warnings: mentions of physical abuse and attempted sexual coercion / rape

Chapter 14: Kala & Wolfgang

In which Kala meets Wolfgang

Kala isn't sure what she'd expected, when the girl at the bookstore had given her that address and said it was a big building— an apartment building maybe, or a large house. Certainly not an abandoned church. Her mind goes to drug deals and squatters and murder, all of which she associates with dark abandoned places.

But Riley had seemed nice.

Kala tries the door and it's locked. "Hello?" she calls out. It's early— just past 6 AM. Maybe no one's awake. She knocks lightly, hears something inside. Movement. She knocks a bit louder. "Is anybody there? Um—" She clears her throat. "Riley sent me?"

There's another sound then, the sound of metal rattling on the other side of the door. Then it opens, and Kala finds herself face to face with a blond teenage boy.

He's frowning at her, arms crossed and jaw set. "Riley sent you?" he repeats.

"Um. Yes, she—" Kala holds out the paper she's been worrying between her fingers, the one with the church's address on it. "She gave this to me? It was about a month ago, actually, but she said— she said I could come here, if I needed to?" She glances over the boy's shoulder into the interior of the church. "Is— is she here right now?"

"No. She's not," says the boy, taking the paper from her and peering down at it. He flips it over, still frowning. Then he looks up. "But uh. You can come in, if you want. Just, uh— Here—" He holds out a hand, which Kala takes, and she steps up into the church. He looks her over for a moment, hand still clasped around hers as she stands on the threshold. Then:

"Sorry," he says hastily, letting go. "Uh. Yeah, just... follow me."

He leads her to the back of the church, where a dirty mattress lies covered in blankets and surrounded by sleeping bags.

"You can put your bag anywhere, and just, uh… sit anywhere. Yeah." He scratches his cheek. "What's your name?"

"Kala," says Kala, sitting down gingerly on the ground beside a sleeping bag. She keeps her duffle bag in her lap.

The boy sits too, on the edge of the mattress. "I'm Wolfgang," he says, his eyes trained on her as she glances around, taking in the scene: the high, open ceiling, the broken windows, the piles of timber heaped on the ground.

"So you live here?" she asks quietly.

"Yep."

"With Riley?"

Wolfgang nods. "And others too. There's six of us. Well, seven now, I guess," he adds. "Counting you."

Kala glances down at her duffle bag. Fiddles with the zipper. "You— you'll want to know what happened, I expect?" she says softly. "Why I'm here?"

Wolfgang shrugs his shoulders. "I assume that you left whoever did that to your face," he says. "Don't really need to know the rest."

Kala reaches up reflexively to touch her cheek, winces as her fingers brush against what must by now be a bruise. "My boyfriend," she says softly.

Something blazes in Wolfgang's eyes, and Kala gives a nervous laugh. "It was— he'd never hit me, before," she tells him. It feels important to her that this boy know that. "He was always very good to me."

"You don't have to explain," mutters the boy.

"But I want to," Kala says. "He— he took me in when I left my mother's house. I was fifteen. I had no one. And he always— wanted more. Than I did. But he never forced himself on me. Ever." She stares at Wolfgang, begging him to understand.

At last, very slowly, he nods. "But?" he prompts.

Kala sighs. "Last night, he said he'd waited long enough," she murmurs. "And I thought— Well, I owed him, didn't I?" She wipes in annoyance at her stinging eyes. "So I said yes. And he was so happy. But then— I just— I couldn't do it," she whispers. "I started crying. I pushed him off of me."

"So he hit you."

"Yes." Kala looks away. "Then... he said I'd 'ruined the mood,' but that next time... He said next time he won't take no for an answer. So this morning, after he left for his internship, I— I packed my bag and—" She stares down at her hands, blurry through her tears, unable to meet Wolfgang's eye. "It's just, he'd never done something like that," she says. "I thought he never would. I thought he was— I told myself—" she chokes out, but by now she's crying too hard to form any more words. She covers her face with her hands.

They sit like that for a long time, Kala crying into her fingers, Wolfgang looking pointedly away.

"I'm sorry," Kala says at last.

Wolfgang shakes his head. "Don't be," he mutters, which almost makes her start crying again.

"Thank you," she says as she rubs at her eyes. "I— Riley promised I would be welcome here but I—" She breathes in deeply, then exhales, trying to pull herself together. "I never thought I'd use the address," she admits finally. "Riley, she took me aside and said, 'If you need to get away from him, you're always welcome to stay with me, come any time day or night,' and I thought she was crazy. I thought, oh, I could never leave Rajan, he's never hurt me, he would never mistreat me." Kala sniffs wetly. "But I think... I think that he had been mistreating me for years, and I just never realized. But Riley realized. She watched us for all of five minutes and somehow—" Kala shakes her head, finally looking up. "How could I have been so stupid?" she whispers.

The boy stares at her for a moment, then shrugs. "It's hard to leave," he says simply. "Doesn't make you stupid. Just—" He shrugs again. "Human. I guess."

Kala bites her lip, and Wolfgang smiles grimly.

"Thank you," whispers Kala, and she smiles grimly back.