The Repossession Read Free Page B

this town. If parents ate with their kids like we do, maybe they’d know what they’re thinking. It’s just so scary. If I hear of one more 1-800
    number to call if you know anything, I’ll get hysterical. I keep hearing about Mr Harrison out with his flashlight.
    He’s been roaming the hills for a year. That boy of his is gone and he isn’t going to call. None of them are coming back, get used to it already.’
    Mr Yates helped himself to more cheese.
    ‘You’re right, m’dear. Those kids have gone. The town just can’t hold them. Happening right the way up to the Okanagan. They just up and go with no thought to the pain their families must feel. I blame crystal meth. It’s destroying our society. Once those kids get their hands on it – their lives are already over. There’s talk of a government task force coming in to control it, but you think it will stop the kids disappearing? I don’t.’
    ‘I don’t know any kids doing meth,’ Rian said.
    His mother looked at him with relief in her eyes.
    ‘Well, I for one am glad about that, Rian. I don’t know what I’d do if you started taking drugs.’
    ‘You’d throw me out, just like all the other kids who’ve been thrown out of their homes in this town for doing something their folks didn’t like.’
    ‘And you’d deserve it,’ Mr Yates said, pointing his knife at Rian.
    Rian glared at him, but let it pass; no point in arguing, he’d be gone soon enough. He’d never heard of Anwar, but then again there were hundreds of kids at his school he didn’t know. Tonight he and Genie
    would be joining those names on the community board if everything went to plan. He briefly wondered if his mother would set up a 1-800 number herself and make Mr Yates comb the hills at nights. Almost made him laugh to imagine it.
    He’d started making plans the moment he realized that Genie was being held prisoner. He’d arranged to see her the day after school ended but she didn’t show. Then he’d heard about the girl possessed by the devil on Maple Street and knew the moment he walked over and saw the Reverend Schneider’s car that they had Genie. Genie’s mother had turned her water hose on him. No boy was coming near her house and that was that. The language she used certainly wasn’t Christian.
    It had taken weeks of organization, but this was the night Genie would be free and they would leave, start a new life somewhere. Everything was prepared.
    ‘Your mother was talking to you,’ Mr Yates informed him.
    Rian focused on his mother. She was looking at him oddly. ‘Sorry.’
    ‘I was asking if you knew any of these missing children?’
    Rian shook his head. ‘No. But I guess some are pretty desperate. They don’t have a choice I guess, some
    families are pretty messed up.’
    His mother looked at him sharply. She knew about Genie and how he liked her. Never met her of course, but a mother can tell when a son is distracted. ‘That poor girl.
    I know you miss her.’
    ‘The Magee girl?’ Mr Yates asked, like he knew something about her.
    Rian was surprised they knew he liked her, let alone seemed to have discussed it.
    ‘Mother got her locked up in the house, believes she’s possessed,’ Rian explained.
    Mr Yates looked exasperated. ‘There is no such thing as possession. God, we might as well live in the middle ages.
    The County should take her into care.’
    ‘Reverend Schneider sits on the Board of Governors,’
    his mother informed him. ‘He sees Satan’s hand in everything. That unfortunate girl.’ She looked at Rian with pity. ‘Poor you, finally got a girlfriend and she’s possessed by the devil.’
    Rian heard the sarcasm in her voice.
    ‘Poor family stock. The father was a lawyer but her mother is a Munby and y’know . . .’ Mr Yates declared.
    Rian didn’t know. ‘Munby?’
    ‘Not here. Not at the table,’ his mother insisted. But then she said, ‘Shame, a Munby. That’s a special curse
    all of its own. Poor thing.’
    ‘Genie