by G. Benson
It changed people.
But what if the foster home had been a good one? One filled with food and meals that arrived at the same time each day, with an adult who liked to hug, where safety floated over your shoulders like a net that should have been there since forever?
Maybe Mattie would have given that a chance.
Now she would never know, and neither would he, and they lay under a bridge Carmen knew wasn’t frequented this time of year: too loud with the trucks reverberating overhead and the lap of the water. Too cold—the breeze carrying a bite, the water carrying a fog that could sink into your skin and leave you trembling.
But not with the sleeping bag made for negative temperatures that she had stolen the last time she’d slept outside, independence burning in her chest and idiocy coursing through her blood. Not with a brother who could sleep through a bomb, not with the need to keep him from the things she’d seen in the squats during her first few weeks on the street, years ago.
She still had nightmares about things that had happened there.
Against her chest, Mattie’s breathing evened out, his fingers loosening where they clutched her hoodie. Carmen swallowed and watched the lights play over the surface of the water, trying to keep her mind blank, to not think about what she was going to do.
But really, that was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
She’d done what she had wanted to do, followed the urge that had been building for years: to run, to hop a bus, a plane, to disappear. But she’d stalled in her takeoff, her eight-year-old brother’s hand in hers, and realized she would never have done any of that without him anyway.
His breath washing over her skin reminded her of him as a baby—even and steady and hers. The moon was full, gaping wide, and Carmen felt as if she could fall through it, like they could both tumble through and move among the stars, stepping from constellation to solar flare, something forbidden to mere mortals, but not to them.
The last time she’d stared up at it all had been with whiskey on her tongue and the warm weight of Ollie next to her. Carmen had actually felt sixteen then, and that hadn’t seemed like a bad thing.
But she wouldn’t be going back to that, or falling in among the sky.
Instead, she was here, and Carmen had no idea what she was supposed to do now.
Ollie knew she was lucky—that many kids didn’t like their parents or their parents didn’t like them or everyone rubbed each other the wrong way. She knew there were families that had torn each other apart or parents who didn’t care and left their kids alone to float along, adrift in their own mistakes.
Her family wasn’t like that.
“When’s Sean coming for dinner again?” her father asked, passing potatoes to Ollie before she could ask for them. He liked to regale her friends with stories about how, when she’d been a baby, she’d only eat potatoes. Nothing else. Even for breakfast.
The question grated. “I don’t know. He’s busy.”
She needed to tell them that short thing was over, but panic lit up in her stomach that she couldn’t explain.
“He could come this weekend?” Ollie’s mother topped off her wineglass, ink still staining her fingers. She must not have had a day doing procedures in the hospitals but in consultation, listening to hearts and writing notes. She was insanely busy all the time.
Her parents weren’t like all the ones she knew could exist, and Ollie was lucky; she knew that. But sometimes she was all too aware of the pressure of them both, one on each side of her and always pushing. “Maybe.”
“Or do you have exams coming up? Maybe you should study.”
“Have you thought any more about those campus tours?”
Who even knew which parent asked what?
Sometimes Ollie was awash in expectation and long-drawn conclusions. All around her, people pushed her into adulthood yet snagged her backward, holding her in place and not wanting her to move forward, while asking things of her that seemed beyond her capabilities.
“Ollie?”
Blinking, she turned to her father. “Yeah?”
“Campus tours?”
“I don’t know…”
“I hope you’re still thinking of law. You always talked about being a lawyer.”
Had she? Or had her parents said she had? “I was thinking of art.”
Her father flinched, a quick look, one that was barely discernible. “I still think it’s more of a hobby.”
Her mother threw him a look, and Ollie didn’t know if it meant not right now or stop or I know, right? Whichever it was, she wanted to disappear to her room. Hopefully, Sara would come over later and they could sneak vodka from the hip flask she sometimes brought along. Or she could go out, pretend it was to study, but end up at Deon’s and sprawl on his sofa while his parents were away, watching the free Netflix he hacked.
But instead, later, her mother put on a movie, and Ollie sat next to her. In minutes, her mother had pulled Ollie into her side, soothing fingers running against her scalp. Their legs sat next to each other, Ollie’s dark ones alongside the white of her mother’s, who joked she couldn’t tan, even with stuff from a bottle. Her father joined later, next to her, and Ollie liked the way their legs went from white to dark brown to even darker. She wanted to paint it out on a canvas, the way her parents’ skin tones had created hers, but instead she stayed pressed between them. They sprawled out, lost in the movie, and Ollie wished they would be this calm all the time.
Carmen woke with a jolt, adrenaline surging through her so fast that she barely noticed the ache in her neck. Everything was blurry, and she rubbed at her eyes, blinking away the last of her dream still at the edges. Something about the taste of whiskey, the splash of a ping-pong ball, the lick of a tongue at her bottom lip.
The sky was streaked with pink, the water no longer a beautiful black pit hiding secrets but a reflection of sunrise, of a new day, of something that should encourage anticipation but left Carmen tasting ash. She had wanted to get herself a life, find a job, and set herself up so that at eighteen she could get her brother back. But the chance of that had been low to begin with.
The air was cool, hinting at a bigger turn of the weather, and she yanked her hood to cover her ears, pulled the sleeping bag higher up over Mattie, and bit her lip.
“What are you thinking?”
The voice was gravelly, full of sleep, and Carmen looked down to see Mattie watching her, his breath warm against her forearm, cheeks a little ashen.
“What we’re going to do.”
There must have been something in her voice, something that gave her away, because his eyes widened and his voice pushed against the gravel in it. “Don’t give me back.”
Carmen swallowed past that damn swollen feeling in her throat and settled her hand over his forehead to smooth through his hair, a habit as old as Mattie himself. “What about food?” she challenged.
“We can find food.”
Carmen laughed—just a puff of air through her nose—at his cadence, at the naivety.
“We can,” he insisted. His voice was still squashed with sleep, and Carmen wished he could stay that way forever, that trusting and sure of her. She wished he could stay this safe in the security of a night with her, with food in his stomach, with warmth. “You did last time.”
Carmen pressed her lips together and looked away. From there, they could watch the city come alive from a point where the city couldn’t see them. How could she explain that it had been easier last time without an eight-year-old in her care, without worrying about him, worrying about preserving his innocence? At thirteen, she’d looked so young: shelters would call the authorities. Soup kitchens would edge toward their phones, trying to keep her talking, to keep her near, to make a call they thought would be helping her. How fast they’d do tha
t if she went now with someone as small as Mattie at her side.
“I did.” There was one thing she could try, but Carmen had no idea if it was an option anymore. “What about school?”
Even curled up in his sleeping bag, sleep still hanging off him like dew, he managed to shrug. “What about it?”
Carmen did laugh this time, softly, the sound grating at her ears but the feeling in her chest easing just slightly. “Said the eight-year-old.”
He eyed her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You need school.”
“Do not.”
Carmen sighed and lay back down, Mattie wriggling into her side, warm and breathing and with her.
“Do too,” she said.
“Nuh-uh.” His voice was muffled against her shoulder. Carmen stared up at the gray cement overhead, covered in layers upon layers of graffiti. The patterns swirled, nonsensical, and she closed her eyes, the colors and curls imprinted on her eyelids. The feeling crept up her throat that that was meant to be an image of her life flowing out in front of her, leading nowhere and wrapping in on itself again and again, colliding with the past so that she never really went forward, or anywhere at all.
They spent the day walking streets Carmen hadn’t been to in years, safe in the knowledge that the city was huge, that there were hundreds of kids like themselves and not enough people to find them all. Anonymity held something humbling. To know how easy it was to slip through the cracks. Especially when that was where she wanted to go. With a credit card taken from the same place as the money the morning before, Carmen bought two bus tickets to New York, gave all their details, and let their names get tapped into the computer. Without a backward glance, she dropped the tickets into the trash can outside the station, snapped the credit card in two, and dropped it in after them.
Mattie stared at her, puzzled. She gave him a wink. “The card’s probably been reported stolen.”
“So?”
Sometimes it was easy to forget how young he was, how much about life even he didn’t know yet. “They’ll know it was me that took it, and the transaction here will be flagged.”
“Flagged?”
They walked down the street, and Mattie’s backpack bounced with his steps.
“Like, noticed.”
“Wouldn’t that be bad?”
“Well, if we were actually going to New York, it would be a clue to them, and yes, it would be bad. But that bus leaves in twenty minutes, and they won’t notice we’re not on it. That shouldn’t get logged electronically. They normally tick that off on a piece of paper.”
Mattie chewed his lip for a second, his eyebrows scrunched together. “So they won’t know where we are?” A grin was starting on his lips, and the pull of it made Carmen want to cry.
Instead, she said, “Exactly. They’ll see we bought two tickets there and tell child services. They’ll think we’ve gone there, but really we’ll be here.”
And that crack they were already slipping into would grow wider, a chasm to swallow a street kid whole.
Mattie stared up at her. “That’s pretty smart, Carmen.”
Her throat ached at his happiness that she was dragging him down with her.
They spent the day in a library, still clean and put together enough that they could slip a smile to the librarian and mention a homeschooling project. They set up in a corner, and Carmen gave Mattie a topic, one she knew he could go at for ages—the planets and the sun—and watched him walk among the aisles. His fingers plucked at books, trailed along spines. He carried back armloads.
They repeated this for days, the weather cooling around them each morning but Mattie never once muttering against it. Every night, Carmen lay awake, staring upward and begging the sky for a plan. The same one always came to her, but she rejected it every time, stubbornness hardening her jaw as she tried to figure out a way she could make things work with only the two of them.
Or maybe she was waiting for Mattie to give up on this dream so she wouldn’t really be giving in to this life.
In the library, Mattie read with small movements of his lips, as though he needed to roll the words around his tongue to really get a feel for them. Carmen showed him the glossary, taught him how to find the words he didn’t know. He dragged out a notebook and pen from his backpack, the childish loops to his letters rolling out from his hands and across the pages. His toes just barely scraped the floor when he kicked his legs, and the table shook gently with each movement, but not once did she tell him to stop.
Rather, she sat and mulled. Rolled thought after thought in her mind. Ideas clashed and rebounded, and she picked each one apart until it lay in a tangled mess, proven worthless to help her predicament. Her knee bounced, and she flicked a pen around and around her fingers until she stood and moved to a computer she could still see Mattie from. A colorful book with Saturn spread over its cover sat propped up in front of him.
Carmen wasn’t great with computers. They’d never had one at home, and what she’d learned, she’d been taught at school. But she could do a search. She searched for shelters that didn’t require your age, that didn’t report to child services. None existed for children as young as Mattie, and any that could prove useful were all full.
She searched for soup kitchens. The money in her pocket wasn’t going to get them far. Some she went into with Mattie, and they ate fast, keeping an eye on any volunteers who edged for their phones.
Being alone had been so much easier.
Until it hadn’t been.
She kept circling back around the idea, again and again. Trying uselessly to avoid it.
During that last day of marinating in bad ideas in the library, a sound at the window drew her attention, and Carmen’s stomach sank as water splattered over the glass. Fat, heavy drops started to fall, and soon it was pouring outside, the windows fogging and the rain washing the city clean. With the computer humming in front of her, she watched Mattie look outside, his body tensing, before he looked back to his book. He kept looking back, then away, until eventually he was staring, pupils reflecting the coming storm.
Sliding into a chair opposite him, Carmen tried to smile and cover her panic when his nervous gaze launched to catch her own.
“It’s raining.”
“It is.”
With a quick glance around the library, secrecy already easy for him, Mattie lowered his voice even more. “We’ll get wet if we sleep where we’ve been.”
“We will.”
He stared at her, and Carmen gave in to the only idea not left strewn and exhausted. “But it’s okay. I know somewhere.”
And so easily, he relaxed into his chair, pulling the book onto his lap, shoulders no longer squared but at ease. “Oh, okay.”
Just like that.
When the library started to close around them, they slipped the books back where Mattie had taken them from. Outside, the cold was almost stinging, and Mattie’s cheeks were damp within moments from it. He slid a hand into hers, his fingertips still warm from the haven inside.
“Can we come back here again?” He had asked that each day.
“Of course.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
At least, she hoped he would. Over two years had passed. It may not even be there anymore. They walked for over an hour, the rain giving up to barely a trickle. Not once did Mattie complain or say he was tired. With the streetlights lit up around them, they stopped halfway to pull the bread out of her bag that she had bought the day before. They smeared pieces of it with peanut butter, thick in their mouths and more filling than things they’d eaten at home at times. Carmen relished in the sense of satisfaction that at least she’d managed to fill his stomach. When the rain stopped, it was like Carmen herself had willed it.
Action felt good.
They walked again, slipping into mazelike alleys, feet treading a path Carmen had never thought she’d be on again, especially side by side with Mattie. Finally, they reached a fence, the wire pulling out easily like it had years before when she’d tried it. The hole was just big enough to slide through, snagging at the bags on their backs. Mattie didn’t ask a single question, and his trust was heavy on her shoulders.
They ducked under another fence, then through a gate, and eventually they came to a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. In front of them was a door covered in peeling green paint.
Mattie looked up at her, and Carmen gave him a smile. The stars peeking between parted clouds overhead were bright in his eyes, and the fog from the river started to creep up the streets around them. Taking a deep breath, she tore her eyes from the galaxy of his and knocked on the wood: twice rapidly, once after a pause, then three more quickly, a pattern she played before sleep some nights after she had returned to her mother’s place, a longing for days gone by in the balled fists of her hands.
A panel slid open, and dark eyes stared out at her.
Carmen swallowed, and Mattie’s hand clamped tighter in her own.
“I need your help.”
Chapter 8
“So she has no Facebook?” Deon stared at Ollie, his collection of monitors behind him blinking and glowing like they held the answers to everything.
“Nope.”
“No Twitter? No Tumblr? No…no social media?”
She shook her head again, buried in a beanbag chair with a bowl of popcorn on her stomach. Between her legs, sitting on the floor, Sara stretched out like youth personified. They’d agreed after a few days with no sight of Carmen that it was time to find something out. Now, with the rain coming down in fits and starts outside, with the three of them tucked away in Deon’s basement, she was hoping for some answers. “None that I could find her on.”