by G. Benson
“I thought,” Carmen faltered, “if we could fake his record somehow, or a birth certificate, we could enroll him in school.”
Jia didn’t dismiss the vague idea straight away. “Papers like that, digital issues, take months. More, even. And money.” She paused, then shrugged. “I can ask around. Before that, we can look at schooling him with Dex.”
Dex, who had a voice as soft as feathers and pulled each kid under his wing. Dex, who had made Carmen study algebra and literature, made Rae read when all she wanted to do was fight someone with anger burning in her eyes. Dex, who chased them all for answers to questions he’d sent them out with. Who had been a teacher once before all this, who had worked in a shelter part-time and had seen the broken system, then had disappeared with Jia to help fix it where he could. They built pathways between them, used old connections, got kids jobs, helped them find apartments, helped them build a life back up when they’d all been torn down.
And they did it like this, unofficially, where the red tape was a murky gray and the law was too. At a pretty huge risk.
“Did Dex get his bar?” Carmen asked.
Jia smirked. “You didn’t ask him yourself?”
“He was distracted with Mattie.”
“He did. It’s opened.”
“He finally opened it?” He had always talked about wanting one. “Did they call it what they always said they would?”
“Floaters?” At Carmen’s nod, Jia rolled her eyes. “Yes.”
Carmen huffed a laugh through her nose. Dex had always called them all that.
“Mattie,” Carmen ventured, “he wants to help. He wants to contribute.”
Jia shook her head. “He’s not working the streets.”
Carmen let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. In reality, he was perfect for the work: small, quick, and innocent-looking. On the other hand, his skin was several shades too dark. Carmen’s had been too: many of theirs was. Black held something especially dangerous these days.
With Jia, they had never pickpocketed a lot, but it was a necessary thing, something Dex had taught them all and something he’d never explained how he knew. They had a particular client: never anyone who looked like a student, who clambered for money probably more than they did; never someone in beat-up shoes, never one of their own. Always people with a certain clean look, a cut to their clothes, wrapped up in phone conversations and appointments; a parent with brand-name sunglasses juggling a child in a stroller worth more than anything any of them had.
Not that that made it better, but it was something. You had to have standards.
“If he ever got picked up, he’d be lost in the juvie and the foster system.” Jia glanced out the open door, focused on something Carmen couldn’t see. “We’ve been trying to get to a point where we don’t need the kids doing it anymore. The bar…”
When she didn’t finish, Carmen asked, “How can we help, then?”
They had to help. Nothing here worked on its own. Everything was built up from a team, from sharing work and doing what they all could.
Jia’s focus fell back on her, eyes a well of understanding. “You can teach him to scrounge: the areas, the places. He can team with you and with Rae; she doesn’t go much anymore, though. He can also be here, cleaning. Dex and a group of the girls are doing some construction work on the building. He can help.”
“Okay.”
“Dex will teach you too. We have a kid the age you were when you first arrived, another a year younger. He’s been doing a lot with them.”
Carmen had to ask. She had to know. “And a job?”
No job meant no guardianship. No apartment. No security. No Mattie. Even with a job, those things weren’t guaranteed.
Jia surveyed her then and gave one slow blink. “We could try you in the bar.”
That made Carmen pause. “But I’m only sixteen. Seventeen soon, I suppose.”
“As long as you aren’t handling alcohol, it’s fine in our state. You can waitress, clean up, do dishes, do some of the prep.” Jia grinned then, her scar deepening, a shadow across her face that Carmen knew intimidated some but to Carmen was just familiar. “All that fun stuff.”
“Will it be legitimate?” Something was rising up, was threatening to spill in her throat and down to her fingertips—something a little like hope.
“We can put you on legitimately. It’s easy to pretend we didn’t know you were a runaway if they ask. I’d say we’d pay you under the table, but if we’re caught doing that, it’s bye-bye bar. Besides…” Jia paused, something clouding up like grief in her face, “once you’re over sixteen, they kind of stop caring. We haven’t had anyone over that age ping their system yet.”
Carmen wondered why she lived in a world where that was a good thing.
Life wrapped itself around Ollie, and she threw herself into studying, into friends, into anything. Especially into the parties they all had, one by one, taking turns to trash one of their houses when their parents were away. They always lay about in the aftermath, the others gone home and their core group all together. She would fall asleep among them all, friends breathing in her ear, and wake up tangled or with someone different or with an extra person there.
Some of their friends fell upon each other—lips and tongues meeting, alcohol streaming through their blood—and then muttered the next day that nothing had happened. Chelsea and Alex were repeat offenders until Deon finally rolled his eyes and asked them who they were kidding. They still just slid each other sideways glances and shy smiles, and Ollie watched them, astounded that two people so interested in each other wasted so much time dancing around each other.
Usually, Ollie ended up spooning Sara and Deon. The three of them would fall, chuckling, on a sofa or a blow-up mattress. The mornings were always filled with painful groans, with the smell of coffee and bacon and eggs, with bottles clinking together as they all pitched in to pick up the carnage. Summer was well behind them, fall long closed in and shedding golden-brown across the ground. The air had started to bite at their cheeks, and most of them were kissed ruddy by it, beanies pulled over their ears, kicking leaves up to watch them play in the wind.
Some days, she was awash in those moments and nothing could touch her. And then some nights things felt like they’d pull Ollie under.
Dinner with her parents would stir up questions, discussions. Her dad would leave a heavy hand on her head, and her mom would smile at them both. Then her parents would speak about college and bring up her aptitude—or lack thereof—for chemistry, followed by other questions falling thick and fast about a future Ollie was being pushed into feetfirst, heels digging into the ground. And she still hadn’t told them about Sean.
Ollie felt everything inside her halt at the fear that she just didn’t know what she wanted.
Some nights, she would sit at her desk, a textbook open in front of her but her pencil in her art book, and sketch out lips and eyes and hands and shadows. She’d remember the last time she’d soothed someone, really seen the pain tearing at their insides and pooling in their eyes, the way she’d literally just offered herself up with zero explanation from the other person.
Ollie couldn’t help it: when she saw someone who needed something, she liked to step forward and help.
And so Carmen was someone she couldn’t stay away from. Ollie was stuck in her orbit, even if it all now seemed like a distant memory, a daydream, a scene from a movie that had seeped into a deep part of her, lulled into her brain.
After weeks, she stopped glancing around for Carmen. Deon’s digging had said enough: Carmen was at a different school on the other side of the city. Letting her go would be easier. Ollie couldn’t stalk out her address; it would look too weird. Carmen knew where to find her, and the fact that she hadn’t left Ollie a little cold.
But also f
eeling a little ridiculous: what had they shared, really?
Instead, she pushed Carmen to the back of her mind. Pushed the burn of her lips, the stroke of her tongue, the graze of her fingertips to a place where Ollie could ignore them—let them fade into that strange dream state and let them be.
Sometimes, when she was with her friends, Ollie didn’t think about Carmen at all.
One night, thick with sweaters, Ollie stumbled through her front door. Her glasses were fogged up, and she wiped a clumsy hand over them, achieving nothing. Deon had dropped her off, and she’d weaved her way up her garden path, his car idling out front, clearly waiting until she was in the house. That’s when it hit her full force:
She was really drunk.
Her key scraped out of the lock, and it was just after midnight, right on time for her curfew. Ollie had told her parents she was staying at a friend’s, but Sara hadn’t been able to come to the party and Deon had left early. In the end, she’d craved her house and her bed and her space.
Her glasses were really fogged up. Or maybe she was just blurry?
She closed the door behind her as quietly as she could. It snicked shut, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Her parents slept through everything.
Light was spilling from the kitchen, but she ignored it and tiptoed to a side table to lay her keys down gently. They barely made a sound.
Her stomach roiled. Who had brought out the Jaeger?
Though every time she complained about that, someone always seemed to point out it had been her.
Boots came off clumsily, almost tripping her in the process. Her hand flashed out, and she caught herself against the wall before she could fall.
She really was kicking this sneaking-in thing’s ass.
As she straightened up, Ollie took a step forward and froze. Her mom was standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her with an eyebrow raised and what could have been either a smile or an angry frown. Everything was blurry.
“Olivia. While that was highly entertaining to watch, you were louder than a herd of goats.”
“I was quiet!”
“Not even a little, sweetie.” Her mom stepped forward. “How drunk are you?”
She may throw up. “Not at all.”
“Well, that’s a lie.” Her eyes narrowed. “Bathroom. Now.”
Ollie barely made it. But when she threw up, her mom lay a cold washcloth over the back of her neck and rubbed circles on her back. Instead of lecturing her, she got Ollie into bed with water and aspirin.
“How did you get home?” her mom asked.
“Deon.”
“Was he sober?”
“Yup.” Ollie groaned in her pillow. “’Cause he’s not an idiot.”
“Good.”
Silence, then, and just her mother’s hand rubbing her back.
“Why aren’t you yelling?” Ollie’s eyes were closed, her bedcovers tucked in around her.
“Your head will do that enough for me tomorrow.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah. Ugh.” Her mom’s voice was quiet, a note in it Ollie hadn’t heard before. “Are you okay, Ollie?”
“Drunk.”
“No, I mean…are you okay?”
For a minute, Ollie let the room spin and shift around her. Even with her eyes closed, everything was drifting. “Yes,” she murmured. “But also no… I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.”
She wondered if she would remember this conversation tomorrow. Her mom’s hand still rubbed soothing patterns.
“None of us do, Ollie. But it’ll get better.”
Nights grew colder, but the warehouse didn’t hold the bite it once had. Dex took Mattie and Carmen around and showed them the patched-up holes and the insulation they’d found or taken from other empty buildings. Mattie listened to it all, and one day, with a hammer in hand, he sat in the wind on the roof, Dex squatting next to him. Carmen watched with her heart in her throat as he fixed tiles in a spot in which the water had come through. Days later, when it rained in sheets and sheets, he dragged Carmen to the spot and stood under it. The rain was hammering on the windows, and none of that rain made its way inside. Mattie grinned so hard she thought they both might shatter.
For weeks, she didn’t let him out of her sight, and he made no attempt to leave it anyway. Carmen and Rae led him to places they knew they could pull out bags of thrown-out food. At the end of each term, the kids at college who moved dumped enough to stock boxes for days. Supermarkets wasted too much, and a lot of workers who emptied the stock into the bins outside turned a blind eye to the kids who scuttled out, fingers desperate and bags ready. They knew which supermarkets didn’t order perfectly good food destroyed when they tossed it.
Mattie learned to clean windows, to fix things, to use his hands. Jia had connections, people who helped her get hold of first aid gear, donations sent to shelters she could haul in: warmer clothes, sleeping bags, pillows, a newer mattress, extra gas for the camping stoves. Carmen did everything she could to get them somewhere to shower more than a couple of times a week.
But Mattie saw things Carmen wished he didn’t. If they were out too late, with darkness in every corner, all the horrors the day stifled leaked out. Fights that erupted, people lying in corners with needles in their arms, a brutal police officer, the flash of a gun tucked into a waistband.
Most nights, Mattie slept well. But many nights, Carmen lay awake, second-guessing everything she did while Mattie sprawled out beside her, sharing her heat. She was lucky, she knew, to have the people in her life that she did—this strange collection of humans.
Dex was a constant. He was like a bear, but the first time she’d been there, Carmen had watched him bring a puppy back to life with a dropper of milk and sugar, his huge hands enveloping it and his voice a soft hum. The dog, huge now, a patchwork of breeds, bounded at her and bowled her over. Mattie was in love with it instantly.
The readings Dex gave them, the old textbooks that lined one of the shelves, the math he patiently had them repeat, all meant nothing; Carmen knew that. Nothing official, nothing that could go on their record. But knowing that Mattie had some kind of structure, anything, made her feel better. Once he got back into school, if he got back into school, he wouldn’t be so far behind.
Some of the nights that Carmen lay awake, sleep burning at her eyes but evading her with each breath, she scooted away from Mattie and went back downstairs.
All the kids Carmen had known before had moved on, most of them to things Jia and Dex had set up for them. Yet the newer ones were nice: they were rough around the edges but good kids who deserved more than to be grasping at this version of normalcy. The youngest, Arti, was as close to a friend that Mattie could now say he had. Dex gave them the same material to look at, and Carmen often made Artie sit down to actually do it with Mattie, or dragged them during a free moment to the library. Most nights, Artie slept on a sofa, and no one made him move. He had an aversion to closed-in spaces, and even his room was too small for him. In summer, Rae told her, he’d slept on the roof with only the blanket of stars to close in on him.
On those nights when Carmen stumbled downstairs, a soft glow still lit the building, one that never really went away, due to the muggy streetlights outside. Someone was always up. Sometimes, someone would offer hot tea or coffee, or Rae and Dex and Jia would be there, and those were Carmen’s favorite nights.
Dex had taught Carmen to fight when she was thirteen and angry, with fear rumbling in her stomach. Never, never, for fun, he’d told her—and repeatedly had to say to Rae, rolling his eyes as he did so—but to protect themselves, to fight back if ever need be.
They’d had to sometimes.
The day he’d first stood in front of Carmen and shown her how to throw a punch, his fingers gentle as they untucke
d her thumb, the bruises from being undefended had still lingered on her skin, marks that had sunk themselves deep and permanently spoiled something within her.
Now, three years later and rusty, she sparred in a back room. The space was big, one set up with filthy old mats they’d wiped down a thousand times, that were stained and splitting their insides. Dex reminded her of focus, of breathing, of momentum, and using force to deflect an opponent—to incapacitate and run.
Rae, once coal-eyed and all fire and boiling blood, now laughed at Carmen or poked her arm. Carmen thought vacantly that Rae simmered now more than boiled. Hours later, sweat cooling on their skin, they would sit in the frigid air on the roof, their feet swinging and sharing a drink of beer or a cigarette, dividing their heat under sleeping bags they pulled up with them. Most of the time, Jia joined them, grabbing the beer bottles out of their hands with a huff, putting their cigarettes out against the concrete. They’d offer her sheepish smiles, and they’d settle in, not the same as before, but different—deeper, comfortable. And Carmen knew that just below, Mattie slept in a bed with a blanket, his stomach full and a book just fallen from his hand.
In those moments, Carmen forgot to second-guess herself. She forgot that anxiety should be crawling up her throat and choking her and instead breathed easily, the heat of arms against hers and the chatter of her crew around her.
Chapter 11
There was a ringing in Ollie’s ears.
It echoed, like time was bouncing against itself. Her backpack sat at her feet, heavy and filled with books she really had to get through that night. She still had her scarf wrapped around her neck, the cold from outside clinging to the fabric. The living room seemed huge, encompassing, overwhelming—even as the walls were compressing in on her. A painting hung on the wall that her mother had brought back from a trip last year. Her mom had raved about it for hours.
Her mom?
What had her father just said?