Going Over by Beth Kephart Page A

jacket’s unzipped. There are heat prickles inside my cap. It still hurts in every bone. I stop my teeth from chattering.
    â€œHe ran all the way here, by himself, and climbed through a window.” She tells me what I’ve just told her, in the same order I told it, every word measured and slow, like that will change the percentage of truth. She’s old, Henni, like fifty or something. She has short legs and a wide middle. Her eyes are so blue they’re almost violet. She had a boyfriend once, calls him Ancient History. She wears yellow canvas shoes and brown corduroy pants, that beat-up, rust-colored apron. These kids are her life. She’s never had a runaway. She’s refusing to believe it.I remember something she said to me on the first day I started: The kids are only on loan to us. We screw up, and they vanish.
    I give her a steady, unlying look and nod again. “He must have known the window would be open. Must have noticed Markus sitting there smoking. Markus does it, like, every day. Savas is smart. He remembers.”
    â€œAda, he’s five years old.”
    â€œHenni, he was here. All right? He was here. He was hiding in the closet.” My voice ricochets off the thin kitchen walls, the silver refrigerator, the tiny oven, the two sinks, the faucet, the pantry shelves, the Dixie cups, the tubs of playdough. I start again, quietly, as composed as I can given the way that I feel, which is lousier than ever, and worried. “He was here and he was afraid. He was running away from something.”
    â€œAnd why were you here again, Ada? In the cold, in the dark, after midnight?”
    â€œI was taking a ride.”
    â€œA ride.”
    â€œOn my bike.”
    â€œI didn’t think you had a bike.”
    â€œOn my
friend’s
bike, Henni. What does it matter?” I’ve torn the cuticle down to the flesh, popping a ruby of blood—bright red and wet as polish. I feel Henni’s eyes on me, like I’ve done something wrong, like it is my fault Savas ran away, my fault that I found him. Beneath the cap, my hair is smashed and hot, and on my lip an old yellow mole is melting. I watch Hennithrough loose strands of sunshine, wonder when Markus will come in here and stare down his thin nose and declare that his shawl has been stolen.
    â€œAre you sure it was his mother—that woman on the street?”
    â€œWho else would she be?”
    â€œI don’t know, Ada. I’m finding this hard to believe.” In the big room around the corner from us the saucer feet on the chairs are squeaking and the kids are growing noisy. Dominik is fighting for a pair of scissors with his favorite word of all time: “Mine.” Markus is telling Aylin that it’s time and Aylin’s turning “No” into a song. Now someone is running—the
splat splat splat
of their feet across the linoleum floor.
    â€œSavas is missing,” I say. “That’s what I know. And he was afraid. And we should find him. We have to, Henni. You have his address, right?”
    â€œYou know how it is, Ada. We’re not exactly welcome guests in their wedge of Little Istanbul. Besides, if she’d wanted your help, she would have asked for it. If this all happened the way you say that it did.”
    I brush the pink out of my eyes, give her one of my looks. My eyes blur. I focus. “She doesn’t speak German, Henni. How could she ask me?”
    â€œBut she ran. That says enough, doesn’t it?”
    The bright pop of blood near my nail has smeared. The kitchen smells like baked wool. Markus has found his guitarand he’s strumming, circling the room. I catch a glimpse of him in the silver face of the refrigerator. Dicle, a dark-haired kid who joined the class a month ago, is parading after him, a pipe cleaner up against his mouth like a zurna.
    Now Meryem’s up, and Ece with her, and when Markus hits the la-la chorus, the room echoes with the