McConnell Short Story

So I had to write a shorts story for my creative writing class and I was too lazy to think of anything else, so I decided to write about the McConnells (a character family from District 8 that I started, for those of you who don't know). Apparently my teacher liked it so much that she wants to try and get it put in the freshman curriculum and teach it because she says it's a good lesson on morality and family and stuff like that xD So here it is, upon request^^

Robbed of Breath

Us McConnells, we’re the lowest of the low. Dirt poor, hidin’ from the law, like an isolated group of ugly ducklings that can’t seem to fit in, whatever we do. We’re even thieves – well, Hornet and I are, at least. We won’t let the kids steal; too risky. Because regardless of everything else, we’re also a family, no matter what all those others say.

Our story? Well, it’s simple, but with a whole lot of shenanigans mixed up into it. Basically we were all kids in No Hope Orphanage a bunch of years back, all six of us. Old Batty – well, Bethesda, but Batty seems to fit better – watched over us and ran the place, but she was gettin’ pretty senile so it was no surprise when she went bankrupt and the government said they were comin’ and takin’ her orphanage away. Well, she wasn’t standin’ for it – in a fit of madness she scooped up six of us and ran off, changin’ all our names so that no one could find us. That’s why I’m not Virgil anymore, but Skid. Skid McConnell. Times were tough at first, in our run-down apartment in Brooklyn, but then when we got older, Hornet – she’s the second oldest - and me learned to steal. And I learned to hustle. So now? Well, we’re hangin’ in there. Best that we can do. I just can’t let the kids starve; they’re counting on me.

Tonight hadn’t gone well. I’d went to the bar around the corner with a twenty in my fist, hoping I could win a game of pool or texas hold ‘em so I could get more to pay for a decent meal tomorrow. But I’d been beat – my hand was lousy, so I guess I expected it, but that didn’t make walkin’ out of there with empty pockets any easier. What would I say to the kids? Sorry, guys, we can’t eat today. I’ll try again tomorrow. I didn’t think I could bear to see the hopeful look on Kit’s pale, round face turn to disappointment. To see the pain of hunger in little Birdie’s big brown eyes.

“Batty?” I called softly as I closed the ramshackle apartment door behind me, careful not to make too much noise and wake the kids if they were sleepin’. “I’m home.”

“Skid!” Old Batty came flyin’ in from the hallway clad in her filthy patchwork apron. She was about a hundred years old – okay, not really, but we liked to say so – and growin’ crazier and crazier as every day passed. I thought she was just up to her usual antics, but then I saw the look of horror in her cloudy old-person eyes and immediately tensed up.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded, assuming the worst. We’d been found out, and they were going to take us all away from Batty and put us in homes. They’d given us one day left to say our goodbyes.

“Bird’s sick.”

When she spoke, my shoulders slumped a bit in relaxation. “Well, yeah, I know, she’s had a cold for the past few days. You gave her some of the broth Hornet and I got yesterday, right?”

“Nonono, she’s really sick!” Batty flung her hands up in distress and beckoned me to follow her to the bedroom that all the girls shared. Skeptical, I walked in her wake and peered cautiously into the room behind her.

Kit, always the caretaker of the family even though she was only fourteen years old and third youngest, was seated beside a mound of blankets that had to be my youngest sister Bird. As I neared the bed I could see that little twelve-year-old Birdie was all curled up into a tiny ball, shiverin’ although there were beads of sweat glistening on her forehead. I was about to ask what was wrong or what had happened or something, but then she broke into a fit of coughin’ that lasted a good thirty seconds before she could breathe properly again.

“What’s wrong with her?” I turned to look at Batty or Kit or somebody, but it was Hornet – she’d been standin’ with her arms crossed nervously against the wall the whole time and I hadn’t noticed – who answered.

“Seems like her cold turned to pneumonia,” she muttered, her voice laden with worry. I wondered who’d made that diagnosis; I bet it was Kit, because Hornet was none too bright when it came to stuff that wasn’t street-smarts and she wouldn’t know pneumonia from a stomach virus. Or maybe Wheels; he was the smart one of all of us, but I didn’t see him anywhere.

At that moment Bird coughed again and I heard her mumble “Skid?” I crouched down beside my little sister.

“You okay, Birdie?” I brushed some of her curly auburn hair away from her face and saw the pained look in her eyes. Bird hardly ever got sick; it was Wheels who seemed to be a magnet for whatever germ he could pick up, which was one of the reasons why he hardly ever went outside. So when she started coughin’ and picked up a bit of a fever the other day it was kinda strange, but it was just a cold, right? So we gave her some broth and tucked her into bed, hopin’ she’d sleep it off. But I’d only been gone since early afternoon, and she’d already gotten this bad?

“Do I –” Another round of coughin’. “– sound okay?” I couldn’t help but grin at Bird’s snark; at least she wasn’t too sick to have a little spirit.

“No, you don’t.” My grin faded as I looked at her; she was white as a ghost.

“We’ll get you some medicine, Birdie, don’t you worry.” I could hear the forced confidence in Hornet’s voice as she spoke up for the second time, lookin’ right at our sister. But why was she making promises she couldn’t keep? We had no money for medicine; medicine was expensive, and besides, wouldn’t we need a prescription or somethin’ like that to get it? For us McConnells, going to the doctor was like just askin’ for Batty to get arrested for kidnappin’ us and for us to be taken to homes. We’d be found out for sure, and then where would we be?

“Hornet, watch it…” I began, letting my voice trail off in warning.

“No, we’ll get her some,” Hornet repeated, and I saw a gleam of determination in her pale grey eyes. The telltale one that meant an idea was forming, and there was no stoppin’ it once it did. “We’ll steal it.”

“We’ll what?” I stood up and turned to face her. “Look, when you figure out how the hell we’re gonna be able to break into a pharmacy, come and tell me! Cause that’s like robbin’ a bank!”

“Go talk outside, guys,” Kit piped up, looking nervously at Bird who’d begun to cough again. She was right; this wasn’t somethin’ to talk about around her. I gave my sick sister one last long, desperate look and then Hornet and me left the room and walked out of the apartment into the cool, dark night.

“Skid, she could die.” Hornet spat. “What’s more important to you? Riskin’ our lives or savin’ hers?”

“I’m just tryin’ to make sure we don’t get sent to prison and the kids get taken away from Batty! Look, one of us has to be responsible here,” I insisted, glaring at her. “And clearly it ain’t gonna be you.”

“Why don’t we just try it? We know how to steal, I’m sure we can –”

“We know how to pickpocket, Hornet. We know how to take peoples’ money out of their pockets off the street, or get them to drop their wallets, or maybe snatch some things from a convenience store. That is nothin’ like robbin’ a pharmacy.”

“Well, I’m gonna try it, whether or not I have your help.” Hornet crossed her arms and stared me down, a gleam of challenge in her eyes. “So if you’d rather sit around and watch your baby sister cough up her lungs ‘til she can’t breathe, go ahead. But I ain’t waiting around for you.”

I was silent for a long while, leanin’ against the brick wall of the building and watching as all the cars sped by on the street. It was when an ambulance sped by, sirens blarin’ and lights flashin’, that I came to my senses.

“Alright. We’ll do it.”

“There’s the Skid I know.” Hornet’s smirk was full of approval, and even a bit of excitement. She was looking forward to executing the worst robbery we’d ever done ever? I shook my head in disbelief, entirely sure that as long as I live I would never understand how that girl’s mind works.

“Tomorrow night,” I decided. Hornet was about to raise her voice in protest – clearly she wanted to get the ball rollin’ right away – but I cut her off before she could. “We need time to plan it out first. Birdie’ll be fine for now, I promise. We’ll give her more broth.”

My seventeen-year-old pseudo-sister gave a short bark of laughter. “Broth isn’t going to cure her pneumonia,” she muttered, but didn’t disagree with me before disappearing back inside the apartment. I decided not to follow; instead I lowered myself down on the steps, watchin’ the sky as a blinkin’ light that could only be a plane passed by. I stayed like that for a long while.



The next day passed by in a blur. We were all almost afraid to even breathe around Bird, scared that anything we did would make her sicker. A dedicated Kit sat at her bedside all day, spongin’ her fevered forehead or givin’ her sips of water and sometimes spoonin’ broth into her mouth though she kept sayin’ she wasn’t hungry. I tried to stay sometimes, too, but I wasn’t good with that sort of thing like Kit was. Sparky – my youngest brother, who was a year older than Bird – stopped in to see her occasionally as well, though he preferred spendin’ most of his time outside. Old Batty just flitted about the house in utter distress. Hornet had disappeared off to who knows where, so me and Wheels sat down to figure this whole fiasco out.

“What kind of medicine do we need?” I asked him while was sat on the moth-eaten sofa in the living room. He was only fifteen, and pretty scrawny and awkward-lookin’, but he knew everythin’ about anythin’ from all those books he read. He’d taught himself all that stuff, since none of us went to school.

“If it’s pneumonia caused by bacteria, you’re going to need antibiotics,” Wheels replied, getting that look in his eyes that proved he was thinkin’ hard. “Thing is, though, you’re not going to find that on any old shelf in the drug store; it’s gonna be behind the counter. Prescription medicine.”

“Great.” As if this wasn’t gonna be hard enough already, now we had to steal prescription medicine. I forced myself to picture Bird’s sick little face in my mind so that I’d get my courage back. “So we’ll need to distract the person workin’ there.”

“Exactly,” Wheels agreed. “So look, here’s how you should do it…”



Wheels and I spent two hours workin’ out the plan and figurin’ out all the possible things that could happen when we did it so that we’d know what to expect. I half wished Wheels would come with Hornet and me; he’d be a big help. But he wouldn’t want to, and besides, I wasn’t gonna put him in danger, too.

Hornet showed up about an hour into the plannin’, refusing to say where she’d been. We filled her in quickly, and after a while we decided there was nothin’ more we could do. Except wait.

Ten o’clock at night. Everyone in the house knew what Hornet and I were about to do, so even though it was late, I knew none of them would sleep. Instead, everyone sat around Bird’s bed, keepin’ an eye on her and starin’ nervously at each other. We said goodbye – made sure to give hugs, too, cause anything could happen tonight – and then we were gone, walkin’ down the sidewalk towards the Rite Aid nearby as the two of us had so many times in the past. Only this time would be different.

The sky was dark, but the stars were a lot brighter than usual – which wasn’t sayin’ much, really, cause livin’ in Brooklyn you hardly ever saw the stars anyway. But I was pretty sure I could make out the Big Dipper in the sky… or was that the little one? I dunno, but it was somethin’, and I was just trying to distract myself as much as possible.

I stopped dead in my tracks to take a deep breath when we reached the Rite Aid, attempting to stop my poundin’ heart. Hornet turned around and rolled her eyes. “Scared, Skid?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Yes. And you should be too.”

“Well, I ain’t and I won’t be, so you shouldn’t be neither.” To my surprise, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette and lighter. She lit the thing and began smokin’ it, blowin’ out puffs of the stuff every once in a while. I raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” I didn’t like cigarettes; I’d decided that the first time I tried them. But sometimes I still smoked a couple during a game of poker. Just to keep up appearances.

“Well, guess there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Skid,” she replied somewhat coolly, before chucking the cig on the ground and steppin’ on it a few times to put it out like the true slumdog princess she was. I debated for a second before picking it up and tossin’ it into the nearby trash can. Hornet gave a short laugh of disbelief. “Sometimes I really wonder about you, Skid.”

“Well, I could say the same for you.” I shook my head lightly at my sister, but didn’t say anything else. “Now, come on. Let’s get this over with.”

The plan was actually pretty simple, but there were a lot of things that could go wrong. Hornet would be doin’ the distracting – admittedly that was better, cause the person at the counter was a guy and I knew she could be pretty seductive when she wanted to – and I would be the one actually stealin’ the medicine. She would “accidentally” smash a bottle of somethin’ – like a jar of sauce, maybe, whatever she could find farthest from the pharmacy counter in the back – so that the guy workin’ here would go and see what had happened and I could slip in the back unnoticed. It was a good thing I was the only one in the store at this time of night; if not, then there'd've been trouble.

We wandered innocently into the place before splittin' up, Hornet headed for the food aisles where she'd find somethin' to smash and me nonchalantly makin' my way to the back, pretendin' to look at things like hair products along the way. I waited until I heard the crash, shatter, and the clerk askin' what the hell happened before I made my move, straight for the back of the store where the pharmacy counter was.

Penicillin. I'm lookin' for a bottle or bag or somethin' that says penicillin. That was what Wheels had told me, and I trusted him, even though it was risky business and puttin' some kind of strange drug in my sister's body wouldn't be any good. I ducked behind the counter, my heart poundin' ninety miles a minute, and searched all the bottles I saw. They all had names on them, names of the people they were supposed to go to, and I tried real hard not to think about the fact that I was about to steal medicine from someone else who really needed it. Well, they can get more. Bird can't. It took a while, but finally, finally I spotted a bottle of what Wheels had told me to look for.

But just as I was movin' to snatch it, I heard a shout.

“Hey! What are you doing back there!”

Oh, shit. Oh no. In my haste to get the hell out I swung around and my elbow knocked over the exact bottle I'd been meaning to grab. It fell to the ground and on impact the seal cracked clean open, scatterin' the little white pills everywhere. My eyes widened and suddenly a war was being waged in my head: try to save some of the pills, or get out before I got caught? It was Hornet's yell that decided for me.
“Run, Skid!”

Not pausin' a moment to think about my choice I turned on my heel and ran as fast as my nimble legs could carry me, straight for the automatic door that separated me from outside. By the time the clerk came into view and he realized I was makin' a run for it I was nearly out the door, same with Hornet who was hot on my heels. The last thing we heard was the clerk's indignant scream. “I'll call the cops! I will!” Then we were home free.

As we ran for our lives down the block back to the apartment, I heard Hornet start to laugh. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her, gaping. “You think this is funny?”

“That was insane,” she snickered. “Exhilaratin'!” She panted, catchin' her breath. “Well? Did you get the medicine?”

“Of course I didn't, it was either that or get arrested! You told me to run!”

Her jaw dropped. “I thought you'd got it already!”

“Well, I didn't!”

“Oh, no.” Hornet's expression turned grave and she buried her face in her hands. “Oh no, Birdie, Birdie, Birdie.” I sighed, not knowin' what to say. I failed. I screwed up. I didn't get the medicine that our sick sister so desperately needed. “How are we gonna go back there, Skid? Back there with nothin' to give her?”
“I dunno. But we have to. Quick, before that guy follows us.” Dejected, the two of us trudged back to our building and through the door, dreadin' the moment when we'd have to walk into Birdie's room and see everyone's hopeful faces and let them down.

“Well?” Old Batty stood up from where she'd been sittin' on Kit's bed, and the other kids – even Sparky was here now – looked up at us eagerly.

In answer, Hornet stalked over to her own bed and collapsed onto it, burying her face in her pillow to muffle one long, low scream that she let out. I gave the slightest shake of my head and sunk to my knees beside Bird's bed, gettin' a good look at her for the first time since we'd walked in. I gasped.

“She's gotten worse.” Kit's words were barely a whisper from where she sat above me on a little wooden stool beside the bed. She was dead right; Bird's face was pale as a sheet, white as a corpse, even her lips that were usually so pink we teased her about it, sayin' she wore lipstick when really she never had before in her life. While I watched her she gave one shattering cough that racked through her entire little body, makin' her tremble. Then she went still, her breathin' labored and barely even there.

“We'll... we'll figure somethin' out.” I muttered, useless words of consolation. No we won't. Not in time. Tryin' to get the medicine had been a stupid idea; we shoulda just nicked some extra money instead so we could buy it ourselves. Even if it was prescription drugs behind the counter, I was sure the clerk would've taken a bribe. But now it's too late. All we'd done was gotten ourselves and our family into deep trouble. Would that man stay true to his word and call the cops on us? How long would it be before they figured out where we went? We shoulda been more careful.

Feeling utterly helpless, I could do nothin' but take Birdie's hand. I could do nothin' but watch as my baby sister got closer and closer to death.

And that's when I heard the siren outside.