warnings: hunger and a reference to past child abuse
Chapter 3: Sun & Capheus
In which Sun meets Capheus, then Jonas
Sun wakes up at dawn.
Mechanically, she rolls up her sleeping bag and stuffs it into her backpack. Then she pulls her beanie down over her hair, hoists her overstuffed backpack onto her shoulders, and heads to the nearest public bathroom.
The water is cold as she washes her hands. Cold like the February wind outside. She examines her fingers under the stream of water, scrubs a bit harder at the dirt ingrained around her fingernails.
Once, when she was six years old, Sun's father had slapped her across the mouth for coming to dinner with dirt under her nails.
She turns off the faucet and wonders what he would say if he could see her now, with her filthy nails and dilapidated backpack and too-small sneakers, her shoulders hunched under a jacket she found last month by the side of the road.
Wonders what her little brother would say.
What her mother would say.
Her mother.
Tears fill Sun's eyes before she can stop them, and she pumps frantically at the paper towels dispenser, only to find it empty. She lets out a sob, a single sob. Then she dries cheeks on her sleeve, dries her her hands on her jeans, and takes a deep, steadying breath.
It's okay, she tells herself, her mother's face swimming before her eyes. Her mother wouldn't want her to cry. Her mother would tell her to be strong.
Sun is so, so tired of being strong.
o - o - o
Sun has a sign. "Please spare some change," it says in careful writing. "Anything helps." It's written on the back of a personal-sized pizza box and it earns her five dollars a day, if she's lucky.
This week, she hasn't been lucky. And yesterday she bought a pack of cigarettes, which wiped out all her earnings from the past three days.
She sets down her bag and sits against the wall, her legs hugged to her chest, and rests her sign on the tips of her shoes. Then she takes an empty cup out of her backpack and sets it beside her on the ground.
o - o - o
At some point her sign blows down and skitters a few inches across the sidewalk. Sun is too tired to flip it back over.
She buries her face in her knees. She's so hungry. No, not hungry. Last week she was hungry. Now she's just— empty.
It's past noon, and her cup is still empty too.
o - o - o
"Hey."
Sun glances up to find a dark-skinned boy standing before her, bundled up in a ragged blue jacket.
He nudges the overturned sign with the toe of his shoe. "Jonas still up to his old tricks?" he asks.
Sun stares at him, unsure how to respond.
"Still giving out those business cards?" the boy prompts.
"I don't know who you're talking about," Sun says then. "Please leave me alone."
At this, the boy laughs. "Where did you get the pizza then?" he presses.
Sun glances at the lid, which is, sure enough, emblazoned with the words Casa di Jonas. "I found that box in the trash," she says, and the boy laughs again.
Then, to Sun's horror, he plops down on the ground beside her, crosses his legs, and turns to her with twinkling eyes.
"I'm Capheus," he tells her.
Sun averts her gaze.
Capheus seems unperturbed. "Sorry," he says, scooting over by about a foot. "Is this better?"
No, thinks Sun. Why are you talking to me. Go away.
She shrugs.
"So you don't know Jonas?" tries the boy. "I thought every kid out here knew him."
Sun shrugs again, feeling a prick of curiosity in spite of herself. "I don't," she says.
"Well he's the owner of this place," Capheus says. He taps the lid of the Casa di Jonas pizza box. "It's like ten minutes from here. I used to go there all the time and he'd always give me free pizza."
Sun looks away quickly and stares down at her nails, her stomach clenching at the thought of food, free food. Furiously, she presses a fist against her abdomen until it hurts, until she can't feel the hunger.
"But he's one of those savior types," Capheus goes on. "Kept asking if I had a place to sleep, kept giving me some social worker's business card and telling me to 'give her a call.' He wouldn't let it go. And free pizza's nice, but—" He looks Sun straight in the eye. "I'm not going back to foster care."
Sun nods slowly, turning his words over in her mind. "He gave you...free pizza?" she says, working hard to keep her voice level, to keep from sounding desperate.
"I told you," Capheus laughs. "That's how he is. Probably thinks it's his duty to feed every homeless kid in Chicago." He picks the pizza box up off the ground and flips it idly in his hands, pausing when he notices the writing. His eyes flick over to the empty cup on the ground.
"Hey," he says, more quietly. "Hey, I can tell you how to get there, if you want. You tell him Capheus sent you and I guarantee he'll give you something to eat."
Sun can feel her cheeks heating up. No, she thinks. I'm alright. I don't need help.
"Yes," she breathes. "Please."
o - o - o
She stands outside Casa di Jonas for at least fifteen minutes, avoiding the eyes of everyone who walks by, waiting for the restaurant to empty out.
At last it does, and she steps inside cautiously, flinching at the bell that announces her entrance.
The man at the counter smiles at her. Jonas, presumably. "Can I help you?" he says kindly. "Want some pizza? Cheese? Pepperoni? Vegetable? On the house."
"Cheese?" Sun says hesitantly, her voice barely above a whisper. "If that's alright. Um, Capheus sent me."
"Capheus!" exclaims the man. "I haven't seen him in months; is he doing okay?" He sounds genuinely concerned.
Sun glances up briefly, then down again. "He's fine."
"Good, that's good," muses Jonas. He disappears into the kitchen, then bustles back out, saying, "Alright, miss, here you go, one slice of cheese, fresh from the oven."
Sun watches through her eyelashes as he slides a piece of pizza across the counter on a napkin.
She grabs it before she can help herself, breathing in the mingled scents of tomato and cheese and freshly-baked bread.
She takes a bite, a tiny one, and sucks on it, letting the cheesy dough dissolve on her tongue and slide into her empty stomach.
It is, quite possibly, the best thing she's ever tasted.
She laps up a bit of the oil pooling on top of the slice, then takes another bite, bigger this time, not even minding how the molten cheese sticks to the roof of her mouth.
She doesn't stop till she's eaten the entire slice, barely chewing, right down to the crust that scrapes her burned mouth as she swallows it whole.
"Thank you," she chokes out at last, finally looking up.
The man just watches her, a small crease between his eyebrows and pity in his eyes.
Suddenly shame, more painful than hunger, twists in Sun's stomach. She ate too fast. She was too weak. Absurdly, her mind travels to her nails, still dirty, and she curls her fingers into the napkin to hide them from Jonas's view.
"There's more where that came from," Jonas is saying, but Sun just shakes her head.
"I'm sorry," she tells him, the shame blooming up from her stomach and into her chest. "I— I need to go."
Jonas nods. "Alright. But there's pizza for you here whenever you need it," he says earnestly. "And here's this," he adds, placing something on the counter.
A business card, Sun realizes when she picks it up. Like Capheus said.
Angelica Turing
Child Welfare Specialist
Department of Children and Family Services
Chicago, Illinois
It's sweet, she thinks, gazing down at phone number. It's sweet and it's stupid.
The minute she's outside, she crumples the card in her napkin and throws it away.
