True Nature

by Jae

  “I know, but...” Kelsey searched for a believable explanation. She couldn’t very well tell Rue that she was hoping to catch a whiff of Danny’s scent if he was still in the neighborhood. With the cacophony of scents and sounds in the city, it was a long shot, but a small chance was better than not even trying. “It’s just that I’d feel better if we opened a window.”

  “What is it with you and enclosed spaces? Are you claustrophobic?”

  “What? No. Of course not.” No Syak had ever suffered from claustrophobia. At least that was what her father said.

  The early-morning traffic slowed for no obvious reason, and Rue braked. “No?” She threw a disbelieving sidelong glance at Kelsey. “What is it, then? And don’t say it’s nothing. You stiffen up every time you get in the car, and when we got into the elevator, you looked like you were about to throw up.”

  She’s too observant for her own good. I have to be more careful around her. Kelsey took a deep breath. “I just don’t like feeling trapped.” She had ignored the problem for over a dozen years, hoping it would go away in time. But now it was worse than ever. She wasn’t even sure why. Maybe because Danny’s peanut smell had reopened old wounds or maybe because the stress of her assignment was tearing down her defenses. During the last twenty-four hours, her skin hadn’t stopped tingling as if a steady electric current were humming through her. If she continued like this, she’d lose control. How ironic. If I’m not careful, it’ll be me, not Danny, running around New York in wolf form.

  “Trapped?” Rue sent her another questioning gaze. “Why would you feel trapped in a car? We can stop and get out any time.”

  Kelsey rubbed her tired eyes with her thumb and index finger. “I know. At least my head knows it. But...”

  “But what?”

  “Remember the car accident I told you about?” Kelsey heard her own voice say as if from a great distance.

  Rue nodded.

  “The car sank to the bottom of a river.”

  Rue stopped at a red light. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Jesus! Did everyone get out okay?”

  Kelsey’s throat felt like a desert during dry season. She had to swallow before she could answer. “My brother and his family...they drowned. I was the only one who made it out alive.”

  “God.” Rue took one hand off the steering wheel and touched Kelsey’s arm.

  Even through the fabric of her jacket, Kelsey could feel the coolness of Rue’s skin compared to her own, like a cold compress soothing the flames of her grief.

  Behind them, two other cars sounded their horns when the light turned green and Rue hadn’t yet cleared the intersection.

  The sudden noise made Kelsey jerk. “Great Hunter.”

  “Assholes,” Rue mumbled, but otherwise ignored the honking. She looked deeply into Kelsey’s eyes. “I’m sorry.” Something in her blue eyes softened, like ice melting in the sun.

  She understands. She lost her parents.

  For a few moments, the blaring horns behind them faded away, and it was as if nothing else existed in the world beyond Rue and Kelsey and their shared pain.

  Rue stroked Kelsey’s arm. Then, belatedly, she lifted her brows and asked, “Great Hunter? What does that mean?”

  Kelsey winced inwardly. Caught up in the intensity of the moment, she’d let her defenses down. “Um, just something my father always says. It’s a family thing.” She turned away and stared through the windshield. “The light’s green.”

  Rue moved the car through the intersection and hit the button that rolled down the window on the passenger side a bit.

  The wind cooled Kelsey’s flushed cheeks. She turned her head and looked out the window, ignoring Rue’s gaze she felt resting on her. Why had she told Rue about Garrick and his family? She hadn’t talked about it in years and certainly not to a human she barely knew.

  A whiff of peanut smell drifted through the half-open window.

  Kelsey sat up straight and then slumped against the passenger seat when she realized it was just the scent of peanut sauce from a Chinese restaurant.

  There was no sign of Danny anywhere.

  Chapter 26

  The scent of coffee woke Danny. The sun was starting to rise, peeking through the high-rise buildings surrounding him. He stared at the neon signs and billboards across the street, needing a few seconds to get his bearings and remember where he was. Sometime during the night, he must have slid down and was now curled up tightly around his backpack.

  He sat up, and his bladder started screaming at him. He shifted uncomfortably.

  The smell of coffee and disinfectant told him that there was a coffee shop and a restroom nearby. He jingled the coins he had in the pockets of his pants and his jacket. If he was lucky, he could buy himself a bagel and use the shop’s restroom.

  But getting up and going in search of a bathroom meant he would have to give up his safe spot in front of the shoe store. He hesitated until the pressure in his bladder went from uncomfortable to painful.

  With the help of his nose, it took him only a minute to locate the coffee shop. He hurried into the men’s room and then, afterward, took his time nursing his bagel and a cup of water, grateful to be protected from the cool March temperatures for a while.

  Finally, when his bagel was long gone and the man behind the counter started giving him suspicious glances, he got up and left.

  An old man in a threadbare shirt that clung to his thin body sat in front of the coffee shop, throwing a longing glance inside.

  Danny hesitated and then dug into his pocket and pulled out his last dollar. Wordlessly, he pressed the bill into the old man’s hand and hurried back to his spot in front of the shoe store. Maybe he could sleep for an hour longer.

  A large man stepped from the shadows of the doorway.

  Danny jumped back and lifted his open palms. His heart racing, he backed away, showing the intruder that he had no intention of fighting for the spot.

  But instead of staying and claiming the spot, the man followed Danny. He said something, but in the low light Danny didn’t catch what it was.

  His instincts told him that it wasn’t just a friendly hello. Maybe it was just his overactive imagination, but the man reeked of danger.

  Danny shook his head, trying to tell the man that he didn’t understand.

  Finally, with Danny backing up and the man following, they stepped out into the light of the rising sun, where Danny could read his lips. “What are you, kid?” the man said. “Deaf?”

  Danny nodded.

  The man stared; then his massive body shook as he laughed.

  Danny used his distraction to run.

  The man’s weight hit him from behind and tackled him against a storefront. His cheek scraped along the wall, and his ribs groaned.

  Panic gripped him. He struggled and kicked. A strange burning flared across his skin, starting in his forearms and then rushing over his body. What’s happening? More panic washed over him, and he increased his efforts to break free.

  The man’s meaty hands pulled him around. His face was contorted in anger or pain. He shouted something, but again, Danny didn’t understand.

  “What? What do you want?” he asked, laboring to control his fear and his vocal cords.

  Grabbing Danny’s collar with one hand, the man rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for money.

  Shit. “I don’t have any money,” Danny said. “My wallet was stolen.”

  The man stared at him without comprehending.

  Danny turned one of his pants pockets inside out, repeated the money sign, and shook his head.

  The man’s grimace said “yeah, sure.” He wrenched the backpack from Danny’s shoulders and threw it away when he found nothing of value in it.

  Free of the man’s grip, Danny started to run, but his attacker was faster. He snatched Danny by the back of his jacket and whirled him around.

  When the man tried to put his hands in Danny’s jacket pockets, Danny struggled
and grabbed his wrists.

  A cloud of condensed breath exploded in front of the man’s face as he grunted. He used both hands to break Danny’s grip.

  Steel glinted in the light of the streetlamp. A knife appeared in the man’s hand.

  Fear pulsed through Danny in hot and cold waves. He stared at the man.

  “Give me your cell phone and your watch,” the man said, extending his pinky and thumb next to his ear and patting his wrist to make Danny understand.

  Part of Danny wanted to continue fighting and not give up his possessions, but a cooler-headed influence—faded memories of Rue telling him to learn to pick his fights—told him a cell phone and a wristwatch weren’t worth getting stabbed to death.

  Danny shoved trembling fingers into his jacket pocket and handed over the cell phone. With a glance at the knife in the man’s fist, he unclasped his wristwatch.

  It had been a gift from Rue. When she had given it to him last Christmas, he hadn’t cared, thinking it was an attempt to bribe him with expensive gifts, but now he found himself unexpectedly reluctant to hand it over.

  The man wrenched it from his hand, shoved Danny against the wall, and ran.

  Danny’s head banged against the bricks. Fire rushed through his limbs. Something seemed to move beneath his itching skin. He bared his teeth and growled at the retreating man’s back.

  Chapter 27

  Kelsey felt as if her ear was about to fall off. She sat in a deli across from Rue, the cell phone pressed to her ear and a pastrami-on-rye sandwich uneaten on the table before her. Finally, she lowered the phone and waited until Rue finished her own call.

  “And?” Rue asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Me neither.” Rue put her cell phone on the table and leaned back against the booth. Frustration wafted around her in thick waves.

  Kelsey couldn’t help wanting to cheer her up. “That’s good, right?”

  “I guess. At least he didn’t end up in an emergency room.”

  “I had no luck with any of the youth hostels or hotels near Paula’s office either.”

  Rue put her elbows on the table and tangled her fingers in her hair. “Danny has a prepaid credit card. I called the credit card company, and they said that he bought the bus ticket yesterday morning and then some items totaling four ninety-nine in a 7-Eleven around the corner from the TV station late last night.”

  Four ninety-nine? Strange. After being on the bus and not eating for so long, most Wrasa teenagers Kelsey knew would have gobbled down fifty dollars’ worth of fast food.

  “The cell phone company says he has his phone turned off, so they can’t locate him.” Rue sighed and tightened her fingers around the card Detective Vargas from the NYPD had given her this morning. The detective had promised them that every officer in the area would keep an eye out for Danny, but since no foul play was involved couldn’t mount a more systematic search.

  Kelsey resisted the urge to give Rue a comforting pat on the shoulder. “What now?”

  “I suggest we head back to the TV station. I want to show Danny’s photo around in the nearby subway stations. If he didn’t stay in any of the hotels in that area, he probably took the subway to someplace else.”

  The subway. Kelsey squeezed her eyes shut. Just what she needed—more enclosed spaces.

  Chapter 28

  When his sneakers started to rub his swollen feet raw, Danny sank onto a low wall that separated the sidewalk from a nearby park, an oasis in the middle of gray concrete. At least the strange itching of his skin had stopped now.

  Across the street, two gigantic stone lions flanked the front steps of the public library, towering over Danny in a silent gesture of domination.

  He lifted his upper lip and snarled at them. Geez. What are you doing? Shaking his head at himself, he turned his back on the lion sculptures and focused on the hustle and bustle in the park.

  Two jugglers threw balls high up in the air, starting with three, then adding more until, finally, the seventh ball dropped onto the lawn.

  A homeless guy played a drum on the street corner. Danny felt the vibrations through the soles of his shoes. Whenever one song ended, the man lifted a paper cup and shook it until a pedestrian dropped a coin into it.

  A few yards farther down the street, another man sat near a heat grate and held up a cardboard sign that said “Homeless and hungry. Please help.”

  Danny’s stomach growled when he saw a passerby hand the man half a sandwich. Would someone give him food or money if he held up a similar sign?

  Cut it out, man! You’re not one of those bums.

  He wondered what time it was. Probably at least three in the afternoon by now.

  Two pigeons stalked closer to Danny’s feet and then quickly bent their heads to gobble up a few crumbs.

  Danny ground his teeth. Even pigeons got more to eat than he did.

  The pigeons took flight when he moved his feet, and an image flashed before his eyes—feathers flying as he pounced on them.

  He shook his head and spat as if to get rid of feathers in his mouth.

  You’re going crazy. Maybe begging for money was the lesser evil. Better than fantasizing about hunting down pigeons, anyway. Just until he had enough for a sandwich or two. One step at a time and he would make it on his own until Paula was back.

  He took his baseball cap from his backpack and stood.

  Pedestrians walked past, some loaded down by shopping bags, others carrying briefcases or with ice-skates tied around their necks. He made eye contact with a friendly-looking woman, but when she came closer, she looked away and hurried past him before Danny could think of something to say.

  You need to be faster.

  A man in a business suit approached.

  “Excuse me,” Danny said. He tried to pronounce the words clearly, as the speech therapist had drilled into him, but every muscle in his body tensed, squeezing the air from his lungs, and the fear of not being understood made him even tenser. “Excuse me,” he said again. “My wallet was stolen, and I—”

  The businessman mumbled something that looked like “Get lost” and made a shooing motion.

  Humiliated, Danny stepped out of the way and sank back onto the low wall. Shit.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  Danny whirled around.

  A wiry boy with disheveled red hair stood in front of him. His broad grin revealed a gap where one of his front teeth was missing. “You’ve never done this before, have you?” the boy asked. He spoke slowly, carefully, as if he knew Danny was deaf and wouldn’t be able to read his lips otherwise.

  Danny grimaced. Is it that obvious? He shook his head.

  The boy pointed at Danny’s jacket and mimicked taking it off.

  Danny eyed his jacket and then took a look at the boy’s clothes. Oh. It’s too new. Too expensive. People will think I’m some rich kid just doing this on a dare. He squinted at the boy. How does he know that’s not why I’m doing this?

  The boy grinned as if he could read Danny’s thoughts. “I saw you last night.”

  When Danny looked more closely, he detected an army-green sleeping bag tied to the duffle bag slung over the boy’s shoulder. He’s the boy who slept in front of the cosmetics store.

  The boy sat next to Danny and rummaged through his duffle bag until he found a magic marker and a piece of cardboard. He scribbled a few words and then handed Danny the sign.

  Danny glanced down at the cardboard sign in his hand, which now read “I’m deaf. I don’t drink. Please help.”

  “You are deaf, right?” the boy asked, pointing at his ears to help Danny understand.

  Danny nodded. His cheeks burned with shame as he stared down at the cardboard sign. Never had he imagined that he’d ever use his deafness to beg for money. Man, if Rue could see you now. Was this really what he wanted to do? Maybe he should get over his pride and just call Rue.

  Something dropped into the baseball cap Danny still held in his other hand.


  When he looked up, he saw a gray-haired man pass without giving him a second glance.

  Danny fished a shiny quarter out of his cap and clenched his fingers around it until the edges dug into his skin.

  The boy nudged him. “Welcome to the streets of New York City. I’m…”

  Danny shook his head to indicate that he didn’t understand. Names were hard to lip-read since he couldn’t guess from the context. Danny fished the notepad from his pocket and used the magic marker to write, “Was that Pat?”

  “Greg,” the boy scribbled.

  Danny bumped his fist against Greg’s. “Danny,” he said.

  “So what brings you here?” Greg wrote on the notepad.

  Good question. What the hell am I doing here? Just a few days ago, he had watched movies and eaten junk food with his friends at home; now he was sitting next to a homeless stranger at some goddamned street corner, begging for money. He shrugged.

  Greg scribbled the next question and turned the pad around for Danny to read. “You ran away from a fucked-up situation at home?”

  Guess you could say that. Danny nodded.

  “Me too,” Greg wrote. “When my old man started taking the belt buckle instead of the other side of the belt to my back, I knew it was time to get the hell out of there.”

  Belt buckle? Danny stared. His own belt buckle rested heavily against his empty stomach. He vehemently shook his head, not wanting Greg to think Rue was hitting him. Without any doubt, he knew that Rue would never lift a hand against him. And if anyone else tried, she’d rip the person’s arm off.

  He remembered Rue storming into the principal’s office after his first fistfight. After finding out that Brandon, who stared at them through a swollen eye, had called him “deaf and dumb,” Rue had shouted at Brandon’s parents until they stopped demanding that Danny be kicked out of school.

  He had almost forgotten about that. His fingers itched to call Rue just to see her face on the tiny phone display and let her know he was okay, but then he remembered that he didn’t have his cell phone anymore. Don’t get sentimental. If you go back, Rue will ship your ass off to boarding school.