Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings are the property of the Paterson family and their official affiliates. Any unrecognizable characters or settings are, in fact, mine; and come from my own imagination. I suppose that means that I own everything previously unrecognizable.
Long Way Down
Chapter Six:
Nothing to Do
She had traveled a good three miles that morning; the run from the warehouse to the property line of the woods was primarily straight and easy, if one took side streets or jogged along highways that were rarely used. The area of Roanoke that she had resided in for the last half of a year wasn't bad, necessarily; it was only dangerous if you didn't belong there. Most people in Virginia were aware that Roanoke didn't possess the gang equivalent of Los Angeles or New York, but they knew that they—the gangs—still existed, and for that reason they chose to avoid certain areas of the city like it was inhabited by death, which, in their minds, it probably was. The thought of people afraid of most of the kids in those parts of the city always made her want to laugh. It was true that there were legitimate evils lurking, but that was the case everywhere. Most of it was just a cover; if people had no desire to see them, they would never find them, which was what just about everyone—including her—wanted.
About three blocks from the warehouse she slowed to a jog, focusing on breathing deeply through her nose and choosing to ignore the shoddy storefronts she was passing, most of them abandoned, like their warehouse was.
"Hey Bookworm," A masculine voice, rich and almost indiscernible with inner city colloquial speech, called in her direction. She turned her head towards the sound but never stopped moving—basic survival. She realized that she was passing the Marshall Deli, a square, squat building comprised entirely of stucco and a few panes of glass. The faded, dirty, yellow and white striped awning was sagging with age, the window in the front door looked like someone had punched—or shot—right through it, leaving a decent sized hole with splintery edges right in the middle of it. The cracked shards of glass caught the sunlight and sent facets of rainbow colored glow all over the sidewalk. The deli had been abandoned for several years, like most of the surrounding buildings, but a small family of siblings and cousins had taken to inhabiting it and the one room apartment on the second floor. Sometimes, when it was decided that the entire group, even Alexandra, would go onto a raid in the city, they would stop at the deli both before and after the excursion to make deals with the eldest brother, Gregg, who was almost twenty. It was Janice who headed most of the bartering, and she most often called on Carla, Scott and Gary to back her up. During this time Madison would usually sit on a stool behind the dusty front counter, eyes squinted, mouth pinched, nose ever so slightly up in the air, looking disgusted with it all. Alexandra would take to cowering in some empty corner, and Leslie, feeling sorry for the little girl, would stand beside her. That was how she came to know the boy who was now calling a greeting to her, Marco. Marco was fifteen, only one year younger than she was, and had come with the four original siblings before their eight cousins arrived some months later. He had explained that he, Gregg, and their sisters, Joana, now eighteen, and Kyla, fourteen, had decided to run away when their parents died in a car accident and they had been sent to live with their grandmother in Langley, who was cold, bitter, needy and cruel. Marco had once told her that his grandma burned him with her curling iron for not cleaning his room when she told him to, and that the gravity of his burns was what finally pushed Gregg and Joana to decide that they were all going to run away, rather than risk being split up by child protective services, since Gregg and Jo were, at the time, too old to be safely guaranteed the ability to stay with him and Kyla. Leslie hadn't believed him at first; his eyes were always lit like he was laughing at some inside joke, his dark brown face never seemed to lose its innocent baby fat, even now, as he sat hidden inside the hood of an oversized black sweatshirt and jutted his chin in her direction from behind the gaping hole in the front window. She remembered back to the first time she had accompanied the other kids to the deli for their haggle session, when he had seen Alexandra hiding behind her and had come over to try to make the trembling redhead feel less afraid. He had told the two of them that story, and neither girl had fully believed him. It wasn't until he had pushed up the sleeve of his hoodie and showed off the four gruesome, dark scars that snaked their way around his left forearm that both of them took his tale as the truth. Alexandra had threaded her fingers nervously through Leslie's belt loop while Marco snickered good naturedly. She waved to him with a cheeky grin, and dismissed the feeling of guilt she felt at not telling him her name. Sure, she had chosen to keep her middle name as well as her surname from the other kids at the warehouse, even Alexandra, but she had never kept her Christian name from anyone, ever. It wasn't as though she had done it deliberately, he had never really asked. She might have considered it odd, were she not so secretly frightened by the grungy, gray-green ambiance of Marshall's, but instead she felt incredibly grateful when he caught sight of the paperback copy of Jane Eyre that her elbow was pinning against her ribs and asked what it was about. She had proceeded to babble a very detailed synopsis about the story, blurting out the biggest, most European words that popped into her head, and he listened but chuckled all the while. For the rest of the day he called her Jane Eyre, much to the confusion of the other warehouse kids, but she just laughed with him, pleased to have found someone who didn't completely terrify or despise her. The next time she saw him—one month later—he had shortened it to just Jane, but did ask what her actual name was. He saw her freeze, and with an almost sympathetic sigh he asked her about Wuthering Heights, which had taken the place of the Charlotte Bronte's novel under her arm. When she was done explaining he inquired if her name was Catherine, which made her relax and answer with a smiling no. After that he gave up on guessing her name and decided to call her Bookworm, since she seemed to be in possession of a new volume every time they met. It stuck, though the slight, nagging feeling of culpability never fully dissipated. She did like Marco, but whether or not she could trust him with something even as simple as her name—which she had learned was actually very sacred and valuable indeed—was still debatable, even after "knowing" him for six months. Though his caramel eyes often shined with good humor, there was a two dimensional quality to them that made her question how strong and unwavering his character really was, and it saddened her. As her pace grew to a sprint and the deli's front disappeared behind her, the other stores quickly following suit, she wondered if it was a ludicrous wish to want to be able to trust someone with not only her forename, but everything else too.
Before they left the restaurant, May Belle announced that she needed to use the bathroom again. She had leapt up from the booth and darted down the hallway once more, leaving Jess to say their goodbyes to both Miriam and Rosalind. It had been awkward for him, to say the least, especially when both women asked how their meal had been multiple times—each time he replied with an overly enthusiastic "delicious"—and then when they offered their almost tearful condolences regarding great-aunt Adelaide's supposedly sudden death and were trying, apparently, to compensate for his grief by shoving doggie bags full of mystery food into his hands, he found that he almost couldn't take it. He'd never been a good liar, ever, even when dealing with little things, like when he had tried to blame a very young May Belle for spilling his apple juice when it had really been him all along. Lying about his entire life, or most of it, in addition to lying about the state of his family, had almost made him vomit. Bile actually pooled behind his closed lips, rolling across his tongue and settling in the hollows of his cheeks. He had forced himself to keep smiling and then, as cleanly as he could, excused himself to go outside, which he did after both of the females had given him one final pat of sympathy and another goodbye. He had kept up the happy façade until he was past the almost solid pane of windows on the front of the building, and then gladly disappeared around the darkened corner, into the alley beside the service entrance and spat all the bitter-tasting stomach acid into the rain gutter. His mouth tasted positively awful; sour and salty and ever so slightly sweet, though that may have been leftover from the maple syrup that had coated his small stack of pancakes. He yearned to brush his teeth, but going back into Libby's simply to use the bathroom seemed almost cruel for some reason he didn't fully understand. So he resigned himself to spitting one last time and then walking back to his pickup to stick the doggie bags inside of the cab. He had two in each hand, but hadn't looked in either, though he could clearly pick out the odors of bacon and Thousand Island dressing wafting from each. He yanked open the driver's side door and tossed both of the bags on the floor carefully, in order to keep them out of the sun. Slamming the door behind him with a little bit more force than probably necessary, he wandered back onto the front curb to wait, somewhat impatiently, for May Belle.
As he stood on the curb with his back to the restaurant's front and the already uncomfortably warm morning breeze wafted across his visage, his nose caught the scent of smoke somewhere far off, carrying over the dirty blacktop and the smell of gasoline from the Mobil station a few blocks ahead to reach his nostrils. He realized, with a small start, that he felt like he should be smoking a cigarette. He had never had the desire to smoke in his life, the constant reminders that his mother had hammered in his head since his eleventh birthday had killed any desire he may have secretly harbored. It's an expensive, gross, and eventually deadly habit. She had always told him this, and her reasoning had eventually consumed his mind. However, as he stood looking out at the grungy concrete towers on the outskirts of Virginia that would no doubt lead him into the heart of the inner city should he choose to follow them, he felt as though he was disobeying a social expectation by not holding a small white paper roll to his lips and taking a long drag of the smoke and ashes.
As another breeze that was slightly stronger, hotter and smellier than the preceding one blew over him, he decided to wait in the truck with the sacks of mystery food until May Belle decided to come out. He sprinted over to the driver's side in two or three paces and opened the squeaky door with one great, strong thrust of his arm, gritting his teeth in pain as the old spring recoiled on its own and sent the mass of metal flying into his ankle as he hoisted himself up inside of the cab. He rolled down his window with the manual crank—the only legitimate downside of his rather old vehicle that he actually allowed himself to acknowledge; another one of his mother's ridiculous sayings, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", prevented him, unconsciously, from looking for more imperfections—while digging into his pocket for the key ring. While he certainly wasn't crazy about the idea of wasting valuable and incredibly expensive gas on something like air conditioning, it was rather uncomfortable inside the car as the potent rays of the sun streamed through the streaky glass of his windshield and blinded him momentarily. Plus, whatever was inside of those doggie bags smelled just a bit too good to die a slow death via heat.
Freeing the key from the confines of his pants at last, Jess eagerly stuck it into the ignition and turned it, squinting his eyes shut automatically in anticipation of the hot air that his old air conditioner would spew into his face while he waited for it to warm up slash cool down. To his surprise, no warm air came. It took him about five more seconds to realize that there was no air, period. He looked down, confused, at the controls beneath the dusty radio built in just below the dash and was able to discern, despite the eroding letters, that the switches were set to Max A/C and High. About two more seconds passed before he realized that the actual car itself wasn't making any noise whatsoever. He turned the key again. Nothing. Trying to dismiss the feeling of panic building up in his chest, he removed the key from the ignition, wiped it on his shirt, and tried for the third time. The stretch of highway before him, bare except for the occasional scrap of debris that rolled across in the breeze, held more sound than his diesel engine.
He hopped out of the cab, hands shaking. This couldn't be happening. Not today, not now, not here. There was just no way this could be happening to him, to May Belle…to them. It wasn't happening. Positive thinking would help, surely. Wouldn't it? He found himself questioning his mental stability as he walked over to the hood.
He felt no scorching heat as he laid his hand on the hood, but that didn't stop gallons of smoke from billowing out, making him cough and sputter and gag as his eyes began to water.
"Well," He managed to growl to himself between wheezes, "Dammit. Dammit all."
By the time she arrived at the warehouse, Leslie was covered by a light sheen of sweat and her breathing was mildly labored. A glass of room temperature water and a brief, lukewarm shower before settling down in her room with a book sounded like heaven to her. Managing to do all of it, completely uninterrupted, would be an absolute miracle. And absolute miracles weren't easy to come by. And judging from the din she could already hear before entering the building, peace and solitude was not on the agenda for today. Sighing, she shoved open the thick metal door with her shoulder and listened, not expecting a greeting of any kind. She didn't receive one, but she did behold a sight she most certainly hadn't been expecting.
Since the upper floor of the warehouse had a bizarre layout and minimal space, those quarters were used only for the seven to nine hours of the night in which they all slept, and even then it wasn't particularly comfortable. For that reason the lower floor was used for nearly everything; though the cavernous room had no dividing walls of any kind, the use of different kinds of furniture helped segregate the areas. In general it was just like a giant living room with a "kitchen" of sorts, which was several folding tables and chairs, ice chests, a mini fridge and a microwave. The rest of the grand room was dominated with chairs and couches, cots, lamps, radios, even a few TVs and an ancient desktop computer that no one ever used, which sat next to the lone bookcase, a short, squat little cabinet that was falling apart and filled primarily with CDs, magazines and the few volumes that both Leslie and Madison had brought with them when they ran away. Leslie actually had about a dozen more paperbacks hidden upstairs in her room, odd little novels or factual books that she usually swiped from yard sales or thrift shops, though sometimes she did resort to the used section of independently owned stores or the occasional library book. She didn't really understand why she chose to keep the books away from the others, there was one or two that Alexandra would surely enjoy, and she hated the idea of denying the little girl the pleasure of reading. Maybe she wanted to keep the print away from Madison's cold eyes, which drank up the words for all the wrong reasons. Or, most likely, she liked the idea of knowing that she had one thing that was all her own. Part of her understood that it was a silly notion; she was all but invisible here, no one would pay attention to something as trivial as the book she chose to read during the evening. The couches and chairs were spread out on the lower floor so that everyone could technically be in the same room without ever really seeing one another. That was how it worked most of the time, anyway. That was why she was legitimately shocked to see all of the girls—Janice, Carla, Madison and Alexandra—standing relatively close together, while Gary and Scott were nowhere to be seen. From the looks of it, however, they were fighting, not truly attempting to become friends. When Leslie arrived, Carla was screaming something at Janice, who was standing as a human barrier between the irate brunette and a positively terrified looking Alexandra, who was silent. Madison, although not taking an active role in the disagreement, apparently found it—slightly—more interesting than the book she was reading. The paperback lay, ignored, on her knee as she lounged on one of the faded loveseats near where the action was taking place, watching with a semi-bored expression in her eye, as if nothing in life would ever excite her again. At present, however, Leslie was not interested in Madison's unrelenting negativity, but instead in the emotional and possibly physical well-being of the redhead. She approached the scene quietly, never noticed, and tried to understand what the whole mess was about.
"I told the little brat it was my muffin!" Carla hollered.
"Did not," Alexandra surely meant this to be a rebuttal, but her voice was so weak and terrified that it came out more like a squeal.
"Liar!" The older girl apparently tried to lunge at her, because Alexandra shrank backwards, but she also found her voice.
"I am not a liar! The muffin didn't have your name on it, how was I supposed to know it was yours?"
Janice took the opportunity to speak for her friend, turning away from Carla and whirling on the younger girl. "Because, you little idiot." She snarled, her tone making Alexandra flinch as though she had been slapped. "What kind of muffin was it?"
"Uh…"
"Well?"
"Um…blueberry pecan, I t-think…"
"Okay. Was it good?"
Alexandra went mute. Janice; angered by her lack of compliance, got down on her knees in front of her and shook her shoulders until her hair flopped all around her face. "Was it good?"
"K-k-kind of…it w-was okay, I g-guess…"
Here Janice cocked a single sandy eyebrow, a silent command to explain.
"It was dry," Alexandra had ceased stuttering, but her voice was barely a whisper. "Kinda stale, I suppose…"
"That doesn't matter," Janice's voice was even too, but that made it all the more petrifying. "Because, as a general rule, blueberry pecan muffins taste good. And if food tastes good, it's automatically left to us upperclassmen, unless otherwise specified. Especially if it's close to a raid, and there's almost no food here!" She shook the little girl once more for emphasis and then stood up, looking at Carla with a smug expression, as if to say: we've scared her enough, I think.
The gangly brunette was not fully satisfied, but apparently—somewhat—sated, because she didn't attempt to attack Alexandra anymore. She gave her a withering look and stated menacingly, "Don't think I'm done with you just yet, shrimp. That'd be really stupid. In fact, you've just lucky that Fulcher and Hoager should be in tonight with the entirety of this month's haul, or there'd be hell to pay. And don't think I'm not going to remember this, either."
Alexandra was beginning to quiver again, and Leslie's temper flared.
"I don't see why you're berating the poor girl, ladies," She spoke sharper than she had intended to, surprising everyone in the room, who she guessed hadn't even been aware of her presence up until that very second. "Didn't you hear her? The muffin was bad. Dry, unappealing, probably bitter in taste. Overall, a very unfortunate snack that most people—sane people—would not consume by choice if they knew what was coming before they took the first bite. Why, you should thank her, I believe. She saved you an unpleasant experience; nay, not only did she save you, but she took it upon herself so others would not have to suffer it. If only…" Here she chose to pause and sigh dramatically, casting her eyes down momentarily to the floor, well aware that both Janice and Carla—her intended targets—were glaring holes into the side of her head. She fought the beginnings of a triumphant smirk and continued with an innocent, almost somber, but eloquent strength that held just the right air of sarcasm and a politely contained distain that would make any human being in their right mind tremble with shame and chagrin. "If only the same could be said for people. Wouldn't that be just wonderful, ladies?" She looked them directly in the eye and let the anger loose. "Wouldn't it be nice to just know, when someone like Alexandra here, someone brave and strong and good and sweet, waltzes into your life, so you may reward them, thank them for being who they are. And as for the stale blueberry pecan muffins…" She shot Carla a steely glare, "Toss them directly into the bottom of figurative dumpster of society where they rightly belong, and perhaps they will dig through the rotting goo of garbage and discover a backbone, so that maybe, should they be dense enough to try to walk over a good person for a second time, they might not have to run and cower behind a more frightening friend to gain their powers of intimidation."
If it was physically possible for fire to shoot out of her nose, Carla would've burned all the hair off of the back of Janice's head. She started forward toward the lithe blonde with a low, menacing growl, but Leslie, far more agile than her adversary, merely leaped back a few inches and laughed.
"What are you giggling at, freak?" Her slightly almond eyes narrowed even more as she attempted to spit in the direction of the girl who had been brave—and possibly stupid—enough to give her a taste of her own medicine.
Leslie's face was calm and slightly bemused as she crossed her arms over her chest and arched a dark blonde brow mockingly. "You mean besides your terrible aim when it comes to spitting in the faces of your opponents?"
"Look here, beanpole," Janice once again cut into the conversation. "You don't have to stay here…"
"I'm well aware that my rights as an American citizen give me the ability to enter and exit various premises as I wish, provided I am the right age as specified by federal law, thank you, Janice." Leslie interrupted. "And I'm also aware that the Bill of Rights guarantees me freedom of speech. Violent assault on your part because I choose to exercise it, however, is not very easily pardoned. Or so I've been told, anyway."
Janice's green eyes narrowed into slits as she stared into the calm blue ones of her opponent. "I'd watch how brave you are, beanpole. You think you're so clever, don't ya? Not telling us your last name, where you're from, why you're here. You think if you remain smart and organized, you'll be able to disappear whenever the hell you wanna and we just won't care. Well, let me tell you something, genius. We will care. We'll care more about you disappearing than anybody else. Not because we like you, princess, far from it. As I said, you don't have to stay here, and we certainly didn't want you. The more of us there are, the easier we'll become to find, even you must understand that concept. But, unfortunately, we need you, to some extent. You're a ghost—you hide better than anybody else here does. I'm not going to lie, that's valuable when you live like we do. But you're weird, beanpole. And here, weird is dangerous. You're valuable, sure, but not so valuable that we're going to risk our skins, sanity and independence for somebody who was odd enough to look for us. If you make too many mistakes, we'll make you disappear, ghost girl. And no one will find you once that happens. I'll make sure of it if it's the last thing I do. I'm giving you a fair warning here, beanpole. Watch yourself."
With one final glare in Leslie's direction Janice stalked away into one far corner, Carla following close behind. Alexandra gave the blonde girl one long look that seemed to bear a cross between fear and admiration before turning and running up the stairs to the second level. Madison, obviously annoyed that her source of entertainment was gone, sighed and returned, half-heartedly, to her book. As for Leslie, she walked towards the bathroom, for the shower she had wanted to take since her arrival.
She shut the heavy metal door tight behind her and locked it, flipping the switch for the single light that was built into the ceiling. She quickly shed her perspiration damp clothes and tossed them into a corner, leaning against the dingy pedestal sink as she ran her fingers through her hair and then turned to flip on the shower, which had been crafted by Scott and Gary and was similar in form and operation to the portable showers that people took when they went camping. While she waited for the water to warm she returned to her place by the sink, staring at her face in the mirror and reliving the confrontation in the front room moments before. She knew she had no real reason to feel afraid, but yet she sensed it there, breeding, deep inside of her. It wasn't as if Janice and Carla themselves scared her—while the former had brawn, her partner was weak, and she would easily be able to defeat both of them with proper intellectual strategizing. But what they had said terrified her, on an extremely deep level that surprised even her. She was a ghost girl, like they had called her. What if she became so good at vanishing that she forgot how to find herself again? What if she was never found; never looked for, even? Had everything that happened that night, all the words she had said in exhaustion and hurt and anger, really been thought to be fact? Had all of her lies been taken as the truth? Was she a lost cause?
She stepped under the pulsating jets of water and drew the shabby curtain, allowing the clear liquid to scorch every inch of her skin. She titled her head back, closed her eyes and opened her mouth, allowing her face to drown. She thought of Alexandra's tortured little face, and of her own dead eyes as she stared herself down in the mirror, and felt a tear mix with the drops from the showerhead that ran down her face. She wanted desperately to do something, to make everything right again. The lone tear that slid down her cheek was not of sadness or even guilt, but rather an odd kind of discouragement. Because she knew, deep down, that at present, no matter how much she longed or hoped or tried, there really wasn't anything at all to do.
Author's Notes: This chapter didn't cover as much ground as I had originally planned, but it seemed like this was the appropriate place for the narrative tone to halt. Plus, I realize that I haven't updated this story in nearly a month, and I want to keep on track with updating this piece with a good tempo so that everyone, me included, doesn't lose interest. :) I hope you all enjoyed; I know that I'm having a blast writing this story, but I want to make sure I'm taking you all on the ride as well. Please drop a review, your feedback is appreciated more than you know.
