Nora & Kettle (A Paper Stars Novel Book 1)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  I shake my head and swallow the large lump of bagel, coughing a bit when it gets stuck.

  She’s still squatting uncomfortably on the stones and I stand up, ushering her to sit on the bed, while I pull my chest over and sit on that.

  “You hungry?” I ask, offering her another bagel from the bottom of the bag. She nods and takes it shakily, picking small pieces from it like a bird.

  We sit in silence for a while, eating and avoiding eye contact until she says, “Am I sleeping in your brother’s bed?” she asks, her eyes wandering all over my face. She tucks her feet in, keeps them pressed neatly together.

  I nod. “He got sick. So he can’t stay here anymore.” I clasp my hands in front of me and talk to the floor. “Truth is, I don’t know where he is. After the paramedics took him away, I don’t know what happened to him.” I close my eyes, scrunch them against the dark that’s closing in, the fear. “He could be dead for all I know.” I don’t tell Nora about the lady who fainted at the platform and the reason why I pulled her from the window. She wasn’t there, and it’s not her fault. “Please don’t tell Kelpie,” I plead.

  She reaches out and pats my shoulder, real quick, and withdraws. “My…” she starts and then bites her lip. “I’m sure he’s not dead. Why don’t you go to the hospital and find out?” she asks innocently. Not understanding that I can’t. I made a false report, I’m a runaway, and I’m in the system. If they let me in the door, it would only be to arrest me.

  “Yeah maybe,” I mutter. “I can’t today, though. With Kin gone, there’s not as much money to go around. I’ve got to make up for his income. I’ve got to work today.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “You work?”

  “Last time I checked, money wasn’t falling from the sky,” I say sarcastically, then add, “just hats, stockings, and necklaces.”

  I stand and pull my work clothes from my old suitcase, casting my eyes over the large bag of dirty clothes that’s sitting like a lump at the end of the bed. I need to go to the laundromat. I sigh again. It’s a lot. I’m going to have get Krow to take on more responsibilities, starting with this. I kick the bag and put my hands in the small of my back, stretching. When I straighten, Nora is glaring at me, eyes aflame.

  She stands suddenly, our bodies too close in this small space. She’s breathing hard, her lips pursed. And I don’t know how we went from quite civilized to this so fast. “P-please,” she stutters. “It’s not a joke.”

  Her arms are jangling like ribbons in the wind and I want to reach out and still them, but I get the sense that I shouldn’t touch her, not unless I want a black eye to match hers.

  Usually this kind of thing would make me want to press for details, usually I’d be defensive, but she seems so earnest and affronted, I feel like I need to just apologize.

  “Sorry,” I say quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” But why? Why are you upset? Why were you throwing your stuff, your expensive stuff, out the window in the first place?

  She calms, ceases shaking, and I can see her mood unwinding before me, her eyes opening wider, her mouth relaxing into a neutral expression. I need to change the subject.

  She does it before I get a chance. “Where do you work?” she asks, forcing lightness into her tone. It doesn’t work that well. Her voice is layered, thick as a bank vault buried in concrete. There are secrets and truths I feel are just below the surface and then more of them, buried even deeper.

  “Down at the docks,” I reply. Reaching out to lean on the wall, I miss, my hand scraping down the bricks and making me stumble. “I, um, actually, I need to get ready now if I’m going to make it on time.”

  She’s sits back down on the bed and rests her chin in her hands. The clock ticks over for a few awkward seconds before she says, “I should come with you.” I shake my head, but she ignores me. “No really, I should. You’ve lost a worker, I can work,” she says, knotting her brow like she’s not even sure that’s true.

  Her eyes tell me I’m not going to convince her otherwise, and I figure why not? She wanted to live in my world and this is it. Besides, there’s no way she’ll make it through the gates. I won’t let her get hurt. My guess is she’ll see how brutal it is and she’ll give up and go home. Which is what I want… right?

  I cast a disapproving look her way. “You can’t work at the docks in a skirt and twin set.”

  She snorts and daintily covers her mouth, and I’m reminded that she’s not from here. She’s from the sky, and I’m a blade of grass searching for the sun that’s always getting trodden on. “You know what a twin set is?” she asks, glancing down at her chest and playing with the button on her cardigan. The way she plays with it between her fingertips teases a memory from my brain. A little girl plucking Kin’s braces like a guitar string. A button falling to the ground. We stare at each other for a moment, but if she remembers me, she doesn’t say. I laugh to myself. She’s not going to remember someone like me.

  Her lashes fall, and heat creeps into my cheeks. Thankfully, in this small light, she won’t be able to see it. “I can see into shop displays,” I say defensively. “I can read a sign.”

  She huffs. “Okay, well, if I can’t wear this,” she says, holding her skirts in her balled-up fists, “do you have something more appropriate?”

  I think for a moment. “I’ll see what I can find,” I say, ushering her out of my space. “Just let me get changed.”

  She backs up and stands there, looking a little lost. A little determined. Again, her feet seem stuck together, her legs bowing so her knees don’t touch.

  “Um. I’ll be a minute. You can go back to your bed.” I wave her away.

  Closing the curtains, I wait to hear her footsteps padding away from me. I crouch down and drag my lockbox to my feet, grabbing the key from my pocket.

  I lift up a few things, scarves, long beads, and pull out a pair of riding pants that Nora threw from her window months ago. They’re classy and kind of grown up for a teenage girl. The navy-blue fabric has a slight shine to it, but they feel thick and strong. Good enough for the docks anyway.

  I’m not good at keeping secrets. I don’t have any. I have memories I’d rather forget, songs and faces that are painful to remember. But this girl has secrets.

  I’ll be honest with her. I don’t expect her to return the favor.

  38. CAN’T HIDE

  NORA

  I twiddle my thumbs, anxiously waiting. I want to prove myself. Prove that I’m not weak. Not to him. To me. I need to prove to myself that I can survive out here, in this vast city and this small tunnel, on my own. If I can do that, I can find Frankie and there will be no reason to ever go back there. To him. To hands that hold me down and drag me under.

  Kettle approaches me with clothes bunched in his hands like a bouquet. His expression is unsure… wary. He runs one hand down the length of his simple clothes, dark pants and a white-collared shirt that’s gone beige from lack of proper cleaning. My eyes follow his hands and avoid his face, stopping at a missing button on his jacket. He’s taking his time, which is an achievement considering it’s only about ten steps to get to me, and I find myself holding my breath as I wait. When he finally reaches the bed, he shifts from foot to foot and mutters, “Here,” thrusting the clothes toward me, the other hand resting behind his back.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking the clothes from his outstretched hand as he takes a step back from me. I angle the bundle toward the light. One thick shirt similar to Kettle’s but cream-colored. It will be too big, but I’ll roll the sleeves up. The pants shine slightly in the light, a slither of metallic thread running through them. It gleams at me in dark colors of distrust and bad memories, and I take a sharp breath in.

  “Thought you might like them back,” he says quietly, his voice hinged on nervousness, his legs bending awkwardly away from me.

  “Where did you get these?” I whisper, running my hand over my mother’s riding pants, the ones she bought and never wore, saying she would take us riding in the
country one day, but it never happened. Flashes of her smile, mashed with Frankie’s, slap me in the face. And then the reason I threw them pummels me and I’m reliving the beating. I never wanted to see these again, be reminded…

  Kettle looks down and mumbles, “I got them from you. You threw away a perfectly good pair of pants.” He blusters air through his lips. “They don’t even look like they’ve been worn.”

  I lay them gently across my lap and look up at the stones arching over my head, each perfectly balanced against another. If you took one out, the whole thing would come crashing down, burying us.

  I’m gripping them rather tightly when I say, “They haven’t. But… I threw them out the window months ago. How have they come into your possession now?” My fingers tighten around the clothes.

  I hate the way I sound like my father right now. My voice sounds angry, but I’m not. I’m just sad and confused and I didn’t want to go through this. I thought, I thought, I thought that he was new, unconnected to my old life. That I wouldn’t have any reason or need to tell him.

  I’m breathing too fast. My chest constricting, my fingers and nose tingling from the lack of oxygen. It’s something more than panic. It’s secrets spilling out from holes I can’t patch fast enough. Pouring in all directions like ants fleeing the rain. I can’t breathe. One of my hands cramps and freezes into a claw like an old crone. I hold it up shakily, stare at it, and keep breathing in too quickly.

  “Nora, breathe. It’s okay.”

  He holds out his hand to me. Should I take it? I take it.

  “Breathe,” he says in his warm, poured-coffee voice.

  Breathe.

  He pulls me up, the pants fall to the floor, and I step on them as he leads me back to the other side of the room to his bed. On the floor is every item I threw from the window over the last six months. Every punch, every slap, every lash of the belt is there, strewn across an abandoned subway platform in a swirl, the colors mixing together until they become a murky, oily brown.

  KETTLE

  She stares down at the floor in horror. And I’m afraid of what I’ve done. Though I shouldn’t be. I don’t know this girl. I shouldn’t care how she feels. But each little part of her she lets slip past the mask is handing me a puzzle piece I have to fit.

  Caring about her… I think it’s carving out a bit of old hurt, yet I’m scared of the possibility that it’s just making room for new pain to nestle in there.

  She kneels down and scoops up the string of pearls, holding them out from her body like they’re something disgusting. Rolling one pearl between her fingertips, she drops it back on the pile, returning to standing, her palm coming to rest across her stomach like she’s worried it may fall out.

  I stand next to her, our hips not quite touching, staring down at her pile of belongings too, trying to decipher the mystery. My eyes go to her stomach. “Are you feeling sick?”

  She shakes her head and sadly laughs, a sound like leaves being blown across the sidewalk. “No, I’m not sick.”

  I run a hand through my hair and sigh, waiting for her to say something, to explain her reaction to a simple pair of pants.

  She breathes in deeply and seems to steady, although there’s a slight tremor to her voice when she speaks. “I… I don’t understand. Why do you have all of these things?”

  My explanation first, I guess. “I’ve been sleeping in the alley for a while now, ever since the fire. It’s a good spot. Cleaner and less looked on since that apartment building is vacant. When you threw that brooch from the window, I was there. I caught it. And I guess I kept it because, at first, I thought it meant something.” She won’t look at me, her eyes firmly tethered to the items on the floor. “After a while, I think I just held onto them because I liked having something that was just mine. A small secret. A treasure.” Her eyes flick to me so briefly, harboring a withered expression. “Why does it matter anyway? If you threw these things away, you clearly didn’t care about them or want them.” I feel defensive, mostly because she won’t look at me.

  In a cracked to almost broken in half voice, she whispers, “They’re not my things. But they do mean something to me…” She holds her hand across her chest like a sling, like she’s trying to stop herself from falling apart. “But I never wanted to see these things again.” Her head shakes slowly back and forth.

  I feel like I’m in the dark, clawing at the sides of a well and searching for a foothold. I want to know. I don’t know why, but I do. Tell me.

  I pick up a pair of stockings and hold them up to her, coming around so that we’re facing each other. “What’s so important about a pair of stockings?” I challenge, careful not to sound angry, but she’s not giving me anything.

  She flinches, her hand going to her cheek, her finger crawling into her hairline. Her amber eyes are bleeding pain, and I suddenly feel very sorry I asked. She looks down at her feet, seems to count to three, and then looks up, a truly honest expression on her face. “That time it was a book.” She presses her hand into her head a little harder until it tips to the side. “It was one of his law books, real thick, heavy.” Her fingers drum lightly over the side of her head. “Leather bound, gold writing…”

  I think I’ve stopped breathing now. The pair of stockings drops, with my hand, to my side, and the cardboard bends under the pressure of my grip. Sorry is all over my face. I expect tears to be all over hers, but they’re not.

  Between our feet is a mess of memories. Ones she probably wanted to forget… and I’ve just opened the box to her nightmares.

  She bends down and grabs the scarf. “She used to wear this in the fall. Lightweight,” she says, weighing it in her hand. “Not too hot or too cold.” She runs it through her fingers like a magician and says flatly, “That time, it was the belt.” She shudders. “I’m used to the belt.”

  Oh, Jesus.

  She drops the scarf and goes to pick up another item. I gently take her wrist to stop her. “Nora. Stop,” I say. “Shit. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  My heart aches for this girl. Aches and understands.

  We are more similar than I could have ever imagined.

  I kneel down and start packing the things away as she stands there, woodenly watching me. Once I’ve closed the box and locked it, she seems to wake from her dreamy state. “They’re my mother’s things. I guess when I threw them away, I was trying to get my own back, just a little.”

  “So every one of these things is…”

  She nods. “Everything in that box represents a time when he hurt me.”

  I kick the box behind my bed with the back of my heel. I want to burn it. Or set it on the tracks and let a train smash it into tiny pieces.

  She shifts nervously. Her eyes downcast like she’s ashamed. She shouldn’t be ashamed. “So when you said your dad was strict, you weren’t kidding, huh?” I say, snapping my mouth shut straight after. I am the biggest idiot.

  She rolls her eyes. “Um. Yeah.”

  “Your mom must be pretty angry that you threw her stuff out the window.”

  “My mother’s dead,” she emphatically replies. The mask is coming back down. Unrolling like a blind.

  “Oh.” Things are starting to make a little more sense to me.

  Blankets shift, someone yawns. The boys are stirring.

  I wonder what I should say. She looks real uncomfortable, and I don’t want to push it any further than I already have. “So are you coming to the docks with me?”

  She lifts her heels from the ground and seems to shake off the heaviness of before. “Just let me change,” she says brightly, turning on her heel and walking away from me. But I don’t miss the stumble, the tremble in her legs as she reaches Kin’s bed and pulls the curtain closed.

  I feel like I’ve just walked into a swamp. There’s a light across the water that I have to reach, but my legs are being swallowed by mud, deeper and deeper. It’s still a long way off.

  This changes everything.

  If she wants to
, I have to let her stay.

  39. WORK

  NORA

  What should I be feeling right now? One secret is pinned to the wall like a butterfly wing. The others lay beneath, pulsing with the time I’m going to run out of.

  I think of his eyes. Where I expected to see pity, I saw… solidarity, understanding. There was anger there too. A small fire I shouldn’t feed. I see it in my own reflection sometimes, and it can only destroy me. And it won’t touch him.

  Kettle doesn’t make me wear sunglasses now, and this tells me something has shifted in the way he sees me. That maybe he trusts me. I’m well disguised as a boy wearing Kettle’s shirt, some beat-up sneakers and my mother’s pants, which we roughed up so they wouldn’t look so ‘girly’ as he put it.

  We stand on the platform, and I’m reminded of the last time I stood somewhere like this with Frankie’s hand in mine. I was so ready to leave my father and that life behind. I stifle a gasp as I remember the world slanting and then turning black so fast, all my hopes dripping into a puddle that everyone would walk through. It seems like that was years ago.

  My feet slip as I step back from the memory and Kettle throws me a concerned glance, but he doesn’t say anything. He is focused, cap low, eyes narrowed.

  The train rattles the few occupants in unison like there’s a string running through all of them. The men look up briefly with their darting, suspicious eyes. They yawn and stretch their legs, flex their muscles. Thankfully, their eyes pass quickly over me.

  A hand brushes my neck, and I swing around. Kettle’s cheeks flush dark under his eyes as he tucks a loose curl back into my cap. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Your hair fell out.”