Again Kevin wondered why he was still there. He could have called the police hours ago, when the kid was still breathing. He knew he should've called when the kid had started making those loud groaning noises and clawing at his throat, but Kevin had been too busy trying to steal some money from one of the teachers out in the hall. And now it was too late.

Kevin hadn't wanted to come. Seeing all the kids in wheelchairs made him nervous. They reminded him of his father, paralyzed for life after the explosion in the coal mines where he had worked. He hadn't wanted to come, but his new social worker had made him. "You'll be giving back to the community," she had said, "a chance to help children less fortunate than you." Kevin couldn't think of what the community had given him, except an addiction to heroin and an obsessive need to steal whatever he could get his hands on. But she set up the trip, so he went.

So here he was, at Krollmount Institution for Mentally Handicapped Children, sitting in a room next to the dead body of a boy no older than Kevin. And Kevin had really liked the kid. Sure, he couldn't say much, but when he smiled at Kevin for bringing him snacks, it made Kevin feel good, something he hadn't felt in a while. And after that first day, Kevin had actually asked to come back. He liked the kid, liked the feeling he got when he helped him with something he couldn't do on his own. He drew pictures with him, read stories to him, and brought him snacks. For once in his life, he felt wanted.

So how was he supposed to know that apple he had brought, the one still clasped in the boy's hands, was deadly, covered in a pesticide that caused a slow and painful death if swallowed? How could he have possibly known what would've happened when the boy got the food from Kevin and took a big bite, smiling at Kevin? How was Kevin supposed to know that only minutes later the boy would end up slumped over in his wheelchair, dead? How could he have known? Yet Kevin still couldn't help thinking it was all his fault as he reached over to finish the apple.
 
 

Back to: The Table of Contents of Kevin Shapiro, Boy Orphan

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