Name: Class:

Abigail at Red Shield

By Patrick McNeil
2024

In this short story, six-year-old Clara moves into a shelter called Red Shield with her mother and
sister.
Author's Note: "This is a work of fiction. Although there is a shelter in Philadelphia called The
Red Shield, and that shelter does important work sheltering families experiencing homelessness,
all the events, characters, and locations in this work are entirely fictional."

As you read, take notes on Clara’s feelings about Abigail.

[1] There are twenty families living at Red Shield,

but there aren’t any other six-year-olds. Miss
Cheryl, who’s in charge of the kids’ room, says
that’s real unusual, but she doesn’t say
whether it’s unusual there’s no other six year
olds or that it’s unusual that you, a six year
old, are here at Red Shield. It definitely feels
real unusual to you, being here.

Like how even though each family has their

own bedroom at Red Shield, everyone eats
dinner between 5pm and 7pm in the same big
dining room. And how sometimes people
here fight in front of everyone, and
sometimes they cry in front of everyone, even
moms. Some of the families at Red Shield are
just a mom and a baby. A lot of them actually. "Abigail_Of_Red_Shield" by Meredith Lucius is
There’s a part of you that feels lucky that the licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
three of you are all in here together — you,
your mom, and your little sister, Samantha. When people are shouting or crying in the dining
room, mom always tries to talk to you and Samantha about random things so you’re not scared
or sad. Like she’ll ask your favorite animal, or how many cheerios you think there are left
floating in your milk and if you want to count them. You don’t. It doesn’t really work.

Two weeks ago, mom packed up yours and hers and Samantha’s clothes in the same big, black
garbage bag, and you all left grandmom and pop pop’s and came to live at Red Shield.

“Why do we have to live at Red Shield?” Samantha said to mom the day you came here, while
you all were waiting in the intake room. The three of you had to sit there for ninety minutes for
your garbage bag of clothes to get out of the bed-bug zapper before they would bring you to

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 your room on the second floor.

[5] It was the only question in the world worth asking, but you, the older sister, couldn’t ask it. You
tried. When you opened your mouth, your throat closed up.

“We’re not living at Red Shield, Sammy,” said mom. “We’re just staying here for a little. Hey, we
get our own room. I think I heard they have bunk beds.”

“But why are we staying at Red Shield?”

“We’re staying at Red Shield, just for a little, so that the three of us can be together.”

And then Samantha looked at you, and you nodded. It was like you beamed the words right into
her brain, because then she said, “But the three of us were together at grandmom and pop
pop’s.”

[10] Mom looked away. When you followed her eyes, it was like she was looking at the security
guard in the corner and not looking at the same time.

“I’m not going to hide anything from you girls. Your grandmom and pop pop asked me to leave,”
she said, and then she looked right at you and you looked back as long as you could, which was
like two seconds. Samantha didn’t ask the next question. She didn’t ask if grandmom and pop
pop asked for all three of you to leave or whether they asked just her, your mom, and you
didn’t beam it into her head to ask because you already knew the answer. You didn’t want to
make mom say it out loud.

“How you doing, Clara baby?” mom said then, touching your hair, and you said good.

But later that night, and every night in the two weeks since, you have not been good, not really.
The truth is that the morning you all left grandmom and pop pop’s, grandmom took you to the
side and said that all you had to do was call and she would come running. “Like that,” she said,
and she snapped her fingers and hugged you up tight. She whispered into your ear that you
and Samantha always had a home here. She said she would only sue for custody if you told her
you wanted it. Then she explained to you what “sue for custody” means.

“That way you could stay here in the house,” she said, still whispering. “You and Samantha.
Wouldn’t you rather stay here with me and pop pop? You should have a choice.”

[15] And every night since you got to Red Shield, you wish she never gave you that choice. You lay
up in the top bunk, way after lights out, listening to Samantha and mom’s breathing below you
steady into sleep, some nights hearing crying from the room next door, wondering what you’re
supposed to do.

***

Every family gets their own room in Red Shield, but nobody’s allowed to be in their room during

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 the day time. Kids aren’t allowed to be unsupervised at all. And since it’s summertime and
there’s no school, you have to be in the kids’ lounge all day long while mom is at her IOP1
program, which they might as well call the baby lounge since all the toys are for babies, like the
counting blocks and the animal alphabet and the bucket of playdough where all the colors are
mushed together into the same smelly, nasty gray. You called it “graydough” on your third day,
but Miss Cheryl must not have gotten the joke because she didn't laugh. Most of the kids at Red
Shield are pre-K, so at least Samantha has a whole crowd of friends.

They do have a fifty-inch TV, though, and a password for Netflix, and Minions is on Netflix so
that’s one good thing about the kids’ lounge. As far as you’re concerned, that movie will never
get old. The other good thing is the mini basketball hoop hanging from the wall in the back and
the mini basketball, which every day after lunch is wide open for you to shoot around.
Practicing your shot is the one thing, besides a good movie, that makes everything else
disappear.

Except today. When you go back there, the older kids are all hanging out around the hoop,
messing around with the ball and doing stupid trick shots, like backwards and between the legs.
They miss almost every shot. There’s three of them, two boys and a girl, all way older than you,
in fourth and fifth grade. You sit down by the bookshelves as soon as you see them, but one of
them, James, catches you looking from over the pages of a book.

“Yo,” he says across the kids’ lounge and waving you up. Then he turns to the others and says
the little girl wants to play.

[20] “That little girl can’t ball,” says the girl, Ade.

“Where you been at?” says James. “That little girl puts up shots every day, that little girl can hoop
better than you.”

You try not to smile when he says that. Walking over, you learn that they are playing a game
they’re calling “Abigail.”

“Abigail’s like Horse,”2 says James, and they all laugh for some reason, “just with more letters.”

“You could say it’s bigger than a horse,” says the other boy, Nathan, and they all laugh again.
Whenever someone says the word Abigail, they all laugh. Nobody laughs louder than James.

1. Intensive Outpatient Program, a program that helps people with mental illness or
dependence on drugs or alcohol
2. A game where players take turns shooting a basketball. If one player misses the shot that
the other player makes they earn a letter. If the earned letters spell out the word HORSE,
they are out of the game.

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[25] “She don’t know what Horse is,” says Ade.

But you do too know what Horse is. And if Abigail is the same as Horse, then you know how to
play Abigail just as good as anyone else, except, you have to admit, you might not know how to
spell Abigail.

“Man,” says James, reaching up and slapping the shoulder of Nathan, who is almost as tall as
your mom, “neither does this fool. Why you think we got a white board? Ade is keeping score.
Don’t worry about spelling, you just focus on your shot, girl.”

You never played basketball like this before, making your shots harder than they have to be to
make it harder for the person after you. Now you’re doing behind the back shots and off the
bounce shots, and some shots you aren’t even shooting the ball — you’re shooting stuffed
animals or counting blocks or, once, when she leaves the room, Miss Cheryl’s car keys. That one
you have to do super fast before she comes back. Nathan loses out pretty early, but you keep
up with James. And even though James is older than you and Samantha combined, you are
keeping up with him, A-B-I-G-A-I to A-B-I-G-A-I, neck and neck. Right when you have him on the
ropes, you pull out the graydough shot. You roll the whole thing into a ball, but it’s a mistake,
it’s too heavy. You can’t even reach the rim with it. James does an easy layup then with the
playdough and wins, but that’s basically cheating. Even Ade says so since you can’t throw it high
enough and he dang well knew that. And then Ade says to you not to stress that cheating stuff
because you, Clara, have definitely got the sauce for a six year old. Nobody ever said that about
you before. You never in your life got to feel like a little sister like that.

The glow of what she said, the sauce, it stays with you the rest of the day, even after mom
comes back from her IOP program. That night is the first night since coming to Red Shield that
you fall asleep before Samantha and mom do. Up in the top bunk, the game of Abigail plays
across the back of your eyelids and, for once, all that fills your head are the shots you’ll try
tomorrow, all the ways you’ll win.

***

[30] The next day though, James and Nathan and Ade are all back on the computer with their usual
bored looks. Ade waves hi to you but that’s it. And nobody even mentions basketball or Abigail.
After lunch, nobody even looks over at you shooting by yourself. You don’t ask. You want to, but
you can’t bring yourself to. Then the next week, James is gone from Red Shield, and then Ade
goes a few days after that. Some new kids show up in the kids’ lounge in the weeks to come,
and one of them is even your same age. But she doesn’t care about basketball, and for the rest
of the summer, you never get to play another game of Abigail.

Then you and mom and Samantha move out into an apartment. When school starts up, you
play basketball as much as they let you in gym class, and in the winter, you join the team. And
even though there are some bad apartments and houses and neighborhoods that you and
mom and Samantha move into over the years to come, you never go back to Red Shield. You
keep playing though. Basketball becomes even more a part of who you are, and whenever you
play Horse, you always call it Abigail. When anyone asks, you only ever tell them it’s because

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Abigail’s got more letters than Horse, so that makes the games more interesting. All your life
you never tell anyone the real reason, how it was Abigail that kept your family together.
Because looking back, it was definitely that day in the kids’ lounge when you lost to James that
all the pressure sort of rolled off your shoulders. It’s what broke that unbearable3 spell you
were under, what kept you in the end from calling grandmom and having her come and take
you and Samantha away. The truth is, that one game of Abigail has come to mean your mom to
you.

And then one day, you see James in the cereal aisle of the ShopRite. It’s a small city like that.
Even though it’s been so many years since Red Shield, you recognize him right away. His face is
the exact same, and even if you weren’t sure, there’s his mom. You forgot about his mom, but
you couldn’t ever miss her — the electric wheelchair she uses to get around is blocking up the
whole aisle. There’s the oxygen tank attached to the back of her chair, and the tubes running
out the top of it and up into her nostrils. The scuba diver sounds bring you right back to the
dining room at Red Shield, all those moms crying. Now that you’re almost grown, you know it
wasn’t their fault, or not totally your mom’s fault at least. They only needed help and they didn’t
get any. But as kids it felt different. And nobody ever talked about it, what all was the matter
with your parents that you ended up at Red Shield, but with James’ mom, it was always kind of
right there in your face. Still, nobody would ever have made fun of her because nobody had any
room to talk. In that awkward, special way at Red Shield, you were all in it together.

At least, that’s how you always thought about it. But watching them now in the cereal aisle at
the ShopRite, without them seeing you, James and his mom and the other lady they are with —
a social worker or something you guess — the lady says something that makes your heart stop.
You wish you never heard it as soon as you hear it, the name she calls James’ mom by, his own
mother.

"Abigail at Red Shield" by Patrick McNeil. Copyright © 2024 by CommonLit, Inc. This text is licensed
under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

3. impossible to endure

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 Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete
sentences.

1. Which statement best summarizes a theme of the text?

A. To be the best at something you need to practice relentlessly.
B. Hope can sustain us through some of life's most difficult challenges.
C. When you expect the best from people they will not disappoint you.
D. When we are little we often make decisions that we come to regret later.

2. What does paragraph 10 reveal about Clara's mother?

A. She is feeling distracted because of the security guard's presence.
B. She is feeling curious because she wants to know what Red Shield is like.
C. She is feeling impressed because her daughter is asking thoughtful
questions.
D. She is feeling ashamed because she has to move to Red Shield with her
daughters.

3. Which detail from the text supports the idea that Clara feels she has to act older than
she is?
A. "And then Samantha looked at you, and you nodded." (Paragraph 9)
B. "Kids aren't allowed to be unsupervised at all." (Paragraph 16)
C. "You never in your life got to feel like a little sister like that." (Paragraph 28)
D. "They only needed help and they didn't get any. But as kids it felt
different." (Paragraph 32)

4. What does the author most likely mean when he writes that "the game of Abigail
plays across the back of your eyelids"in paragraph 29?
A. Clara is having trouble sleeping because people are playing Abigail.
B. Clara is reliving the experience of playing Abigail because it made her feel
good.
C. Clara is imagining what it would be like to play Abigail against James with
her eyes closed.
D. Clara is trying to figure out the rules of Abigail so she can defeat James
next time she plays.

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5. How does paragraph 33 change Clara's feelings about playing Abigail?

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 Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be
prepared to share your original ideas in a class discussion.

1. How would you describe Clara's relationship with the members of her family? What
makes people family? How does this story show different sides of what family
means?

2. How did the reveal at the end of the story affect your feelings as a reader? Have you
ever discovered something about a person's behavior that changed how you viewed
them? What happened?

3. In 2020 approximately 470,000 people used an emergency shelter or transitional

housing program like Red Shield. Do you see these stories often in literature,
television, or movies? If so, how are these families presented? Why do you think that
is? If not, why don't you think we see enough of these stories?

4. Basketball helps Clara during her time at Red Shield and throughout her life. What
activities help you when you are experiencing challenges? How could staying active
or getting involved help a person during tough times?