Quinnzelle tip-toed around her parents' trailer. She could hear his sniffles from her bedroom window and wasn't surprised to find Jerome on the ground beside his trailer's front steps. The eight-year-old looked so pitiful in the light cast on him from the hanging bulbs above them. From inside the house, Nat King Cole began to croon to us. His mother only had used the old record player when she has "visitors" which always sent Jerome into a frenzy. He wouldn't be sad for long. He'd be angry soon. That's shy Quinn didn't approach him right away. She walked past him, to the snake's cage, and stuck a finger inside. Sheeba flicked her tongue out over the child's finger and then lost interest, slithering away.
"Two in a row tonight," Jerome finally spoke to her, letting her know it was safe to approach. "Two. In a. Row. One walked out, and the other walked in. I'll be out here all night at this pace. That dirty, rotten bitch."
Quinn lowered herself down onto the ground a few feet ahead of him, looking up at the door to his left. The lot wasn't nearly as lively as normal. Everyone was in the tent for the show. Except for Jerome, who wasn't interested in being a performer, and Quinn, who wasn't quite nimble enough to be a performer, and Lyla, who began drinking in the early morning and was far too inebriated to perform by the time night came.
"Do you wanna take a walk? Or come over to my trailer? Ma bought puddin' cups for me this morning. I know how much you like puddin'—"
"I don't want any pudding."
"You're jokin'. You always want puddin', Valeska."
She didn't expect him to lunge, but he did, and if anyone were around they probably would have pried him off, but they weren't. So Quinn ended up on her back, with Jerome seated on her stomach with both hands pressed to her throat.
"I don't want any damn pudding, Quinn. Now, are you gonna ask me again?" His voice was as wild as his eyes, but he relaxed his hands so the girl could answer.
"No. Christ, no. Just get off! Holy hell!" Quinn reached up and pushed Jerome off onto the ground, before giving a clumsy roll backwards, flipping her legs over her head and coming to rest right-side-up, seated on her knees. "Keep your lid on. I'm not some damn crow whose head you just get to rip off all willy nilly!"
Jerome fell quiet. His eyes were blank as he stared at her.
"Did I hurt you?"
"Hardly."
"You mad at me?"
"Hardly."
It was her word for when she was mad at him. For when he "lost his lid" and did something crazy or mean, and she breathed deep and remind herself that she loved her friend, but didn't want to let him know he'd upset her. Maybe because she didn't want him to feel bad. Maybe because she got the feeling he would get that crazy gleam in his eye that he got when he was torturing vermin, and that would just give her the creeps.
Jerome laughed now. His weird laugh that he only did when he was angry or upset. The laugh that made his mouth stretch all the way from one ear to the other, with two divots in his cheeks, like parenthesis at each end.
"Hardly Harley Quinnzelle, a harlequin like no one else." He sang the words. He literally sang them. Two or three times, laughing between each line, only stopping when the door to his mother's trailer swung open. Jerome didn't stop laughing as she looked up at the man in his dress pants, with a jacket slung over his arm. He didn't stop laughing as he picked up a rock Quinn was sure he had set beside the stairs on purpose. He didn't even stop laughing as he lunged at the man, knocking him off of the steps and swinging the rock down on the man's skull.
Quinn was horrified and mesmerized. She shouldn't be watching this. She shouldn't be watching Jerome bludgeon a man with a stone. She shouldn't be so entranced by the blood splashing up against his face. She should have moved to stop him when he approached her, drawing a tiny diamond on her cheek in the man's blood and once again singing, "Hardly Harley Quinnzelle, a harlequin like no one else…"
The bus came to a sudden stop, causing the sleeping Quinn to jolt forwards, bouncing her face off of the seat in front of her. Lousy, stinkin', no good driver. She ought to bash his face off the steering wheel and see how he liked it. Quinn stood up, grabbed her backpack from the overhead compartment and started towards the front of the bus. She'd heard about what a shit-hole Gotham was, but she'd never been before. Thanks to the stories, she wasn't surprised that she was the only person getting off at this stop.
"God bless, ma'am," The driver tipped his hat as the twenty-one year old started down the bus steps.
"Hardly," Quinn scoffed over her shoulder.
The sky was gray and the air was chilly. Her thin red zip-up wasn't enough to keep the cold out. Her black jeans were ripped at both of the knees and didn't help much either. She reached up, as the bus began to pull away from the curb, and pulled the hair tie out of her hair. Her brown tresses fell down in curls over her shoulders. At least her ears would be warm.
"Excuse me, mister, but do you know where—" Quinn tried to stop a stranger passing by to look for directions. The man didn't hesitate for a second. The next person she tried had no problem using their shoulder to push her out of the way. Apparently she was on her own.
It took her nearly an hour to finally wander across the large stone structure with the words "Gotham City Police Department" hanging above several sets of doors. Her black and white backpack with its diamond pattern slung over her shoulder, Quinn took the stairs of the GCPD two at a time. Despite all of the stories she had heard, she didn't realize she was going to face the same attitudes in the police station as she did on the street.
"Sir, I just have a question—" The first man brushed her off. "Hey, lady, do you know—" A woman walked away without giving her a second glance. After four or five attempts, Quinn lost her cool. Standing in the center of the police station she looked up to the ceiling and screamed, "I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO JEROME VALESKA AND I NEED TO KNOW RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"
The entire room fell silent, looking at the crazy girl in the center of it. From the top of a short flight of stairs, a young, handsome man was the first to make a move towards her. He approached her with his hand out, but his brow furrowed.
"Um…Detective Jim Gordon, can I help you?"
Quinn knocked the hand away, glaring up at this Detective with squinting, blue eyes. "Jerome Valeska. The papers said…things, about him. I wanna know where he is. I wanna see him."
There was something in this man's face—in Jim Gordon's face—that told her the thing she hadn't let herself imagine was possible. That Jerome was dead. But there was something else there, too. There was something a lot more frightening.