Inkwell 2018-2019

The Explosion by Ella Warnick

from outside. He looked frightened, and only then did it hit me that he had been through more that morning than most adults had in their entire lives. It likely wasn’t helping that he had also been abducted by the cops. I took the seat across from him, smiling as genuinely as I could considering the circumstances, and started our conversation as I would any interrogation. “Hi. What’s your name?” I asked. He remained mute, refusing to meet my gaze. After a moment’s silence, I tried again. “Come on, pal. How are we going to be friends if I don’t even know your name?” He considered this before answering. “Kayden,” the boy murmured. “Kayden? That’s a cool name. My name is Officer Barnes, but you can call me Ethan if you’d like.” I winked like we were sharing a special secret, but he didn’t react the way most kids did. “You got a last name, Kayden?” Nothing. “Alright. That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me yet. How old are you?” He held up a hand and a thumb. “Six years? That’s pretty old. Do you go to school now?” I asked. He nodded. “Were you at school this morning?” Another nod. “Can you tell me what happened?” This grabbed his attention. He finally looked up, his eyes wide and gray as ash. A mess of long curls had fallen into his face. I noted the bruise on his cheek, ripe and blue. He opened his mouth as if he were about to speak and took a gulp of air instead. “Do you remember anything about it?” I prompted. He fidgeted, hands clasped tightly between his knees. Seconds passed and I considered moving on to the next question, when he suddenly opened up. “There was fire. A lot of it,” he began. “First there was a big boom, and then I woke up and I couldn’t move. Some firemen had to come get me and they carried me out on a moving table. I saw my friends. They weren’t moving. Some of them were bleeding. Were they dead?” Kayden said, stumbling over his words in his impatience to get them out. I put my head in my hands. This kid was going to be seriously messed up. “I don’t know, kid,” I said. This wasn’t my

The boy on the other side of the two-way mirror didn’t look a day older than seven. He sat in the interrogation chair — like a criminal — quiet but clearly uncomfortable. Covered head to toe in a blanket of rubble, his hair and skin color were almost completely unrecognizable. I could vaguely make out the Loony Toons logo on his shirt. “Who is he?” I asked. My partner of four years, Donald Weiss, was helping himself to coffee and danishes from the break room and had the bad habit of chewing with his mouth open. I suppressed the urge to smack the danish out of his hand. I didn’t know how he had the stomach to eat when a school building had been destroyed in an explosion just hours ago. They were still pulling out bodies, but I heard rumors circulating among the other cops that there were no survivors. Hundreds of children dead. We hadn’t even begun to investigate the cause yet. “They found him in the wreckage. We assume he’s a student,” Don said. I stole a glance at the child again. He looked unscathed. “He couldn’t have been in the explosion. There’s not a scratch on his body,” I observed. Don nodded like he had already considered the possibility. “That’s the crazy thing. He was trapped under a support beam, so he must have been, but like you said, the kid’s fine. Paramedics said he should’ve died like all the rest, or at least suffered head trauma or some broken ribs or something. They can’t find anything wrong with him.” “Weird.” “Creepy, right?” Don said. “Anyways, chief wants you to talk to him. See if you can get his parents’ information ‘cause so far he hasn’t said a word.” He walked off, and I was left alone to watch the kid, who was starting to squirm. I wished I had a candy bar with me. When I entered the interrogation room, the boy fell still, examining me with the same judgmental eyes that I had looked at him with

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