There was no-one "home" when Linda Davies, aka, Grip, decided to leave the small row of box huts and rag-tag cloth tepees in search of dinner.
Shredded door flaps ruffled in the wind, tickling the inch of skin just above her right ankle, the exposed ring where the tops of her no-nonsense hiking boots started and the hem of her jeans barely finished. Her skin prickled and her knees knocked together if she stood too still, for too long. The weather's turning, she thought. Now that summer has faded, we'll have to hunker down. Find a good place with lots of walls. The wind came in varying gusts, some unforgiving and bitterly cold, making her chapped knuckles ache, while others swooped in as swirling, billowing air pockets that lingered around her limbs, bringing the smell of harbour fish and McDonalds french fries that much closer.
Whistling along with the wind to keep herself company and to keep the darkness from taking root in her mind, Linda eyed the inside of each abandoned alcove she passed, revealing worn sleeping bags and pillow cases stuffed with old jackets and bits of dryer lint. Each temporary home was exactly the same she thought: a soft place to lay your head for the night. And yet, Linda knew from experience that the bottom of each sleeping bag was packed with the treasures each inhabitant valued most in this tiresome world.
Kitty's bag was full of torn magazine covers bearing bikini clad models or scantily dressed Cosmo celebrities, every sixteen-year-olds ideal of perfection, pilfered during her by-monthly visits to the closest walk-in clinic. Empty tubes of lip chap rattled around in the bottom of the sac when Kitty shook it out every morning, that pale pink kind that made her lips shimmer like the sidewalk under a winter sun. And eye shadow, and blushes, concealers and crushed cigarette packs: things to make her look and feel older than she really was. Things to make her feel pretty for the men she entertained.
Jersey's bed was packed to the brim with trading cards. Hockey and baseball and Pokémon: some bought with the change in his pocket at the end of the week, others traded off kids at the park, or dug out of trash cans. He spent hours sorting them, while Jinx, his brother, rhymed off irrelevant stats about goals and innings. The two of them were like a walking sports cast.
Then there were the ones that kept sentimental things like old photographs or I.D. cards with their names printed on the front. Tokens that connected them to their old lives. Little A was like that, always carrying around pictures of a family she no longer had. It took some of them longer to let go than others.
At seventeen, Linda was the official leader of the small gang of underage street kids that made a living running errands for black market dealers and drug traders. The kids called her Grip because she never went anywhere without her pocket knife lining her palm, blade open, ready for action. She had to be ready. Ready to run, ready to fight, ready to defend her charges. That's how she had survived this long. That's what she taught the others.
Linda walked to the end of the alley. The one that bordered the local YMCA. She had chosen this place to build camp because of the exhaust fans that filtered warm air out of the industrial dryers inside. At least for one night they wouldn't have to freeze. Tomorrow was a different story. Tomorrow was a new challenge. But that was for then, all Linda had to do was worry about the now. And right now she was hungry. She turned her head left and then right, deciding which direction dinner would come from. This area of Boston wasn't exactly unfamiliar to her. She had been here before, on drug runs and other errands of the illegal sort, but everything looked different in the dark. She had settled the group in a low income neighbourhood to avoid unwanted attention from the passing middle class who took pity on skinny urchins in the form of a phone call to the Boston PD, claiming vandalism or loitering or whatever else they saw fit to get the underage miscreants off the streets. Linda sighed. As if they had anywhere else to go. Do-gooders always assumed they knew best, that the system would treat kids better than the streets, but they were wrong. The people in these neighbourhoods understood that, and for the most part, left the kids to their own devices, choosing to turn a blind eye. Just the way Linda liked it. The money ran short in these parts, and people were always having to make tough choices about where to get their next buck, but the crime rate in this area was still only built on petty theft, mostly committed by kids like her who could barely tell the front of a switchblade from the back.
She turned right down the sidewalk. The McDonald's she could smell was only a few blocks away, hidden between the adult movie store and a 7-Eleven, but they always kept their garbage bins locked in a wooden shed, like it might be worth something, and Linda didn't feel like picking the locks tonight. Still, she wandered in that same direction, knowing there was a family run pizza joint that favoured open lidded dumpsters. Easy access.
She walked quickly, with her hood up and her head down. No reason to attract unwanted attention. Linda crossed the first intersection, ducking behind a parked car and swerving to avoid running into a fire hydrant. She window shopped the dark displays, barely making out the mannequins and empty cases that would be filled with hot pastry's come morning. All things she couldn't afford. Her eyes wandered, but her ears hung back, always listening to what was going on around her. That's how she knew she was being followed. She tipped her head slightly and watched the black shadow trail her in the reflection of the store-front glass. With each store she passed, the distance between her and the shadow closed.
Linda tightened her grip on the switchblade in her hand and with a deep breath turned so quickly she might have lifted off from the ground and flown away had she had wings. Her fingers reached out and grabbed the shirt collar of someone much smaller than her. It took only a moment for her to acknowledge that her pursuer wasn't a threat.
"Hey Grip," Little A said. Her smooth, caramel brown eyes looked over Linda with excitement. Each tiny freckle on her round cheeks dancing to the tune of her perpetually present smile. Linda exhaled sharply. What did a street kid have to smile about anyway?
"Jesus! What'd I tell you about sneaking around like that?" Linda threw her arms out, releasing Little A. "Announce yourself or something next time. I could've cut you."
Little A righted her sweatshirt and carefully tucked the long tendrils of mangy hair that had managed to escape back into her hood. When everything was in place she pulled the drawstrings tight once more. From a distance she looked like a boy. Drew much less attention that way. It wasn't until you were in her face that you noticed the finer feminine details. Little A had been with Linda for close to two years now and she could see the small changes in the girls appearance. She hadn't grown much at all, and had probably shriveled weight wise. That was a street kid's diet. But her face had thinned out around her cheeks and her eyes darkened. She was older, wiser. The wavy wisps of hair that once belonged to a scared nine-year-old had thickened and become a mane of uncontrollable curls. It suited her, the changes. Little A was slowly moving from cute to pretty and soon the men would start to notice. In a few years Little A could be right where Kitty was now. God, Linda thought. I hope not.
"Thought you were still at the mall," she said.
"We got chased out early," Little A explained. "Too many of us hanging by the fountains again. Guess we should find a new hangout."
"Oh." Linda turned and walked several paces before Little A was trailing her again. They walked like that for a minute. There was no noise except for the ambient hum of the city. Car horns and tires on pavement. Stale voices and the crisp thud of their footsteps. Linda didn't mind the silence and it had never bothered her pursuer much either. Little A was an observer. She studied and she learned. And she was quick about it. Linda only ever had to show the girl something once, how to hold the switchblade, how to pick a lock, how to get out of a department store without setting off the alarms. But the rest of what Little A knew, she learned from books. Linda didn't like to read. She was never very good at it. The teachers she once knew had said something about dyslexia. Another thing that made her different from the other kids she had once known. Another reason for them to ignore her. But here Linda didn't need to read, she was the boss and she didn't get there by spending her days tucked away at the public library like Little A.
"You should go back to the camp," Linda said. "The others will be getting back soon."
"You shouldn't be out here alone," Little A said. "This place gives me the creeps." They had stopped on the sidewalk between Nate's Fresh Italian Kitchen, the pizza joint, and a novelty store.
"Makes me hungry," Linda said. She inhaled deeply and her stomach grumbled.
"C'mon," Little A said, eyeing the alley anxiously. She had started that nervous lip chewing. "Kitty will be back and she always has food." She tugged on Linda's sleeve. "This can wait till morning."
"It won't be any good in the morning," Linda said. "If there's anything worth getting, it has to be now." She looked down the alley and shivered.
Little A rocked on her heels and flicked her head, nodding towards "home".
"I'm fine. It's just the wind," Linda assured her, before following the length of the alley with her eyes. Everything was still. "Go back with the others and tell Kitty that Jared stopped by again while she was out."
Little A wrinkled her nose. "What does he want?"
"What do you think?"
Little A made a face. "Right. Yeah, okay. You won't be long, huh?"
"No. Go on back to the others."
Little A nodded and gave a two fingered salute before heading back the way they came. Linda watched her go for a second before trudging forward. She walked halfway down the brick-lined straight, halfway to the dumpster before she realized that none of the street lights would pierce the other side of the alley. This wasn't a cut through. There was no street on the other side of these buildings. Linda was walking towards nothing but darkness. Darkness and the sliver of hope that was dinner.
Little A was right. The creepy feeling had quickly crawled along Linda's shoulders and now rooted itself at the top of her spine.
But the dumpster was so close. If she could just get there and find something it would all be worth it.
That thought kept her company as she debated about the noise she heard bouncing up and down the alley. About its validity. About whether they were real or just part of her fear induced hallucinations.
I am hearing things, she told herself. There is nothing down here.
But no matter what she told herself, something was moving in the darkness, something responsible for the noise and it was getting louder.
Something clawed against the ground and Linda ducked into the shadow where none of the street lights could reach her. Where she was invisible.
She was so close to the dumpster. Three more steps and she could reach out and touch it.
Again something scratched and scrapped, but it came no closer. She couldn't let whatever it was come between her and a meal, not when she didn't know where her next meal was coming from.
Move, Linda.
She closed her grip on the switchblade in her now sweaty hand and stepped around the bin.
"Who's there?" she said, holding her weapon up beside her head, preparing herself to drive it forward if necessary. "Who are you?" She took a tentative step forward. Another and another. There was no answer. She snuck across the front of the dumpster, back pressed against the cold metal, and closer to the other side of the bin. When she bordered the far corner her footsteps startled the noisemaker.
A raccoon shot out from under the box, yellow eyes glaring in the night, and disappeared down the alley. Linda let out a sharp breath and laughed, clutching her throat. Just an oversized street rat. Just like me, she thought, stumbling backwards. She held her neck where a scream had sat just moments ago.
A sudden breeze blew down the alley, chilling the sweat on her brow and with it came the noise of heavy feet against pavement. They matched her backwards steps until she stopped and then they continued.
The icy breath of panic zipped down her spine and fused like an icicle, freezing her nerves and rooting her to the spot.
There was someone else in the alley. They had been here the whole time, Linda realized. Watching me.
His presence was heavy and constricting, making the alley feel like a coffin closing in on all sides. Linda knew it was a he before she had even laid eyes on the man. She could smell his heavy cologne, sickly sweet. It burned the inside of her nose and made her head throb.
Driving up some sort of strength from the very core of her being, Linda turned and faced the evil that had followed her to this spot.
She swallowed.
"Do you know who I am?" the man asked, still sunken in shadow. His voice was little more than a growl. Like sandpaper against the night, grating into the darkness.
Linda looked at him. Really looked at him. The only things she could make out were his eyes. They were dark, lined by thick lashes, and glazed. He stepped closer, turning his face up. There was a scar running from the outside corner of his right eye, across his lid, and finally cutting through the peak of his brow. She would have remembered that mark. Street people were known by their markings. The scars and battle wounds that set them apart. The reminders of how dangerous this life could be. Linda shook her head, or at least she thought she did. It was hard to tell because she had lost all feeling. But she didn't know this man. She didn't want to. He took another step, pinning her to the wall. He slammed her wrist against the cold brick and the switchblade, her only defense, clattered to the ground. No, Linda did not want to know him. Not this closely, with his body pressed against hers so tightly she could barely breathe.
"Do you know who I am?" the man asked again. He shook her shoulders in frustration, thick fingers sliding together and almost crushing her windpipe. Again she was slammed into the wall, her back cringing under the force of skin and bone against rock.
Linda thought she might cry. If she could just find the air to scream she would, but she couldn't, so she just shook her head. No. No!
The man growled and his fingers tightened around her throat. It didn't take long before his image became blurred and soon her limbs were light as air, floating, like they weren't even there. In the empty darkness Linda could hear sobbing. It was the last thing she ever heard.
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