by R. R. Banks
All I know is that her eyes are boring into me. Eyes that have seen far too much for someone her age. As I stand there, being probed by those sparkling green eyes, I'm half-convinced she can read my fuckin' mind.
As she stares at me, I feel a pang of guilt shoot through me. It hits me that this little girl – and her brother, for that matter – obviously need to cling to that lie. Need to believe that somebody's going to come riding in on a white horse and rescue them from this place. They need to hold on to that hope for all they're worth.
Destroying it for them, would not only make me a complete asshole, but would probably do more harm at this point. They need a little time to acclimate to the environment here. They're both new to the system, and don't understand the way this world works. Not yet, anyway. Once they've been in here a year or two, they'll start to get it.
So, I close my mouth again, and say anything. If he wants them both to live in that little fantasy world, and not entertain the reality of their situation, so be it. Doesn’t matter to me. Who am I to burst their bubble?
“We've got an aunt and an uncle who live Upstate,” Mason goes on. “They're going to come get us.”
“Sure. That's good, man.”
“Anyway,” Mason says. “Thanks for helping me out with that guy.”
I nod. “Just keep your head down,” I reply. “You won't have trouble with Luke anymore. But, if anybody else bothers you, just let me know, and I'll deal with it. You're under my protection now. The both of you. Anybody messes with you, I'll handle it.”
Mason chuckles. “You sound like you're in the mob or something.”
I shrug. “I just know how things work around here,” I say. “People around here listen to me.”
“I'll remember that,” he says. “Thanks again.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say.
I watch as he puts his hand on his sister's back and leads her away. As they go though, she turns and looks back at me over her shoulder. Those green eyes, vivid and intense, burn into me, and I wonder what it is she's seeing. What she's thinking. Something tells me she's a lot wiser to the way the world works than her brother is, and sees shit for how it really is.
* * *
Over the next couple of weeks though, I hung out with Mason a bit. He's a nice enough guy, but I could tell he felt uncomfortable about being around me. I could tell he didn't much care for feeling like he was being protected, or knowing that he needed the protection.
From some of the things he said, and the snotty little attitude he'd sometimes get, I could see he wanted to be known as someone who could take care of himself. He tried to keep a buffer between us – but, never strayed too far away, either.
The whole time we hung out together, his sister never left his side. Nor did she ever say a word to me. Not a single damn word. She just sat there, silently staring at me with those wide, green eyes of hers. To be honest, it was unnerving as hell. I didn't like feeling like she could see through me.
It turned out that Mason had been right all along. About a month after the two of them landed in St. Aggie's – after another shitty Christmas that netted me a new pack of boxers – their aunt and uncle from Upstate showed up to claim them – just like Mason said they would.
I was surprised, of course. In the whole time I'd been at St. Aggie's, it was rare that any of the kids who were dropped off had family who cared about them enough to come claim them. It never happened all that often.
Honestly, I was largely indifferent about their departure from St. Aggie’s. It's not like we were best friends or anything. He was just someone I hung out with.
In fact, it was a little bit of a relief. I didn't have to keep watching his back anymore.
The only thing I remember clearly about them leaving though, was that silent little girl staring at me with her big green eyes as I stood on the porch, watching them go.
It's an image I'd never forget. Though, I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why.
2
Darby
Eight Years Ago...
“Seriously, what are we doing here?” Jade asks me. “This neighborhood is scary. Girls like us shouldn't be walking alone in Hell's Kitchen, you know. I mean, do you know how many people get robbed and murdered around here? I just read a blog the other day, about the human trafficking industry here –”
“Relax,” I say and laugh. “It's not as bad as it used to be.”
I remember back when I was just a little girl and spent a month at an orphanage in Hell's Kitchen. I was really young at the time, but I still recall everything so vividly, and in such great detail. It was just a month in a childhood largely spent with my aunt and uncle up in the wide-open country and fresh air of upstate New York– but for whatever reason, memories of that time in St. Agatha's are still vivid in my mind.
This neighborhood scared the crap out of ten-year-old me. Yeah, Hell’s Kitchen is still a little rough around the edges today, but it’s changed since I lived here, and I can already see the difference. With the approach of the holidays, there are decorations in store windows, on streetlights, and whatnot. It's a little more festive than I remember it being back then.
I haven't been back to Hell's Kitchen for years. After our aunt and uncle picked us up from the orphanage, we moved Upstate for a couple of years. Eventually, we moved back to the Upper East Side, and into “proper” social and economic circles. Where we lived isn't all that far from the Kitchen, but it still feels like an entirely different world. One I don't really venture into all that often. Or, at all, if I'm being honest. At least, not until today.
I adjust the bag on my shoulder as we walk and look around at the sprawling urban world around me. I gaze at the tall, red-brick buildings, and can feel the history of the place washing over me. Taking a deep breath, I feel the history of the place sinking into my bones.
I stop before a vacant lot between two apartment buildings. The lot is overgrown with weeds and filled with old tires, a stripped car, and a ton of trash. It's a neighborhood dump, and I catch the distinct odor of what smells like something rotting. Thankfully, it's later in the year, and the temperatures are starting to plummet as we barrel toward winter, or whatever is decomposing in that field would stink much worse than it does now.
I'm able to shut out all the garbage, and focus on the reason I'm here in the first place. I let my eyes stray to the spray-painted pictures on the walls, looking at the intricate designs and patterns the artists incorporated into their work. Most people would call it graffiti. Tagging. A blight on the neighborhood. Something that needs to be eradicated.
When I look at the murals, I see nothing but beauty. I see an artist telling a story.
You can tell a lot about a person from their work – you just have to know where, and how, to look for it.
“Look at that,” I say, pointing to a mural on the wall.
“It's – nice?” Jade replies.
Jade's more into hair, fashion, and boys than art. Typical of girls our age, I suppose. Not me. I've always been a bit of an outsider. Someone who doesn't quite fit in. I mean, I do like nice clothes and boys, but I’m not obsessed. Which, given the social circles I run in, makes me the proverbial square peg looking at the round hole – never quite fitting in.
Still, I'm expected to maintain a certain – image. My uncle is a highly decorated and prominent criminal defense attorney. He's one of the best in the state – if not the country. He makes enough to afford putting me through a posh, prestigious prep academy, like he did for Mason before me. Now, they’re pushing me toward a college that's equally as prestigious.
They want me to be a lawyer or a doctor, but I've held firm against that – further cementing my square peg/round hole status in their eyes. They call me a black sheep – usually condescendingly – because I already know what I want to do, and nobody is going to change my mind.
I'm going to go to school to be a teacher. That's where my true passion is. That's where my heart is. I would end up miserable a
nd resentful if I spent my life doing something I didn’t love.
I want to be happy, and enjoy the time I have in this world. So, I take the slings and arrows that come my way. I absorb all the barbs, and keep doing my own thing. This is my life, and I'm determined to live it for me.
I appreciate everything my aunt and uncle have given me. The opportunities and privileges they've afforded me are ones I would have never gotten otherwise. I must admit, the elite, upper-class lifestyle is nice, and has a lot of obvious perks, but it's still something I'm trying to get used to. Even now, all these years later, it just doesn't feel right. Pretending to be one of them, one of the elite, has never felt right to me, and it's made me uncomfortable in my own skin at times. It's not how I was originally raised and being suddenly immersed into those waters left me flailing a bit. A lot actually.
I know, poor little rich girl, right? Cry me a river.
Mason though, he took to it like a duck to water. Though our actual parents raised us very differently – he was a different person back then – it wasn't long before he adopted the snooty, entitled, totally condescending, and arrogant air of the rich kids we went to school with. He assimilated with that crowd all too easily.
Mason was always trying to prove that he was better than the next guy. As if by tearing them down, he was propping himself up even higher. And maybe in his mind he was. But, the way I see it, he tried too hard. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he wasn't really one of them, and never would be, and it killed him.
Mason has always tried to prove that he belongs in the wealthy, elite circles my aunt and uncle belong to.
And he did it by becoming an even bigger, more arrogant and condescending asshole than they were. And, as he's become established in his career, and started to make a name for himself in his own right, Mason’s only gotten worse. That sense of arrogance and entitlement only became further entrenched in his DNA.
Yeah, our relationship isn't exactly the best. We were close at one time. Inseparable. When we were at St. Agatha's, and even shortly after we went to live with our aunt and uncle, we clung to each other. We were the only real constants in each other's lives for so long, and our bond was strong.
But, it wasn't long after Mason got a taste of that upper-class lifestyle and all of its trappings, that he started to change. It wasn't all that long after we moved Upstate that he became somebody different.
After we moved back to the city, he really changed. Once we were fully immersed in our aunt and uncle's circles, Mason became somebody I didn't even recognize anymore. He became self-absorbed, narcissistic, and entitled as hell.
It broke my heart to see Mason go from being a protective and doting big brother, to another spoiled, rich asshole, with the world handed to them on a silver platter.
I'm not going to deny that I love the privilege that comes with belonging to such a wealthy family. I'd be an idiot not to. I’m entirely grateful for the advantages and perks that come with being able to buy nice clothes, travel the world, and basically, doing whatever I want. But, that's the thing – I recognize it as a privilege. A privilege I know not everybody gets to have. I know I get breaks and advantages that others don't. I'm always cognizant of that fact, and unlike my brother, it's never all that far from my mind.
Also, further cementing the privilege I enjoy in my life is the constant reminder – at least, the reminder I give to myself – that this is not how we grew up. Or rather, it's not how we were growing up before our parents were killed. As young as I was when they died, I still remember that we were a blue-collar, middle-class family. We never went without, but we certainly didn't have anything resembling the lavish lifestyle we do now.
Unlike Mason, I haven't forgotten where we came from.
“It's cold,” Jade complains, pulling her sweater around herself a little tighter.
“It's that time of year again,” I reply.
She looks at the lot again, an expression of distaste upon her lips. Jade’s a sweet girl, she isn’t arrogant, entitled, or condescending, but she doesn’t really understand the concept of privilege either.
“You're not really going in there are you?” Jade asks.
I look back and give her a grin. “How do you expect me to get the shot I want from so far away?”
She sighs. “This is why you asked me to wear this – costume?”
I look her up and down. She's in jeans, a white button-up shirt, a fashionable cardigan, and tennis shoes. I only told her to be comfortable, and that we'd be walking a bit, so something casual would probably be best.
Though she probably considers it borderline scandalous to be dressed in such casual attire – in public no less – I don't want to attract any undue attention to us. God knows we get enough whistles and catcalls from the old perverts on our side of town when we're in our school uniforms.
Hell's Kitchen is entirely different. I'm smart enough to know that. It's the last place two girls like us want to be running around in prep school uniforms, or in designer outfits that obviously cost a lot of money.
Gravel crunches beneath my feet as I step into the lot, approaching the mural, looking at it with awe. For someone with nothing more than cans of spray paint, and an idea in their head, the work is exquisite. Absolutely beautiful.
The main subject of the mural is an older black woman. There's a euphoric smile on her kind face, and she's reaching out to a group of children of various ethnicities. The piece is breathtaking.
The eyes of the subjects are what captivates me the most. The eyes are somehow so real and filled with actual life, that they seem to be looking at you. Seeing you.
Digging my camera out of my bag, I make my way around all the trash in the lot, careful to avoid twisting my ankle or stepping on a hidden needle, or something equally dangerous. I find a vantage point and take some pictures of the mural, shooting it from different angles, reveling in its majesty.
“I honestly don't know how anybody can say this isn't art,” I say. “I mean, look at it. It's absolute perfection.”
Jade shrugs. “Well, it is spray painted on the side of a building?” she says. “Instead of hanging in a gallery? I mean, that's kind of the definition of art, isn't it?”
“Well, it's a little more complicated than that,” I say.
“Whatever,” Jade says, obviously growing a little impatient.
* * *
“Okay, got it,” I say, slipping my camera back into my bag. “I want to see if there are any others.”
Jade sighs. “This is so boring,” she says, folding her arms over her chest, though I can't tell if it's in irritation, or because she’s cold. “This is not what I had in mind when you said you wanted to do a walking tour.”
I grinned as we left the lot. “And what did you think I had in mind?”
“A walking tour of dress shops, maybe?” she asks. “Boutiques? Places with hot college guys?”
I laugh. “I need to get these shots for a project I'm putting together for Ms. Sutherland's class,” I say. “I appreciate you coming with me, though.”
“You owe me,” she says, narrowing her eyes.
“Of course, I do.”
Though I'm a little cold, all the walking we're doing is keeping me warm. I need to enjoy days like this, when it's not too frigid yet. With winter, and Christmas, on the not too distant horizon, things in the city are going to get very, very cold, and very, very crazy.
We walk down the street and are rounding a corner when a guy comes rushing out of a bar and bumps into me. I stumble back, and he manages to catch me before I fall. Looking up into his eyes, I feel my breath catch in my throat. We stand like that, with me in his arms, for a long moment, and my heart begins to race.
I don't know what it is, but there's something so familiar about him. Slowly, he sets me on my feet, but our gazes remain locked, and his hand is still on my arm.
“Get your hands off her, you creep,” Jade snarls, as she steps forward, and smacks his hand away from my arm
. “And watch where you're going while you're at it. You just about knocked her on her ass.”
The man recoils and looks at her, as if noticing her for the first time. A slow smirk spreads across his face as he takes her in from head to toe.
“You her bodyguard or something?” he asks.
Jade shrinks back from his direct, piercing eyes, but quickly catches herself. She lifts her chin defiantly and stares daggers through him. She is a small girl – all of five-foot-three, one hundred pounds – but, she does her best to not let other people push her around or intimidate her. She overcompensates for her tiny stature, by being full of nothing, as my uncle would say, but piss and vinegar.
My best friend, she's a feisty one. Jade doesn't usually back down from a challenge.
“Yeah, maybe I am,” Jade says, trying to put some heat into her voice. “You want to make something of it?”
I can't take my eyes off the man and feel some fuzzy memories stirring in the back of my mind. I know him from somewhere – I’m sure of it. I just can't put my finger on where that might be.
The feeling though, is like a splinter in the back of my mind, and I can't seem to shake it. His attention is fixed on Jade – not that I blame him. She's a knockout and has the perfect body to go along with her supermodel good looks. She's usually the center of attention whenever we're with guys.
I know I'm not terrible to look at, but I feel downright plain and ordinary when I stand next to her. It's almost like I cease to exist when Jade enters the room. My hair is red, instead of perfectly blonde. And I'm not a big girl, but I've got some curves.
“Maybe I do,” he says.
The man steps closer to her. He's over six-feet tall. He's got wide shoulders, a thick chest, and under a tight black t-shirt, I can tell he has a toned body corded with lean muscle. He looms over her, engulfing Jade in his shadow.