Coal - Part I

After Michael had to run away, he spent about a year working in a restaurant for a man named Mr. Truong. Michael lived on rice noodles and marked time in Sunday dinner rushes until he was taken one morning - led across the damp parking lot, still night-cold under his bare feet, into a police car that took him to a series of concerned strangers, and ultimately to Mr. And Mrs. Marshall, who greeted him with a blue plastic tub full of sneakers of all different sizes, a bowl of buttered noodles, and a room that was to be his.

“And I won’t go in there unless you invite me or if I feel like you’re makin’ some kin’of trouble for yourself,” said Mrs. Marshall, “This is your room, for as long as you’re here.”

It was as great a kindness as he had ever known, or would again for some time. That was the first night he had slept behind a door that locked from the inside, and he slept deeply.

He stayed for three months - not long enough to heal, but long enough that mist began to creep into his memories – that same mist that takes your dreams. He found it hard to remember what was true, and that entire years of his old life could bob up to the surface and sink again like shapeless, rotting logs in murky water. He left the Marshalls’ on the day his sister’s face began to blur.

They aren’t going to take you back.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said, “I want to get Sara.”