The Silent Sounds of Chaos by Kristina Circelli Page A

was sure that whatever it was, she probably earned it one way or another.
    “Mind your own business,” she snapped, peeling out of the parking lot and steering the car toward home.
    He couldn’t help the snide comment that escaped next. “Owe more money?” At the tears in her eyes, he felt a strange stirring of sympathy and found himself softening. Even after all the terrible things she’d done, when she cried it made him feel guilty. “You could ask—”
    “Shut up!” his mother shouted, swerving to the side of the road and stomping on the brakes. Finn barely had a second to catch himself before she grabbed hold of his collar and pulled him over until they were face to face. “You listen here, and don’t make me tell you again. We don’t ask for help. We are better than that. You got that, you little shit?”
    His face a portrait of indifference, Finn nodded. But it wasn’t enough for her, and she all but snarled in his face, shoving him hard against the seat and swatting the metal man in his hand. It tumbled to the floor. “And why do you make these stupid things? Get you nowhere in life. Grow up and do something useful for once, will you?”
    Retrieving the figure, Finn chose not to answer, not trusting his voice not to waver with the sadness burning in his throat. Slightly trembling fingers smoothed out dents in the wire to reshape the man’s head. He liked making them because it was the only thing in the whole world he was good at, and they distracted him from the suckiness that was his real life. But he would never admit that to anyone. Well, except maybe Snow.
    When his mother sighed and focused again on the road, Finn adjusted his jacket and turned his head to look out the window. Accepting her hate, her miserable outlook on the world, was harder to bear these days. And now he couldn’t even talk to Snow about it.
    Tears threatened to build. Finn shoved them back, angry at his own weakness, and stared at the club retreating in the side mirror.
    “ You got balls, kid ,” Joe had said to him that day he dared to talk back to one of the toughest men in town.
    “ Come see me at the club in a few years ,” had been his invitation, a summons to a specific place at an unspecific time for reasons unknown.
    “ Joe, remember the name .” A name Finn had already known, a name he would never, ever, forget.
    As his mother turned down the street he’d grown up on, Finn told himself it was time to stop crying and time to stop letting his mom make him feel bad. He had to toughen up, forget the past and how he’d let people push him around as a kid. He had to grow up—and growing up meant focusing on the future, doing whatever he had to do to prepare for it.
    Joe was waiting for him.

 
     
     
    EXHAUSTED, SNOW FELL into the recliner, watching her four-year-old neighbor run around the living room using a blanket as a cape as she pretended to be a superhero. At thirteen, Snow considered herself pretty fun and full of energy, but she couldn’t keep up with the kid, especially when she was left alone to babysit while both sets of parents went out to dinner to celebrate some kind of “big win,” as her dad put it. And especially when her sister chose to spend the night hiding in her room instead of helping out.
    “I wanna play!” the child insisted, holding out a doll and abandoning the cape.
    “Bedtime,” Snow insisted. The girl’s face scrunched into what Snow recognized as a look of evil determination.
    “You have to play or I’ll tell Mommy you were mean to me,” was the garbled reply, spoken in childish gibberish with just the right amount of manipulation to have Snow quickly jumping to her feet.
    “Okay, okay. Ten minutes of playtime, then bed.”
    “I win!” the little girl cheered, grabbing another doll and plunking down on the carpet. “Wanna play dolls?” When Snow didn’t immediately answer, she screeched, “Wanna play dolls?!”
    Unable to resist, Snow replied with a nod then