No Such Creature by Giles Blunt

tried to comfort him with a touch on his shoulder. It was the briefest feathery touch, but it burst something inside Owen’s chest and he convulsed with tears.
    “No one expects you to like it right away, Owen.”
    “I don’t want to live there,” he said again, all but choking on each word.
    “You’re not used to the country, I know. But a farm is an ideal place to grow up. So much to do. And it’s fun looking after the animals, don’t you think?”
    “I want to live in my own home,” he said miserably. “Why can’t I just stay at home?”
    “Owen, your parents aren’t there anymore. There’s no one to look after you.”
    “But you said there’s money, right? Insurance money? Why can’t we pay a babysitter and I’ll just stay in my house? I don’t have to have new parents. I don’t want new parents. Would you want new parents?”
    “No, Owen, I wouldn’t. Nobody wants to lose their parents. You’ve been very unlucky. But we have to find you another family to live with, and the Tunkles are good parents and they have room.”
    “But I don’t want to live there.”
    Owen was sent to the Tunkles the following day. He spent a painful weekend supposedly adapting to the routines of the farm, and when Monday rolled around he took the bus to his new school and sat silently throughout his classes. He made no effort to acknowledge his new classmates, and when his teacher called on him, he had nothing to say, he had heard nothing. He was focused strictly on the final bell, waiting hour after hour, minute after minute, for it to ring. When finally it did ring, he went nowhere near the bus stop. He walked into town and back to his old neighbourhood.
    He had never seen his house with all the curtains closed. It sat blind and mute on the corner where it had always been. No car in the drive, of course, but then there never was when he got home from school. He still had his key, and let himself in.
    It was a little stuffy, a little dusty, but it smelled the same. It smelled of his house, the way no other house would ever smell. And nothing had changed. All the furniture was there. The coats were still hanging in the vestibule—his mother’s, his father’s, his own—above a chaotic jumble of footwear. The merest objects filled him not just with pain, but with awe: his father’s enormous running shoes, the wellingtons his mother wore in the garden. He went and sat on the couch in the living room, facing the television. His reflection on the dim screen, thin and distorted, looked back at him.
    He had never seen the house so dark, not during the day. He fell sideways into the cushions and cried, but it didn’t help. After a while he went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Snapple from the fridge. All the same food was there. Nothing had been done yet, by whoever had come in to close the curtains. The electricity was on, and the water.
    The message light was blinking by the phone, but he didn’t want to see who had called.
    His plan was this: He would live in this house by himself. He would continue going to school as if nothing had happened. If he could get that insurance money, he would hire someone to cook and clean and look after the house while he was at school. He pictured a fat, cheerful woman who would bake lots of pies. Miss Prine would be impressed; she would see that he could get along without a mother and father.
    But for now he had to keep quiet. He couldn’t open the curtains, and he was afraid even to turn on lights. The cops would burst in, thinking there was a burglary in progress. He brought a jar of peanut butter and some crackers into the living room and ate in front of the TV. For dessert he had a granola bar.
    His parents had not brought him up to be religious, but he found, looking around at the empty chairs where his parents used to sit, with their books still open beside them, that he was thinking about God. What possible reason could God have to snatch his parents from this house, this