”

“United for life,” Kennedy repeats. Even without this, he’d do anything for Rachel.

“Now get back to bed, before we’re caught out after curfew.” She leans over, kisses his cheek, and then silently squeezes through the shed door, back into the big house where they each share a room with three other foster kids no one wants.

Four years later, Kennedy is in the back of a van, sprawled across the row of seats so no one can sit next to him as he and two other boys are transported to their new placement. He traces the scar on his palm as he stares out the window. It doesn’t matter where he’s going; it never does.

The first few placements, he was optimistic about his new home. A residential facility, a family, a distant uncle — each held the promise that he’d finally found his forever home. That’s what his caseworker, the first one, called it. “You’re going to your forever home, Ken!” He hated being called Ken. His dad had called him that, once upon a time, before going away to his own forever home in a federal penitentiary when Kennedy was seven.

Rachel had scoffed at the term too. “There aren’t any forevers, not for us. There are just-nows and for-the-time-beings. But forever? Don’t even think about it.”

He wanted to argue with her. But wasn’t their placement at the time, a temporary holding facility for special needs children, proof enough that she was right, that everything in life was just temporary? That was his fourth placement, Rachel’s tenth or thirtieth or infinity-ith, and so he shut up because Rachel was the authority on foster care, on life, on everything. His blood brother.

The van pulls into a long driveway shaded with trees. A split-rail fence lines the asphalt driveway up to the compound. Compound is never the official term, but that’s what it is. A scattering of buildings, dorms and a dining hall and admin building and sometimes, if he was lucky, an old gym where he could play basketball.

The van stops and the driver and two boys get out. Kennedy hesitates, deciding who he’s going to be here. The quiet kid who ignores everyone and does as he’s told? The loud troublemaker who breaks things because why not? The instigator who everyone suspects but can never catch?

A line of boys comes out of one of the buildings and scurries to another one, like ants in their habitat. All except one kid at the end who struts as if the line just happens to be going where he was going anyways. Kennedy grins, recognizing him as Luis. They’d shared a room together last year at another holding facility, until the staff realized they were better off far, far apart and Luis was sent somewhere else.

Kennedy ambles out of the van. “Yo, Luis!”

Luis looks up. “Yo, Kennedy!” He waves but follows his line.

Kennedy frowns at this atypical-for-Luis behavior but doesn’t worry too much. Plenty of time to catch up later.

He and the other two boys are shepherded into the admin building for processing. They watch a short welcome video, are read a list of rules, and then are wanded and searched before being escorted to their dorms.

Kennedy goes along with the welcome sham, still feeling the place out. The outside doors aren’t locked and neither are their bedroom doors. The staff is a mix of hardened veterans and newbies who flinch if the kids look at them wrong.

Luis finds him at dinner.

“Have you seen Rachel?” Kennedy asks him, the first question he asks at every new placement.

“No, sorry, man. You seen Juan?” Juan is Luis’ little brother. They were separated two years ago and Luis has been searching for him ever since.

“Which Juan?” Kennedy asks with a completely straight face.

A few guys at the table snicker.

“Nacho business which Juan.” Luis says without batting an eye.

“What you taco ‘bout? I’ll be jalapeno business if I feel like it.”

Luis busts out laughing. “You’re good, man.” He calms just as quickly. “But seriously, you seen him?”

“No, sorry.”

Luis nods. They both know, it is what it is.

Kennedy quickly falls into the facility’s rhythm. Wake up and shower, four hours staring at a computer in a cinderblock building they call the school, lunch, therapy, basketball outside with the other guys, then dinner, chores, TV, and bedtime. There’s time to think, if he wants to, and time to zone out, if he doesn’t.

As the days turn into weeks, then months, Kennedy isn’t sure what he wants. He knows better than to make friends — the first rule of group care is that you come in alone and you leave alone — but he doesn’t mind this place. Without consciously deciding, he becomes the background guy: the one who goes along, doing just enough to not get noticed, to not get singled out.

All that changes, however, as he walks to dinner one night with the guys from his building. They pass by the girls’ unit, catcalling like usual, but Kennedy stops short, staring over at a cluster of girls on the porch.

Luis bumps into him. “What the hell?”

Kennedy ignores him, ignores the guys flowing around either side of him. He ignores the counselors’ calls to keep moving and instead walks towards the porch, as if in a trance. “Rachel?” he whispers.

She hears him somehow, or maybe she just wanted to check out the throng of guys passing by, and looks up at him. It’s been three years since he’s seen her and she’s gotten taller. Her long ponytail has been replaced by a close-cropped pixie cut and she has more piercings. But it’s her. “Rachel!” he yells again, walking more quickly in her direction.

She stares back at him, calm and detached, but before he can reach her, to hug her and make sure she’s real, a counselor has him by the arm and is pulling him back in line. “No can do, buddy.”

Kennedy half-turns so he’s walking sideways, drinking in the sight of his long-lost blood brother, until he rounds a corner and she disappears.

Dinner passes in a blur. All he can think about is Rachel: how good it’ll be to hear her voice, how much he has to tell her about the past few years and learn about where she’s been, how they’ll plan for their future when they age out. He knows he has a stupid grin on his face, but he can’t help it. His blood brother is back.

Over the next few days he can barely focus. He’s patiently waited for this moment for years, but knowing she’s so close and yet unreachable is almost more than he can take.

It isn’t until several days later that he has the opportunity to talk to her. All the residents are in the gym, playing basketball and pretending they’re normal teenagers. Rachel sits by herself, watching kids and staff run up and down the court.

“Hey,” Kennedy says as he sits on the bench next to her, close enough that they can chat but far enough apart that they won’t get in trouble for inappropriate boundaries.

“Hey,” she replies.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye, knowing better than to show too much enthusiasm or a staff member will come over and separate them. He waits for her to take the lead, like she always did, but instead she continues watching the game.

“So….” He’s at a loss for words and mentally kicks himself. This is Rachel, not a stranger. “How ya been?”

She shrugs. “Okay.”

“I wondered about you.”

“Yeah.”

This isn’t going at all how he planned, not at all like the conversations he’s had with her in his head. As a last resort, he holds out his palm. “I still have my scar.”

She looks down at his hand and a small smile twitches across her mouth. He smiles too but then she rolls her eyes. “We were so stupid.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

He sits in silence until she gets up and moves across the court to sit with a couple other girls. Kennedy sits, tracing his scar, his mind purposefully empty, until the residents are herded back to their dorms.

He sees her a couple more times over the next week, walking on the other side of campus, too far away to call out to. Although he would, if she waved at him. He’d run over to her, grab her hand and run away with her just like they planned, back when they were stupid kids. Instead, he traces his scar.

At the next group event, a heavily-chaperoned mixer in the gym, Kennedy scans the residents but doesn’t see Rachel. He doesn’t blame her for skipping; these things are like an awkward middle school dance. Or at least like the ones he’s seen on TV and in movies; none of his placements have been big on after-school social activities.

Luis finds him as he’s getting himself a cup of the reduced-sugar punch they insist on serving at these things. His face is glowing. “I talked to Juan this afternoon.”

“That’s great, man! Where is he?”

“Oklahoma, of all places. We have an uncle there who took him in, and he’s trying to get me to come stay with him too.”

Kennedy smiles and says all the right things, but inside he’s carefully building a wall between him and Luis. They’ve never been friends, he tells himself, not really, just acquaintances with a similar predisposition for exploiting chaos in placements. He’s walled off a lot of people over the years.

But not Rachel. He should’ve put the wall up last week but his scar stopped him. Like Luis and Juan, you never stop looking for family. Rachel is family. His blood brother.

Luis bounds away to share his good news with others, a big grin on his face, and Kennedy is left standing by himself. He watches the interactions between residents, joking and flirting and bullying, and he wonders about their walls.

A radio squawk draws his attention back to the present. A staff member near him frowns and heads towards a cluster of other frowning staff members. Three of them exit the gym, in enough of a hurry to let him know something big is happening but not fast enough to alarm any of the kids who aren’t paying attention to staff anyway.

He moves towards the door himself and so he’s able to see an ambulance pull up to the girl’s dorm, its lights casting red and white streaks across the lawn. Luis and another guy have started arguing, drawing the staff’s attention, and Kennedy slips out into the night, towards the lights. Three EMTs guide a stretcher through the girls’ door as he draws closer. When he tries to enter too the door is locked, so he presses his face against its glass window.

Three staff, two from the gym and a third who must already have been here, are pacing around, worry etched on their faces. The EMTs are kneeling on the floor with the fourth staff, a man who’s always had a kind word for Kennedy. One of the EMTs shifts and Kennedy sees past him to short, dark hair framing a too-pale face of the girl lying on the floor.

Rachel.

He pounds on the door as he screams her name. The staff look over as one, then exchange a look among themselves. He continues pounding and screaming.

One says something into her walkie as another comes towards him. She gestures for him to go back to the gym but he shakes his head. He needs to get inside, to check on Rachel, and he beats at the door, kicks it, anything to break the door and get inside.

“Hey, Kennedy.” A staff member has come up behind him and addresses him in a low, calm voice. “Let’s go for a walk, okay?”

But Kennedy doesn’t want to go for a walk. He whirls around and punches the guy, probably not more than half a dozen years older than him, squarely in the face. The guy curses as he grabs his nose and sinks to his knees. No one inside seems to have noticed as Kennedy turns back to the door, pulling on it, kicking it. Rachel still hasn’t moved on the floor.

Panicked thoughts fly across his mind. What if she doesn’t move? What if he’s finally found her after all these years and the only time they had together was a few minutes in a stupid gym? What if all those promises she made to him weren’t true?

It’s too much for him to think about. Right now he has to focus on getting to her, because he sure as hell can’t save her from out here. Banging on the door doesn’t open it so Kennedy steps back and searches the ground around him. The staff are too smart to leave something obvious lying around, like a set of keys or a crowbar or a giant rock, but he does notice the brick pavers tucked into the mulch. He quickly wiggles a small one free and slams it against the door glass.

In the movies the glass always breaks when you so much as even look at it, but the glass here isn’t movie glass, and Kennedy’s arm ricochets back with the impact. He hits the window glass again, square in the center, and he imagines he can feel it breaking, bringing him closer to saving Rachel. He smashes the brick over and over, and on the seventh attempt he catches the glass just right and it shatters, raining down shards onto his palm. He reaches in through the window, ignoring the teeth eating into his jacket and his arm.

Before he can open the door, however, arms wrap around his waist, then around his own arms too, pulling him away from the door and from Rachel. He struggles against them but more arms pile on, pinning him in the grass. He strains to move his arms and legs but the staff bodies hold him tight. He can move his head, however, and he turns it to see the EMTs rolling a stretcher into the back of the ambulance, a still figure lying on top.

“Rachel!” he howls, trying even harder to free himself. He can feel the staff tensing against him, at least five people holding him down. The ambulance pulls away, lights on but no siren. Kennedy closes his eyes and lets his body go limp.

A week later, Kennedy is in the back of a van, sprawled across the row of seats so no one can sit next to him as he and two other boys are transported to their new placement. He ignores the bandage-covered stitches on his palm as he stares out the window.

It doesn’t matter where he’s going; it never does.

E.D. Martin is a writer with a knack for finding new jobs in new places. Born and raised in Illinois, her past incarnations have included bookstore barista in Indiana, college student in southern France, statistician in North Carolina, economic development analyst in North Dakota, and high school teacher in Iowa. She draws on her experiences to tell the stories of those around her, with a generous heaping of “what if” thrown in.

She currently lives in Illinois where she job hops while attending grad school and working on her novels. Read more of her stories at her website.

“Blood Brothers” will be included in her upcoming short story collection, Strong Enough to Cry.