Red and blue lights flash behind me, and I know I should stop.

But I don’t.

I continue to drive, the lights moving closer and closer before disappearing. Pulling up alongside me, the police officer doesn’t even glance my way. Instead, he picks up speed, cutting in front of me sharply. I think for a second that he’s going to hit the brakes, causing me to slam into him, but he shows no sign of slowing down.

I take that as my cue to follow him; he’ll clear the road so I can reach my destination as quickly as possible.

I dial the number Ethan had used to call me once again, but it goes straight to voicemail.

I keep driving, stunned to see the police are driving in the same exact direction as I am—even turning onto my street.

At the far end, I see a bunch of flashing red and blue lights.

Yanking on the wheel, I pull the car over and jump out. I run towards my house.

Shit.

“Where are you going?” one of the officers standing outside my house yells.

“Stop! Hey! Stop right there!” someone else shouts, but nothing is stopping me.

I reach my front door where I find five more officers barring me from entering my house.

“You can’t go in there,” one of them says.

Like hell I can’t. That’s my house. “My brother,” I tell them, my tone clipped.

“There’s a kid in there?” another cop asks, clearly surprised.

I shove my way past them—screw the consequences—and I run straight toward my room, right to the place I know my brother is hiding.

“Ethan,” I whisper. I don’t want to scare him any more than he is.

I hear ruffling before the closet door opens slightly. “Linc, is that you?” a fragile voice asks and I sigh in relief.

“Yes, E. It’s me,” I assure him. “You can come out now.”

“Are you sure?”

I breathe in deeply, trying to keep my emotions at bay. “Yes, everything’s okay now.” I don’t know if that’s true, but he’s okay and that’s all that matters to me.

He peeks his head out of the closet, looking around. Cautiously, he creeps out of the closet, taking slow steps at first, then quicker ones as he runs into my arms.

I tighten my hold, like I might not see him ever again. I don’t know what I would’ve done if something had happened to him. “You’re okay, buddy.”

“We’re going to need you two to come with us,” someone says from behind us. I look back to see a man in a blue uniform looking down at us. His eyes are filled with pity and that’s when I remember the herd of officers outside.

“What happened?” I ask, rising from my crouch.

“We just need to ask you some questions,” the officer says, and that’s when I realize this is far from over.

“Where are you going?” Ethan asks.

We’re down at the station, and I can tell Ethan is getting more and more stressed with what’s happening. “I just have to talk to the man from earlier. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.”

“Is everything okay?” he asks again. I don’t know enough to have an answer, and I’m not sure I could tell him even if I did know.

“Yes,” I lie once again. “I’ll be right back.”

“Promise?” he asks and I feel like I’m looking at the younger version of me.

I nod. “I promise.”

“Okay,” he concedes, trusting me at my word. I’ll never leave him behind. I’ll never break a promise to him—I won’t be like our mother.

A female officer, who’s been waiting with us, sets up a puzzle, asking Ethan to join her.

My brother looks at me for confirmation. “Go ahead,” I say. “I bet you’ll have it finished before I get back.”

Ethan bites his bottom lip, considering his options before cautiously sitting down at the table. The officer starts asking him about school and what he likes to do. Like any child would, Ethan finds himself eager to answer all of her questions, the earlier concern erased.

“Do you think we can beat your big brother and get this done before he gets back?” she asks pointing at the puzzle, and Ethan nods enthusiastically.

Confident Ethan will be fine, I leave the room.

“He’ll be okay,” the escorting officer tells me. “Kids are resilient.”

Numbly, I just stare at him. Of course he’d say that. He’s probably seen this exact same thing unfold a hundred times over. And that makes me angry. Determined. Regardless of what I have to do, Ethan will be okay. I won’t let anything hurt him, or allow anyone to destroy his childhood like mine was.

He shows me into a room. “I’m Officer Alvarez.” He extends his hand and I shake it. Gesturing behind him, he says, “And this is Officer Jones. If you could take a seat, please,” he adds.

As if I’m not in control of my own feet, I move towards the table, taking a seat. He sits down too, and another cop, who I vaguely remember from my house, walks in and closes the door. I glance around. We’re in an interrogation room—a room usually reserved for what I assume are perpetrators. I start to worry whether I’m in trouble.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, feeling the same vulnerability Ethan did.

“It will be,” the officer assures me.

“Son, we responded to a call at your home.”

In rushing to make sure Ethan was okay, I didn’t even give myself a moment to think about what had caused all of the cops to be at my house in the first place. I mean, Ethan told me that Mom and Richard were fighting, but that’s not new. They scream and fight and throw shit, but the cops never show.

“Is my mother okay?” I ask. I may not think she’s a good mother, but I’m not heartless. She still gave birth to my brother and me. She was, at some point, a decent parent before addiction and Richard consumed her life.

“She’s in the hospital,” he says.

“What did that bastard do?” I ask, standing up so quickly, my chair tips and falls behind me.

Officer Alvarez stands up too, walking around to pick up my chair. “We responded to a call about a heroin overdose.”

“My mother OD’d?” My words come out in a whisper. She was yelling over the phone when Ethan called. How could she have overdosed in the time it took me to get home?

He sets my chair back, nodding at it. I sit. “We were able to bring her back with Narcan.”

My mother had died.

“Where’s Richard?” I ask.

“Who’s Richard?”

I run my fingers through my hair. “My mother’s boyfriend.” Who I thought was out of our lives for good.

“When we showed up at the house, it was just your mother lying on the kitchen floor.” The imagery he paints is sure to haunt me. I watch Officer Jones standing silently behind him.

“We received an anonymous call and that’s what we responded to,” he adds.

Anonymous call my ass. That was Richard, too cowardly to stay and help out the woman he’s dealt drugs to for years.

“Son, we have a couple of questions for you,” Alvarez says, and I realize I’m the one who’s been asking them for the most part.

I nod. Officer Alvarez opens a manila folder and slides a few pictures toward me.

“When we responded to the call, we found these on the kitchen table,” he says, tapping the photos with his index finger. I look down and see a few bags of what I know is cocaine and heroin.

“Does your mother do drugs often?” he asks and I consider how I should answer. “Aron, this is important,” he presses. “I know you don’t want to get your mom in trouble, but she could’ve died tonight. She needs help, and so do you and your brother.”

I nod at the mention of my brother.

“Does she sell them?” he asks.

“I don’t think she does. Richard does though,” I say, throwing him under the bus. At this moment, I’d literally shove him in front of a moving car myself for all the wreckage he’s brought into our lives.

“Do you think your mother is an addict?” he asks and I laugh bitterly. She’s been an addict for years now.

“Aron?”

The smile leaves my face. “Yes.”

The cop rubs at his beard, looking at me with pity-filled eyes.

“What’s going to happen now?” I ask.

He puts the photos back into the folder. “I’m not sure. I don’t think your mother will face jail time, but she will have to go to rehab.” Rehab? I wonder if it’ll work. She looked like her old self the last few months. Maybe with help she could be that way permanently.

“The family court judge will likely find that she isn’t fit to care for you until she gets through the program and proves she’s not endangering her children.”

“Not fit to care for us?” I echo. If those words aren’t gospel, I don’t know what is.

“The court will take you and your brother from her custody.”

If the court says she can no longer have us… “Where are we going to go?” I finish my thought out loud.

“Is your father in the picture?”

“I haven’t heard from my father in years. He could be dead for all I know.”

He purses his lips as if what he just heard is distasteful. “Do you have any extended family? The court may award them temporary custody if they can provide a safe environment for you both.” I quiet the thoughts in my head, focusing specifically on where Ethan and I could go. There’s no one on my father’s side.

“I have an aunt,” I tell him. “She’s my mother’s sister.” We used to be really close. She used to take us to her house for the weekends every so often. Then, something happened between her and Mom and all I remember is her leaving our house with tears in her eyes after dropping us off. She did sneak a piece of paper into my pocket that day and told me to call her if I ever need anything, to call her if I ever felt unsafe.

I never did.

I thought things would get better.

I was wrong.