Nora & Kettle (A Paper Stars Novel Book 1)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  “Okay?” I say like a question as I jump from the dumpster and pull her down, mud splattering her clean clothes and shoes. And even though she said okay, I don’t let go of her hand. I clutch it tightly and press close to the wall, moving as fast as I can to reach the other end.

  She runs with me, not fighting, not lagging, and with every drop of filthy alley water that splashes up our clothes, a new question pops up in my head about why she’s willingly coming with me and what the hell have I gotten myself into?

  The police sirens begin just as we round the corner.

  At this time of night, a few drunks, cabbies, and people like me shuffle through the wet streets. They pay me no mind as I dart across the road, avoiding the pools of golden light under each street lamp and straight into the next alley.

  Stop. Think.

  My head swivels this way and that, like maybe there’s a glaring solution in front of me I’ve neglected. My chest tightens when I remember there’s a girl on my arm. A girl I just ripped from a window. A girl they’ll be looking for.

  “Sh! They’re looking for us,” Kin warns, his skinny arm pressed across my chest. I gulp and wheeze like a squeezing accordion.

  The bricks dig into my spine, or my spine digs into the bricks, I’m not sure, all I know is, it’s uncomfortable and I’m scared. I’m scared they’ll find me. I’m scared they won’t find me because then we’ll be alone again.

  Kin’s intense, dark eyes fall on my face and his tight expression relaxes. He elbows me and smiles. “Don’t worry, little brother,” he says. “You and me, we’re gonna conquer this city.”

  I nod. Redness in my cheeks and cold air freezing my nose.

  “The count is out by two,” a soldier mutters, pausing in the archway, two long shadows reaching our feet.

  We slide further away, the brambles of a bush growing up against the wall welcomes us into its arms. Stick fingers scratch my face sluggishly.

  He says our names loudly, mispronouncing every part of them.

  The train is shushing and anxious to leave the station. “What do we do, sir? Do we just forget about it?”

  The other soldier’s voice is angry. “Would you forget our friends who died at Pearl Harbor? Hell, why do you think most of them can’t go back there? People haven’t forgotten and they don’t want them returning to the West Coast.”

  These words are not new. These words were drilled into our heads from the day we arrived.

  “Sir…?” The soldier awaits an answer, and Kin and I hold our breath.

  A loud sigh. An impatient tone. “We’ll notify the local authorities. These boys were supposed to go to an orphanage up state. They’ll find ‘em. Two nip kids won’t get far in this city. They’ll stick out like mouse turds in a bowl of rice.”

  I crouch down, press as close to the wall as I can.

  Kin and me, we’re on our own now.

  She tugs on my hand. A growing concerto of sirens, voices, footsteps shake me from the memory. The sounds bloom from the front of her house and will soon stretch to where we are. I turn to her pale face. Her mouth is open and puffs of mist come out with her breath. She doesn’t look scared. She looks… sick.

  I tilt my head and try to really see her. I arch an eyebrow at her bruises and she straightens, a cold mask slipping over what I thought were excited features a minute ago… until I say, “Can you climb?” and even in this thinly spread light, I can see spots of color in her cheeks and a touch of life returning to her eyes.

  Her lip twitches up at one corner, and she replies, “I can climb.”

  We run between two more buildings and take a few corners, winding our way through the city maze while I try to think of the best hideout. It must be past midnight now and my thoughts turn to the boys waiting for me and to Kin. I can see him slapping his forehead right now at my stupidity. He would kill me. He will…

  I come to a halt beneath an older, more crumbly building but it’s an important one filled with important people. The girl looks up and then dubiously back to me. “Here?”

  “Yep,” I pant, releasing her wrist and linking my fingers together to give her a boost. I’m squatting down, waiting to bear her weight, when the metallic twang of the platform above me makes me jump. She’s standing on the platform, swaying a little, having swung herself up on her own. I shake my head in disbelief and follow.

  Quietly, we creep up the fire escape, just the sounds of our breath filling the closed night. About halfway up, she pauses, one foot on a rung and the other on the platform. “What’s your name?” she whispers.

  I hesitate, but realizing my name will mean nothing to the authorities, I give it to her. “Kettle.”

  She lifts her foot and hangs from the ladder, leaning toward me, her thick hair dangling near my nose. “That’s odd.”

  I grimace. “What’s your name then?”

  “Nora.” She sighs, continuing up the ladder.

  I like it, but I don’t want to say I do. “That’s just boring.”

  I think she laughs. I grip the rungs beneath her. I don’t care if she laughs.

  We reach the top, and she quite easily rolls over the edge and lands on the dirty roof.

  I point to the thick brick wall with several chimneys sticking out of it. “Over there.”

  She nods and crawls over the apex of the roof until she reaches the small space between the two walls, a five-foot-wide, maybe only six-or-seven-feet-long rectangle of concrete between two banks of chimneys. She steps in, and I follow.

  She moves to the far end to give me room, dusts off her skirt, and pulls her legs under it, wrapping her arms around her knees. Although she’s only a couple of inches shorter than me, she looks tiny in here. Defeated.

  I want to ask her what happened to her. I don’t know why. Shaking my head, I lean my back against the warm chimney, my legs pushing into the opposite wall.

  Up here I can see some of the stars and I tilt up, counting them and almost forgetting that she’s next to me until she speaks.

  “Is this where you sleep?” she asks. I turn, noticing she’s staring at the sky too. “It’s beautiful up here.”

  I laugh in a shocked kind of way. “No. Look, Nora, I’m really sorry I pulled you out the window. I shouldn’t have done it. It’s just, well, I was angry about some… stuff and you throwing your garbage on me was the last straw, you know? But I was never going to hurt you. I just wanted to give you a scare.” My words are not my friends right now. “If you could just please promise not to report me, well, I could take you home and we could forget this ever happened.”

  A rustle of skirts.

  A tightening of her brown pea coat across her chest.

  “No,” she says, her voice carved yet soft, ribbons tied to rocks.

  “No?”

  Her words slide from her mouth like a cloud just begging for the sky. “I don’t want to go home.”

  34. AN AGREEMENT

  NORA

  I wonder if I’m damaged beyond repair. I hear his voice and I thread past the anger, the distrust. I squirm between the bands of disdain and think I find kindness. I can’t tell if it’s real or imagined, but I’m clinging to it nevertheless.

  All I know is that I don’t want to go home yet.

  He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns at me through the dark. The murky clouds are clearing and stars and a crust of moon light up his dark features, his eyes looking black although I know they’re an unusual shade of blue.

  “What do you mean, no, you don’t want to go home? You know I could, I could…” He clenches his fists and rests them on his knees, but they are disarmed bombs. I know what the beginning of a punch looks and feels like. This is not it. I dare to move closer to him. I’m not sure whether to be honest. Too much truth and he definitely won’t help me. Especially not someone like him.

  “I know this may sound strange to someone like you, but I want to see where you live. How you live. I’m… curious,” I say, leaning in as he leans away.

&nb
sp; “No. No way,” he answers through mumbling lips, his hands coasting flat like he’s sanding a bench.

  I rise to kneeling, his folded-in form seems so tense, everything looking like it’s about to snap and splinter like dry bamboo. “Then I’ll report you,” I state.

  He groans and swears, then kicks the wall in front of him. He’s staring at the bricks when he says, “Or I could throw you from this roof.” It lacks any type of conviction. He doesn’t understand that I am well acquainted with violence. I know threats and murderous eyes. He is not that person. The feeling wraps around my bones like frayed cotton thread. I’m loose from my tethers of sister and shield and I’m placing too much trust in my ‘feelings’. But what I have lost is already lost. My hands are empty.

  “Let me spend a few days in your world,” I plead. “My father, he’s so strict, I feel like I can’t breathe.” I sigh dramatically. “I just need a break from all the rules.” I’m lying, throwing my hair back awkwardly, trying to pretend I’m someone else whose life is some picture of normal. He doesn’t answer straight away, which means I might have a shot. The moon reads running out of time. The stars are seconds fading. “Please. I promise I won’t be any trouble.” I clasp my hands together and smile. It turns to irritation on his face.

  He shrugs. “How do I know you won’t report me anyway once you’ve had your fun slumming it?” I wince at the words ‘slumming it’ and watch him shake his head as he talks himself out of it. “No. It’s too risky. My home, it’s… special, er, secret. People can’t know about it. I don’t know you, and I definitely don’t trust you. It’s not a good idea.”

  I feel like this might be an opportunity or at least the beginnings of one, but like the slippery tail of a fish, I’m losing my grip on it. “Kettle.” His eyebrows rise when I say his name. “Unless you are going to throw me off the roof, you’ll have to trust me. I give you my word. If you let me stay with you for a few days, I won’t report you. I promise.” I hold out my hand for him to shake. “Deal?”

  He eyes me suspiciously for a long moment, his capacity for silence impressive. My hand starts to quiver from hanging in the air too long but he finally grasps it strongly and shakes. “Don’t mess with me,” Kettle warns quietly and in a voice which makes me think he’s been hurt before.

  The sharp parts of oxygen slice their way out of my throat. I miss Frankie. But something pushes me forward, a need to escape, to look for a way out. Kettle and I are still holding hands, the up and down motion continuing as we both retreat into our own thoughts. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I manage, pressing my other hand to my heart.

  Our hands slowly break apart. It doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as it should. “Fine. Good,” Kettle concedes. “We’ll rest here for another couple of hours, and then make a break for it just before sunrise.”

  My heart stammers a little at this agreement. It pushes unwanted blood to my brain, which still aches. I tell myself Frankie will be okay. She’s not with him, and that’s a good thing.

  I wonder if he’ll even tell her that I’m missing. And then I wonder if I’m convincing myself of things just so I can keep my eyes forward, keep moving forward. I start tapping the bricks in front with my feet in agitation. Tap, tap, tap, like the tick of a clock counting down to nothing.

  I need to find her.

  ***

  The sun lashes the edge of the city, spreading warmth and shadows over our contained bodies. I haven’t slept and my arms are stiff from being crossed over my chest for two hours. Kettle slept for minutes at a time, quickly startling awake at every pigeon coo or car horn. It’s like he’s constantly on alert, waiting for the next threat.

  I unfold myself like a rusted card table, clicking and clacking.

  We haven’t spoken since we made the deal. In fact, his eyes have barely looked my way since then.

  The sun slants over him scrunched in the corner, his knees up but spread apart, his cap pulled over his brow. As he lifts his head and squints into the light, I see his face is smooth and unblemished, and his arms and legs are at odds with it, covered in scratches, cuts, and scars. I want to ask him how… why…? But if I do, he may ask me the same questions and I don’t know how to answer those.

  “Take a Polaroid, it’ll last longer,” he sneers beneath the shadow of his once-white baseball cap. He eases from the wall and rolls his shoulders, crackling like sappy leaves in a fire.

  I startle and heat floods my cheeks. “Sorry,” I mumble, timidly putting my hand to my own bruised face. How can I hide a secret that lies on my skin? “You know what a Polaroid is?”

  He stands, swinging his head past the chimneys, smiling when his eyes reach the horizon. “You think just because I’m not rich that I don’t know what a Polaroid is? Geez. I’m poor. Not stupid.”

  I wonder if you can even see the blush underneath the purple of my bruises or if it just makes them darker. I stand with him and stretch my arms. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He shrugs. “I know.” He stretches his toned arms and swings his head downward to the wakening streets. “Do you think you can climb back down?” he asks, a tiny hint of concern in his rich, melted-chocolate voice.

  I crack my neck, and he flinches at the pebbly sound. “Of course, why wouldn’t I?”

  “No offence, but you look like someone took a baseball bat to your face and now that the thrill has worn off, you may be feeling a little less… brave,” he says, his hands stapled to his sides, fingers tapping, tapping, tapping.

  “I’m fine,” I say unconvincingly. My stomach gurgles and blends with the morning tweets of birds and the sound of a garbage truck ambling down the street. “Just a bit hungry.”

  We climb down the fire escape, more slowly now, hiding when the inhabitants stir in their beds. He’s right, though I wouldn’t tell him so. I feel woozy as I descend, the ground tilting and seeming out of focus every time I look down. Every now and then, he throws careful glances in my direction, an arm shooting out to stabilize me when I get to the last platform and sway a little. I step back from his touch.

  We land on the ground just as day truly breaks, although it’s still dark in the alley, and I look to both ends, wondering what to do next. Suddenly, he grabs me by both shoulders. I step backward and hit the wall. I think I should scream, but I’m silent. It’s a habit ingrained and scratched against my voice box—don’t scream.

  He’s just staring at me, tilting his head from side to side, his grip firm but not too tight. “What are you doing?” I stammer.

  “Your face,” he says, suddenly releasing me as he registers my fear. “If you’re going to come with me, we need to disguise you better. Will you stay here for a few minutes?”

  My lips feel dry. I am toasted, nothing left but charcoal. “How do I know you’ll come back?”

  He straightens, his brows lowered. I’ve offended him. “I made a deal,” he states, then he points a finger at me like I’m a naughty child and says, “Wait here.”

  I have no way to fight him on this, so I let him go. He jogs down the alley and disappears around the corner.

  Standing alone in this cold, damp alley, I start to wonder if my brain has been permanently injured. Because I should be worried about this boy. I shouldn’t be going anywhere with him. But I can’t seem to stop myself. My curiosity, my need to see if there is a life outside of the brownstone walls, is so strong that it overrides every logical thought. The thought slips from my unconscious to my conscious subtly but strongly. I have to try.

  Twenty minutes later, Kettle returns with a scarf and a pair of sunglasses with lenses the size of saucers in his clenched fists. “Here,” he pants, thrusting them at me. He helps me tie my unruly hair down with the scarf and I put the glasses on.

  I put my arms out in front of me and wave them around. “I can barely see,” I say, giggling when he jumps away from my swiping hands.

  “Whoa. Watch it,” he says, bending away. I catch the slight amusement in his tone. He offers his elbow, and I threa
d my arm through.

  “This feels strange,” I say, still batting at the air.

  He laughs short and slicing. “No kidding.”

  I meant wearing sunglasses when the light is still dim. I have a feeling he meant something else.

  35. BLINDED

  KETTLE

  Kin’s disapproving voice is in my head, so real it’s like he’s standing next to me, shaking my shoulder. “What are you doing, man? Are you nuts?”

  “I know what I’m doing, I think.” I’m torn, a hair splitting. “She looks like she needs help, and I think I could use hers.”

  “What makes you think she needs your help? You’re nothing but street trash to someone like her. Besides, you can’t save everyone.”

  “You didn’t see her face.” The built-up tower of sadness in her eyes.

  I lead Nora into the street. Lights flicker off as the sun starts to warm the edges of the buildings. But it’s still a colder morning and puffs of steam run from every mouth of the hardworking people who are up at this time. She keeps up with me though I can hear her wheezing and groaning in pain.

  I wish I didn’t feel bad for her, but I do.

  People don’t look up from their work yet but if she keeps swinging her head around so anxiously, someone will. “Keep your head down…” I say, pulling my cap just over my eyes. She tips her chin to her chest for a moment, but then she’s looking up again.

  “Nora,” I whisper through my teeth. “Get a grip.”

  She huffs out a breath and shakes her head, pulling her coat across her middle with one hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just… there’s so much to see.”

  I pause and try to understand what she’s talking about. People are waking, opening up, whistling, humming or yelling at their wives. Garbage cans glint with early morning light. Leaves twirl between them and the rhythmic crunch of the first wave of commuters’ rumbles across the pavement.

  I shrug and pull her into the crowd of people heading toward the station. Strange girl. It’s like she’s rarely been outside before.