Steal to survive.
I understood that, but living with the Jepsons had given me new insight on how the other half lived.
“I’m fine.” I turned away from the jewelry and moved deeper into her space.
She moved over to the opposite corner and grabbed a box of matches to light yet another candle. She tossed her now empty backpack down, and it landed with a thump on an old, flattened, piss-stained mattress. Stuffing bulged out a large rip down one side, and a few springs popped out of one corner, bent and broken.
It was her bedroom.
Ratted blankets were folded on a chair next to the mattress, and a black T-shirt looked to be drying from a rusty nail sticking out of the wall behind it. Clothes and bags littered the floor around her bed, but the rest I wasn’t able to make out.
“Holy shit. You really live here,” I whispered in shock.
She had someone managed to make the rundown place a semi-decent home. It wasn’t clean, and it smelled like hell, but it was warmer than outside and kept the rain, which I could hear slowly beginning against the tin roof, from getting inside.
“No,” she said. “I was just telling you that to impress you.”
She was all sarcasm wrapped in a monotone voice.
“Of course, I live here. Again, if you have a problem with that, you can get the fuck out.”
“Easy. I was just saying … it’s nice.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she mumbled under her breath. “Sit down.”
She kicked the back of an old chair, making it slide across the room toward me.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
Motioning to the chair, she repeated herself. “Sit. Down.”
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”
The chair was disgusting, and even though I needed a good shower, I wasn’t about to make it worse by adding whatever was smeared all over the seat of the chair to the back of my jeans.
She bent over another bag and dug through it. With her hands full, she stood and started my way.
“Oh, my God. You’re such a baby.” She chuckled. “I have Band-Aids.” She held up a box and shook her head in aggravation.
When I stared in confusion, she rolled her eyes and huffed. “For your arm? You hurt yourself coming in, didn’t you?”
At the mention of it, I lifted my arm and saw my blood had drenched the arm of my hoodie.
“I mean, if you want your arm to get infected and fall off, then suit yourself.”
She turned to drop the first-aid stuff back into her bag, but I stopped her.
“Okay,” I said, unzipping my jacket and peeling the bloody material from my arm.
I hissed in pain when the long-sleeved shirt I was wearing beneath the hoodie tugged at my wound.
She walked over to me, and her fingers moved over my shirt before she tugged open the hole there. Her fingers probed inside and onto my cut, and I flinched, hissing.
“Watch it,” I snapped.
She snickered. “Such a baby. Take off your shirt.”
“What? Why?”
“Will you stop being a fucking girl and take off your shirt? The light isn’t bright enough, and I can’t see anything through the hole in your sleeve.”
I grumbled, but I pulled my shirt over my head and off my body. The cold air of the room hit my naked skin like a sledgehammer, making me start to shiver.
The rustle of paper sounded as she opened bandages and soaked a clean rag in alcohol.
That would burn for sure.
“Where did you get all this stuff?” I asked.
“I’m a big collector.” She grinned at me. “Anything I might need, I take.”
“So you need all that jewelry over there?” I asked sarcastically.
“Nope, but I need the money I’ll get when I pawn it. A girl’s gotta eat.”
She moved close to me—the closest she’d gotten yet—and I was able to make her facial features for the first time. I had barely gotten a good look at her before, and all I could really see was covered in dirt and ripped clothes. But looking at her in the candlelight up close, she looked like she was about twelve.
Still, something about her was familiar.
“How old are you?” I asked.
She paused just before placing the alcohol soaked rag onto my cut.
“Why does it matter?”
I chuckled, suddenly feeling exhausted from our night.
“Now who’s being difficult?”
“I’m not being difficult. I’m just trying to figure out why you care how old I am.”
I yawned, feeling as though I hadn’t slept in days. “I don’t care. I’m curious. There’s a big difference.”
“I’m sixteen,” she answered.
“Really?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes, really.” She moved closer and wiped at the blood on my arm without touching the cut. “How old did you think I was?”
I shrugged, preferring the antiseptic smell of the alcohol over the rotting mildewed smell of her home. “I don’t know … twelve maybe.”
“Twelve?” She hissed in outrage before pressing the rag on my cut and making me yell out.
“Shit! That hurts!”
The sting settled into my arm as the alcohol cleaned up the dirt and blood from my arm.
“I don’t look fucking twelve.”
She was calmer as she peeled the soaked rag from my arm and blew at my cut.
“What the fuck?” I growled at her as the sting subsided.
“It needs to be cleaned so it doesn’t get infected.”
“The hell it does. You did that shit on purpose.”
“Prove it.” She snickered.
“Are you done?” I asked between my teeth, trying my hardest not to get annoyed with her.
She was doing me a favor, after all. She was right. The cut looked pretty bad, and the last thing I needed was for it to get infected.
No healthcare and all that.
“Done,” she said, covering my cut with several Band-Aids.
She tossed my shirt back at me, and I pulled it over my head.
“I’d better get going.”
“You can stay here,” she said quickly.
She avoided looking in my direction by picking up the wrappers from the bandages.
“What?”
“I mean, you don’t exactly look like you have a place to go. Do you even have a home?”
No.
I didn’t.
Not anymore.
But I wasn’t about to say that out loud.
She was a stranger, and honestly, she seemed a bit off her rocker, but she seemed to be doing the best she could. She was obviously in the same position as I was, and for some reason, that made her presence a bit comforting.
“It was just an offer. If you have some place better to go, then, by all means, leave.”
Despite her tone, which was all cold and annoyed, it was obvious she wanted me to stay.
She was alone too, and even though the night had been insane, I think she enjoyed having someone around.
I didn’t blame her.
It could get lonely.
“If I stay, where will I sleep? You don’t expect us to sleep together on that thing, do you?” I pointed at the piss-stained mattress.
While I didn’t mind the company, the last thing on my mind was fucking some sixteen-year-old on a gross mattress in an abandoned building.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I would be able to get it up with all the bullshit swimming around in my brain.
She made a face that matched the disgust I was feeling.
“Eww. Don’t be stupid. There’s another cot, and I have extra blankets. Besides, I don’t want to catch any of your crotch crickets. There’s no telling what kind of diseases you have.”
I laughed. “Crotch crickets? Really? And I don’t have any diseases. That’s a fucked-up thing to say.”
“Well, so was assuming I wanted to share a bed with you while making a disgusted face at the thought o
f it.”
I laughed again. “It’s not that. I’m just not into girls.”
“Okay, okay got it.” She looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
Realizing how my words sounded, I corrected her. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
“Hey, I’m not one to judge.” She held her hands up. “You can’t help who you love. I just thought since you were watching the chick through the window … but I guess it was the dude,” she continued.
“No. Fuck that asshole. That’s really not what I meant,” I repeated through my teeth.
She smirked. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
She moved around the room, pulling out another mattress and a stack of blankets. I watched from the side as she threw together a pretty comfortable looking spot for me far from her bed.
“I have water bottles and a place where you can brush your teeth over there. Unopened toothbrushes in the box beside the bucket. Are you sure you’re not hungry?”
For such a young girl, and considering her situation, she was extremely accommodating.
I smiled at her sarcastic way of helping me out.
“Nope. I’m fine.”
And I was.
Thanks to her breaking and entering earlier in the night, I was still pretty satisfied from the sandwiches and chips.
I brushed my teeth, and after days of not brushing my teeth with water, it was heaven. Once I had cleaned up a bit and was feeling better than I had in days, I fell back on the rundown mattress, which was surprisingly comfortable and didn’t smell, and stared up at the tin ceiling.
“Hey,” I said into the darkness.
“What?”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She fell silent for a long while, making me think she had fallen asleep.
“Victoria, but everyone calls me Vick.”
I knew I had to at least tell her my name, even if she didn’t ask. But at that moment, I was considering giving myself a new name. The problem was, no name seemed to fit all the bullshit I had gone through in my life.
I was me.
I was altered.
And I had learned many things along the ride I called life.
And while I could slowly feel myself become hollow and dark, I knew a spark of the boy I used to be still lingered deep inside. I couldn’t disrespect him that way.
“My name’s Sebastian,” I said, deciding I was okay with keeping my first name.
“I know,” she muttered. “I remember you.”
And then I remembered why she looked so familiar.
We had been housed together for a few weeks once, but she was taken away when her caseworker learned the man we were living with had been molesting her. Deloris pulled me out a day later, and I never saw the girl again.
I wanted to tell her I remembered her, too, but something told me she didn’t want to think about the past or that asshole’s hands all over her.
Instead, I rolled over on the strange mattress and slept for the first time in two days.
SEVENTEEN
VICK AND I STUCK TOGETHER from that night on, making our dilapidated building into a semi-decent home with the things we took from houses that wouldn’t be missed.
I insisted we only take what we needed. Warm blankets when the weather turned colder. Clothes and shoes in our size. Unopened toiletries and food. And on occasion, when we were having an exceptionally hard week, we would take something we could pawn.
Hard weeks weren’t happening very often anymore, though, since I had made friends with a local drug dealer named Anthony and had become his errand boy.
Selling drugs was something I had experience with, but back when I had done it, I was messing with small amounts. The packages Anthony sent me with were huge, and I knew it would land me quite a few years in prison if I were to get caught.
Luckily for me, I knew my way around the streets, and what I didn’t know, I learned fast. Getting caught wasn’t something bound to happen to me anytime soon, but I knew if it ever did, I would be quick to turn in Anthony to get the charges dismissed.
It wasn’t anything personal, but it was business. The one thing I did know was the police around town would give anything to catch the big dog, and Anthony was the biggest of the dogs.
When I wasn’t running the streets with Vick or selling drugs for Anthony, who owned half of New York City, I was back at our place, making it feel like a home as much as I could.
With blankets hanging from ropes, we made ourselves two separate spaces and even managed to pull an old couch we found outside a nice brownstone back to our place. With the exception of electricity or running water, the place was home. And I found myself staying indoors with Vick more and more and visiting Jane’s place less and less. Actually, the more I sat on the situation, the angrier I became about it.
They were using me—trying to get pregnant—trying to steal my little soldiers like I was a fucking sperm bank or something.
Bullshit.
So after a few weeks, I was done.
I changed a lot in that time, becoming darker and colder to everything and everyone around me, with the exception of Vick. It felt amazing not to feel much of anything anymore.
By the time we ended the summer and fall was moving in, we were celebrating my eighteenth birthday. After Jane and the past year of my life, I was completely shut off emotionally.
The streets knew me, and I knew the streets, and I was earning a bit of a name for myself given that I wasn’t taking shit from anyone. Even Anthony, the drug lord who had murder under his belt, understood I wasn’t one to fuck with.
I was just a shell surviving with revenge simmering in my gut for over a year. I couldn’t let go of the fact someone had used me. Jane had taken any emotion I had once felt and shoved it back in my face without a care for me—wrecking me and my trust for the rest of my life.
Revenge.
It was why I convinced Vick that the Jepson’s home should be our next hit. They had nothing I needed or wanted, other than the things I’d left behind, but just the idea of taking from them the way they had taken from me was enough to bring a grin to my face.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Vick asked as she took the back stairs one at a time.
“Yep,” I said with no doubts. “There should be a key under the mat.”
If the key was still there, then they were total dumbasses. They knew I knew the key was there. They also knew I was a delinquent—a delinquent they had wronged. One who would be coming back for revenge once the hurt ebbed and anger took its place again.
Vick bent over, pulled up the black mat, and snatched the silver key that opened the back door.
“I’ll be damned.” She giggled. “It’s like they want to have their shit stolen.”
She pushed the key into the door and unlocked it. A smirk tugged on the side of my mouth when she turned the knob, and the door popped open. I went in first, unarming the alarm with the same code the dumbasses didn’t think to change. Once it was off, Vick followed me inside and closed the door.
“Is there anything in particular you want from these assholes?”
She knew the rage I housed inside me. I’d told her the complete story one night while we lay in bed in the pitch black and listened to a winter storm blow outside our tin covered home.
“Take anything and everything you can. Jewelry. Money. Anything that might hurt them.”
“And what about you? What are you taking?”
I chuckled, enjoying the sting of the cold air on my cheeks. “I’m getting my shit if it’s still here, and then I’m filling my bag with anything and everything I can.”
And I meant it.
I didn’t matter what it was. I just didn’t want them to have it. They could fuck with me so easily—use me and toss me away like I was nothing.
They had a surprise coming.
I took the stairs straight to my old room and pushed the door open, ready to see if they had thrown my things away.
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They hadn’t.
They’d stripped the room completely of me, but in the corner, a box full of my things sat, ready to be taken to Goodwill. I knew that since someone had scrawled the word donate along the side.
Snatching up the box, I sat on the bed and pulled back a piece of the cardboard. There on top was a picture I’d secretly kept of Deloris and a few of the kids from the group home.
My eyes itched with tears I refused to shed.
Life had tilted on its axis, leaving me to grab onto anything to keep from floating away, but looking down at the picture of the only person in the world who had ever loved me, I knew one thing.
I had the one thing I’d spent my entire life looking for, and I didn’t even realize it until it was gone.
A family.
Love.
Deloris.
I missed Deloris, and as I smoothed my finger over the aging picture, I even found myself missing a few of the kids from the home. But I couldn’t let it rock me. I had to stay the course. I had to stay focused with my mind on the matters at hand.
Matters like food, shelter, and warmth since winter was on its way back to town and about to take its toll on New York. Matters like staying alive and keeping Vick’s shit together.
She was a wild one, no doubt about that, and obviously had a problem taking things that didn’t belong to her. I did the same, but it was different. Vick stole wallets and cash; Vick stole jewelry when we didn’t need to pawn. Hell, she would have stolen candy from a baby if I had let her, but after some time together, I helped her control her klepto ways.
Until today.
I’d given her free reign over the Jepson’s house, hoping she would take anything that might leave a lasting mark on their lives.
“What the fuck are you doing, Sebastian?” Vick asked from the door, her arms full of expensive goods—things I’d used when I lived in their house. Things I knew would piss Darrell off when he realized they were gone.
Good.
“Getting my things. You ready? Or you want to take more?”
She laughed, obviously enjoying herself.
“Fuck it. Let’s take more.”
We left the Jepson’s house with two backpacks full, a box full, and our pockets full. And when we left Sal’s pawn shop later that afternoon, we had enough money to actually go to a restaurant and sit down for a nice meal.
Little Black Box Set Page 55