The Lost Kids: A Young Adult Dystopian Romance

by J. L. Smith

  I thought I might cry as I remembered these things, so instead I thought of Nita and let my blood boil at the memory of her. I knew exactly where we were going to find the actors. I knew exactly how long it would take to pay a visit to my aunt.

  “I was thinking,” I found myself saying some time after Stef stopped singing, “we’re going to be really close to where I used to live if we stop where we planned tonight. I’d like to see my aunt.”

  Neal and Saffron were in the back of the truck out of earshot, but everyone else simply stared at me, the silence damning.

  It was Stef who spoke first. “Why?” she said softly, her clear blue eyes betraying concern.

  “I just need to see her one last time,” I responded, becoming surer as I spoke. “Even if it’s in disguise,” I paused, thinking, “which I suppose it’d have to be.”

  “Out of the question,” Rayder replied, his voice almost as harsh as the look on his face. “She could recognize you.”

  “I’m not asking your permission,” I countered, meeting his gaze with what I hoped was enough defiance to really challenge him. I flicked a piece of my orange hair out of my eyes for good measure.

  He was silent for long enough to make me nervous, before replying, “It could compromise the mission.”

  “Is that all you ever think about?” I cried in frustration, even while realizing that I was probably overreacting. But, now that I had the idea in my head, I knew I had to do it.

  “It’s really risky,” Stef said quietly, shaking her head sadly.

  “Wouldn’t you want to see Daddy one last time?” Susie addressed her sister, just as quietly. “Haven’t you dreamed about the look on our step monster’s face if we did?”

  Stef did not respond immediately, but when she did, she looked at Rayder, “Yeah, I guess we all have our unfinished business, don’t we?”

  Everyone fell silent then and I waited, knowing that Rayder was thinking, hating that it was him who got to make the decision for me. It seemed there was always someone making decisions for me. Just as I was wondering about stealing the pickup truck that night – which I could admit, even then, was not one of my brighter ideas – Rayder cleared his throat, catching my eyes in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said, his expression resigned, a little annoyed.

  I had a moment of feeling guilty, but brushed it aside and instead nodded at him, “Thanks.”

  “But it goes how I say it goes,” he said, tapping his fingers in agitation on the steering wheel.

  “And how is that?” I asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. Did he always have to be such an alpha male? We all knew he was in charge.

  “I do all the talking.”

  “No,” I interrupted, but he held his hand up for my silence, which I gave him, but not without a sigh.

  “You decide what I say. But, I’m doing the talking.”

  It made sense. Even in my foul mood, sullied by thoughts of Nita, I could see the truth of that. My face broke into a smile, as my mind raced, “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  It was the first time I had ever really wanted to hurt someone. Of course, I wanted Balen to get what was owed to him, but, with Nita, it was visceral. I could imagine slapping the smug look off her face; I could ponder without the slightest shudder what it would feel like to scrape my nails down her long, thin arms. Revenge hummed in my veins and I realized I was over nothing: not her betrayal, not her treatment of me, not the way I was forced to haunt the peripheries of my own house, tiptoeing around her moods and her men. The weeks had not healed me. I had been ignoring my feelings, but they were there, simmering, hot and dark, and I was ready to unleash them.

  Rayder must have seen something of this on my face, as he pulled me aside after our evening meal to discuss exactly how we would handle the night ahead. We had made camp, as usual, except this time we were close to my home. We had eaten and talked and done our chores, but all along I was far away, contemplating Nita.

  “How long will it take us to get there?” Rayder asked, his face pulled into a frown, which I interpreted as annoyance that we had to go anywhere at all.

  “I think between half an hour to an hour,” I replied, a slow smile creeping onto my face.

  Rayder studied me a while, before saying, “You want to hurt her.” I simply nodded at his statement. “Would you be prepared to do it yourself? Slit her throat or pull the trigger? It doesn’t matter either way to me.”

  My head jerked back with his bloody words and I merely stared at him, trying to understand him, but more, trying to understand myself. Could I actually murder Nita? I repeated the word over and over in my head, until it lost all meaning, becoming nothing more than another powerless word, like bird or rock. Shaking my head, I acknowledged the truth: I could no more kill Nita than I could my own father or mother. Despite everything, she was flesh and blood.

  I sighed in something like disappointment at what a child I still was, but also in relief. Rayder knew I had never intended to kill my aunt. But, still, I had played with the idea, even if only at the edges of my mind.

  “You know the answer to that,” I said, looking at my feet.

  “Yeah,” he replied, “at least, I hoped I did.”

  I looked back at him and watched some unknown emotion flit across his face. Was it relief? Did he mean to protect me from the big bad world? He was impossible to read and in the same second, his face was wiped smooth, handsome and hard once more.

  “So, if you don’t want to kill her, what exactly do you want to do?”

  “Scare the hell out of her,” I replied without thinking.

  Smiling, Rayder said, “Now, that I can do.”

  We arrived at my childhood home a little after midnight, just in time to see one of Nita’s gentlemen depart, the smile of the cat who got the cream on his face. I snorted in derision – apparently some things never changed. And then I really looked at it: my home for almost the whole of my life. It was just as I had left it. The paint still peeled from the white wooden slats which made up the walls of the house. The porch was still slightly lopsided, the left half sinking just a little lower into the red sand beneath. The shutters on the right window were still broken. The gray roof was still missing close on half its slates. To anyone else, it would look pathetic, a derelict house in the middle of nowhere. To me, it was simply home and my heart panged at the loss. I supposed that was the thing about childhood spaces – they would always haunt you, for better or worse.

  Rayder had parked our vehicle a good half mile away and so the darkness cloaked us, protecting us from the wrong eyes. We wore all black, hoods pulled low over our heads, but for our masks: they were white with gaping holes where our eyes and mouths peered out from the shadows. I had smeared kohl around my eyes with a heavy hand, darkening them just in case Nita should think she recognized their blue. If I looked half as frightening as Rayder did, Nita was in for the scare of her life and the thought made me smile, even while my heart pounded with anticipation and not a little fear.

  Rayder knew what I wanted him to do. Trusting him to get my message across, I followed his lead as he walked right up to the front door, after Nita’s night-time friend had driven off on his motorcycle. Without hesitation, Rayder pushed the door open and the light from within spilled out into the darkness of the night around us. I saw Nita then, cutting a lonely figure at the sink of our tiny kitchen, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of something red, I assumed wine, in the other. The kitchen itself, little more than a table, was offensively cluttered, the smells of old meat and burned oil catching in my nose. But it was Nita who held my attention. Her pitch-black hair hung limply about her shoulders, which were hunched over dejectedly, making her seem too tired to be sharing her body at night. She looked smaller somehow and probably a little drunk, as it took her longer than it should have to realize that she was no longer alone.

  She turned and her scream pierced the silence o
f that soulless space, a pointless sound which only served to remind me of how isolated we really had been huddled under that roof together. There would be no one to rescue her from us. Her violet eyes cried of her terror, her pupils swinging wildly between Rayder and me, as she dropped her glass of wine. There was a new desperation about her, something restless and vicious and willing to do anything to get out on top. In an instant, I remembered the beatings. I saw the belts and buckles, the bruises which ringed my arms, the slaps which lingered on my cheekbones. I remembered the nights I had cried myself to sleep, the long, lonely days when I had wished for my parents, wanted to blame them, even, for dying on me. Yet, looking at my aunt, I could not find the old fear, my constant companion for so many years. Instead, I saw an aging woman, afraid and angry and dreadfully unhappy. I could almost feel sorry for her.

  “Hello Nita,” Rayder said quietly, too calmly, as her scream was eaten by the silence of the night. “We’ve come a long way to see you.”

  “Who,” her voice shook, but she held her chin up defiantly, “who are you?”

  “Your worst nightmare,” Rayder responded, slowly pulling an oversized blade from his jacket pocket and opening it up to scrape the tip against his black gloves.

  Nita’s eyes fixed on his knife, her cigarette still held midway to her mouth, the smoke curling up lazily, idly touching her face and hair. She seemed unable to utter a single coherent sound, as if her drunken brain were still catching up with the danger of her situation. “Who? Why? Where?” she slurred, equal parts inebriated and erratic.

  “Balen sent us,” Rayder said, the powerful lord’s name hanging in the air with obvious menace. “The girl you sold – she got away.”

  “I figured,” Nita said hurriedly, her voice taking on a plaintive tone. “When the money didn’t come…” Her sentence trailed off and she took a nervous drag of her cigarette. When Rayder did not speak, she looked at me in agitation, adding, “I didn’t know. I don’t know where she...”

  “We have reason to believe,” Rayder interrupted, his voice ringing with authority, “that you orchestrated her escape.”

  “Me?” Nita spluttered, actually coughing on the smoke she was busy inhaling. “I was the one who sold her! I needed that money.”

  I could feel my face heating up underneath my mask and the urge to reveal myself to her was almost overwhelming. Rayder turned slightly to me and I saw it for the warning it was. I needed to play the part.

  “That’s not what we heard,” Rayder replied flatly.

  “From who?” Nita said, her hands starting to shake with fear and outrage. “I hated her. She was just like her whore of a mother!”

  “Again,” Rayder interrupted, his voice very low, “that’s not what we heard.”

  “Why would I sell my own niece and then get her rescued again?” Nita cried desperately.

  Rather than answer her, Rayder continued as if she had not spoken at all, “Balen is taking a particular interest in disposing of those who oppose him in any way.”

  Nita’s face visibly whitened and her hands trembled as she dropped her cigarette absently to the kitchen floor, “I swear, I didn’t do anything! Why would I do that? All I wanted was my money and the girl out of my life.”

  “My orders were clear,” Rayder paused, seeming to inspect the tip of his blade. “To kill you.”

  “You can’t!” Nita said, tears just beneath the surface of her voice and at the corners of her eyes.

  “I can,” Rayder replied, as if they were discussing the weather. “It’s what I do.”

  “But,” Nita wailed, wrenching at tufts of her hair, “I didn’t do anything! I swear. She was nothing but a lazy, ungrateful bitch and I hated her. I swear to all the gods, I hated her with…”

  She was rambling and, despite her obvious distress, I could see her brain starting to work again, trying to figure out how to get out of her predicament. I knew my aunt, after all. She was like a desert cockroach – difficult to squash. I saw the exact moment she decided upon her course of action.

  “I’m a business woman, after all,” she continued, a little more calmly. “I don’t have time to be sentimental. It’s money I’m after and I get a lot of it lying on my back. My customers come back because I’m good at it. Perhaps,” she smiled at Rayder, still hesitant, “I could show you a good time and we could forget all about this misunderstanding.”

  Rayder was quiet for only an instant and then he started to laugh, the sound causing my aunt’s shoulders to hunch and her face to flare with the hot shame of embarrassment. “Lady,” he said, “you’re not my type.”

  “But, please, I’m better than I look,” she said, and I almost wanted to turn away, seeing her groveling for her life with the only tool at her disposal.

  Rayder took a moment to look her up and down, before declaring, “I doubt it. Your house, on the other hand, might just be. We’ll take it,” he said with decision, “in exchange for your life.”

  “My, my” Nita stuttered, “this house?”

  “Yeah,” Rayder replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “We’ll be needing it. You have exactly five minutes to vacate and never return.”

  “What? I don’t understand.” Nita’s face was pale again. “You want me to leave? Where must I go? How?”

  “Not my problem,” Rayder said. Just as she was about to argue again, he added, “Nita, don’t make me change my mind.” He flicked his knife suddenly, the action sending the blade propeling through the air. It struck the sink beside her, the tip digging into the wood and causing the handle to wobble in obvious threat. “There’s more where that came from,” he added nonchalantly, pulling out another blade. “The next one’s in your neck.”

  Nita’s face drained of all remaining color, becoming a lifeless gray thing and she whispered, her voice shaking, “Please don’t kill me. I’m going. I promise, I’ll go. Please just leave me alone. Please.”

  Rayder did not respond and, after a moment’s hesitation, she rushed to her bedroom to collect the few possessions that she would take with her. Those five minutes seemed an eternity as we waited, my eyes shifting sadly around my old home. I did not dare go into my own bedroom yet, but I could feel the quiet years spent in there calling out to me, the loneliness washing over me again. I thought I would feel triumphant, scaring Nita off, getting her out of my parents’ home, but I just felt sad: for me, for her, for what could have been, had she even cared the smallest bit for me.

  As she emerged from her bedroom, a small bag across her shoulders, the familiar clink of liquor unmistakable, I lowered my eyes, not even able to look at her anymore. I could have loved her with so little effort on her part. The odd touch or smile and she could have won me over. As she left on a string of whispered promises, tripping over her feet in her haste to get away from Rayder, his knife and his terrifying silence, I let out the breath I did not realize I was holding.

  I would give Nita the last thing she wanted and the only thing that would set me free of her.

  “I forgive you,” I whispered to her retreating figure in the dark night. “Even if I have to say it every day, I forgive you.”

  I stopped speaking, unable to get anything else past the lump in my throat. I refused to cry in front of Rayder, not after what he had been through with his own family. Fate had let me off lightly by comparison.

  “You okay?” he said, hovering awkwardly near me.

  Breathing deeply, I said, my voice a bit shaky, “Are any of us okay?”

  “Probably not,” he acknowledged. “You want to go?”

  “Can we stay a while?” I asked, turning to look up at him.

  “Sure,” he said softly.

  “Can I take off this stupid mask?” I asked, laughing a little.

  He laughed, “Yeah. She’s not coming back.”

  “No,” I said, my laughter dying. “I wonder where she’ll go.”

  “Do you care?” Rayder asked, before pulling off h
is hood and mask.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said, taking off my own paraphernalia. “Would it be pathetic if I said yes.”

  “Nah,” he said kindly, a slight smile playing on his lips. “That would sound about right.”

  “Really?” I tilted my head to one side. “How so?”

  “Just a theory I have about how hardcore you are.” The smile danced across his face now.

  “Oh yeah,” I started to smile with him, “and how does your theory go?”

  His grin turned mischievous and my breath hitched, “Do you really want to know?”

  “Probably not!” Before I could begin to blush, I said hurriedly, “There’s a cool view out back. The Angora goats are probably gone by now, but there’s the whole sky to look at.”

  I was right about the goats. My aunt had sold them, likely the very day she sold me. She was never an animal person. It made me feel sad, seeing the empty enclosure at the back of our yard. Instead of looking at the livestock, Rayder and I lay on our backs in the corral, staring up at the sky.

  “You know much about them?” Rayder asked, indicating the stars.

  “No. You?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “a bit.” Tentatively, he lifted my hand, moving it with his own so that we traced the constellations, bright and blinking against the thick, dark blanket of night. There was not one sound to disturb us: the wind was still, the world asleep. “My dad loved the stars,” he said quietly. “Orion,” he hovered over a patch of light, “the hunter. See his belt, there,” he stilled my hand, before moving on, “his sword and his shield.” I nodded beside him, as he gently pushed my hand, pressing it into the palm of his own. “Gemini,” he continued our journey across the sky, “Taurus.”