Ruled & Broken

A/N for 2018-08-30: I'm posting two chapters today. We hit rock bottom at the end of chapter 4, and then Edward arrives...so buckle up and hold on.

Thank you for reading - don't forget to freak out and review too ; - )

~ Erin

It was a mixed group home, Bella realized, as she sat at the large table in the common room. It was plastic topped, and while she could see the dried marks of a cloth and liquid that had run over it, tried to keep her hands off it, after making first, and sticky contact with the dubious surface.

The supervisors ran on a rotating schedule, pinned to the kitchen wall. They were all men. Their pictures were not reassuring. Each looked like someone she'd shy away from in a dark alley. Perhaps that was a good thing, if anyone needed keeping in line.

Neal and Abi, the lead supervisors, were on today, and Abi was sitting in front of her, sorting through a file, setting papers and a pen beside him. He had a black bandana tied around his head, two sturdy rings in his ears, and one in his lower lip. He was toying with it, with his tongue. Bella's breakfast sat mostly forgotten, her attention fixated on his lingual manipulations.

"So I'm just going to run through the rules with you." He went on to read off the more mundane ones about attending all classes, doing house chores, being clean, neat and presentable, not stealing, using drugs etc. He stopped after each subsection, making sure she understood.

"You got any cash, cards, etc.?"

"Some, yes."

"Stays with us in the safe."

"And if I need something?"

"Just ask. We'll buy it for you, or give you the cash for it, if you actually need it."

It was an indignity to be reduced to such juvenile control, but at least it wouldn't get stolen that way.

"No sex while you're here. That includes anything sexual—touching, kissing, etc. You name it."

"Fine."

"You on any prescription drugs?"

"No."

"Not the pill, an IUD, anything?"

"No," she said more clearly.

"OK. These are for you, then." He fished in a bag on the chair beside him, and pushed a bag of condoms over the surface of the table. It left a smudged line in its streaky surface.

She stared at them, eyebrows wrinkled into one line, looking back up at him.

"I know," he said, "those are the rules. That doesn't mean people don't break them. We just don't want to layer any complications on top of anyone's life here." He shrugged. "Most girls don't really want to get pregnant in foster care."

"No," Bella said, agreeing, wondering if girls did here. She hadn't seen any other ones yet.

Once she'd signed the house rules, Abi took her upstairs to her room. "You'n Jasmin are sharin' a room. Meet her when she's back from school. You're the only girls we've got here now."

The top bunk was taken in the small space, so Bella put her bag on the lower one.

"Put anything valuable in the box here. We'll lock it up for you, 'K?"

It was easy enough to put her wallet in the box, and hand it to him.

"Nothing else?" he asked, eyebrows up.

She shook her head.

Later in the day, Neal drove her to the hospital to get her cast removed, and then down to the highschool to complete her registration, and get her textbooks. Most of her school supplies were still at the other school. The secretary just sort of shrugged when Bella asked if she thought they'd send it over. "Doubt it, honey. If they're as busy as we are."

Neal shook his head, "we got lots of school stuff. Don't worry,"

Just things, she told herself. The last ones your parents bought you. You're still you. This is just temporary. Whole new life come September. You won't be anyone's charge then. Not Charlie's, or Billy's or the state's. Your own.

It was a tentative mantra, to be sure, but it was hers, and she was repeating it to herself, pretending to look at a book, when the door to her room banged open.

"They wasn't shitting me!" a loud voice boomed. "They gave me a bitty little white girl for a roommate!"

A set of curves coddled in sweatshirt walked into the room. Her sharp orange nails matched her lipstick, silver hoops dangling beside a well made up face. All the jangling flesh was mesmerizing.

"And I think she can't talk none, or somethin' too."

"Hi," Bella said, standing up, "I'm Bella. Can definitely talk." She held out her hand.

Jasmin took it between two fingers, "not a ghost. Nope. Jasmin, by the way. That's me. Don't touch my makeup."

"No problem," Bella said, and sat back down on my bed. "Don't steal my stuff or try to beat me up. We'll be good."

Jasmin snorted. "That true, what Neal said? You beat some family up, get all gnarly with the police?"

"Totally," Bella lied, figuring she might as well lend credibility to whatever it was people wanted to believe. Clearly they didn't want to hear the truth.

"Good. You'll do fine here then."

The door to the room open, a boy a little older than Bella walked by, his sallow skin offset by his dark, and intentionally greased hair. "Whoa, they really did give us something pretty to look at!"

"Fuck off, Tito," Jasmin spat from the dresser, where she was reapplying her mascara.

"Any time chica," he winked. "You too baby," he directed at Bella, miming running his hands down an hourglass, then tipping his hips towards it suggestively. "An-y time!" He was gone then, and Jasmin smacked the door closed with a foot.

"Fuckers," she muttered.

- 0 -

After the first night in their room, Bella learned to shove a wedge under their bedroom door. She didn't know who, but she'd been woken in the middle of the night, a pair of large hands fondling their way up her chest. She hadn't screamed, smacking them away, the owner of the offending appendages fleeing before she could catch his face.

On her third day, Neal barked out a "cut it out!" to Tito and his friends, when they started catcalling Bella coming down for breakfast, but didn't do anything beyond it. She didn't look at the boys, but wondered if it had been one of them.

If she'd blinked, she would've missed it, but as some of the boys got ready for school, Neal handed them their lunch bags, and subtly, little white bags that he palmed from his hands to theirs.

The school was a utilitarian building with a chain-link fence that herded a dusty field, and a greenless expanse. Its own small desert in the midst of Seattle's greenery. Its inhabitants were made up of the disenfranchised, financially, and morally.

That kids were selling drugs at school was an open secret. That her housemates were, was more disturbing.

She said nothing. If the supervisors were handing them out, what point was there?

Head down, she ate dinner, and read her books, doing her schoolwork. Just a few months of school, she told herself. Two more after that. Then freedom. She could do this.

And if more than a third of her clothes weren't missing when she got back to her room, she would've put up with it. But they'd taken the sweater her mom had made her. It was just too much.

Abi listened with folded arms, and told her to take a deep breath. "Stuff goes missing, Bella. I'm sorry. We can get you new clothes, OK?"

She'd explained why the sweater meant something, and she shook her head. There was no point.

When she saw the carefully woven colours on another girl at school, though, and Jasmin flashing around the new clothes she'd somehow found the cash to buy, it was too much. She pulled her aside after school.

"You took my stuff. Not cool Jasmin. Not OK."

She laughed. "Course I did. We all do that shit, Bella. Suck it up."

"My mom made that sweater. I want it back."

"Or what? Gonna give me a shiner?"

"Do I need to?" Bella was so out on a limb, but she was angry, and the stripping away of the small remembrances of home, and family, were wearing on her.

Then Jasmin kicked her in the stomach, and turned and ran.

By the time Bella limped home, sore from breathing and walking, Jasmin had had the advantage of telling her tale first.

And Bella's record was already a mark against her.

"Mind the line kid. We don't take violence here."

"No, you just tell me to blow it off when she steals and sells my stuff."

"You can't go hitting her for that, Bella."

"I didn't. She kicked me."

His face twisted a bit, and he bent down to speak softly. Menacingly. "Your dad teach you how to hit, so it don't leave marks? Huh, cop kid?"

He waved her away after that.

In the morning, Bella was one of the first people down, and witnessed a quiet hissing match in the corner between Abi and one of the older boys. It was subdued, and she kept her eyes away, not wanting to intrude on what she presumed was private.

Abi's sudden jerk, caught her eye though, and his hand was at the boy's throat, a menacing, "then find them, asshole," spitting from his. Ashen, the boy startled to the side, and scurried off, Bella pretending to study the table's new swirl marks.

When Abi walked by her, he squatted down for a moment, talking to Bella like he hadn't just physically assaulted a child in his care. "Things still tough with Jasmin?"

"Sure," Bella mumbled.

"Better to make peace with her, Bella. You don't want to be on her bad side."

Wanting him to move on, and far away from her, she nodded nervously, breathing out slowly as he walked away.

Just a few more months, she told herself.

At lunch, she found her way to the computer lab, her heart squishing into itself when she saw an email from Jacob Black. It was simple: Just wondering how you're doing. Don't be a stranger.

Part of her wished she'd stayed with them, but another part, darkened by what she'd seen in the last while, wondered if it wasn't better. How awful it would've been to be disappointed by the Blacks. To have them do the things others had done to her. The world was not so full of good people as she'd thought it was.

She wrote back: doing just fine here. School. Home. Studying. All Good. Say hi to your dad for me.

Nothing that would encourage further correspondence.

She heard the screaming before she got to the house. When she realized it was Jasmin, Bella started walking faster.

She regretted it once she got there.

"Ask that bitch!" Jasmin said, pointing a chubby finger at her.

"They were on your dresser, Jas."

"As if I'd be so stupid as to leave that there!"

"Bella? You know anything about this?" Neal held up a bag of pills. They were the same ones she'd seen him pass to the boys.

"No." She said. What else was there to say?

Neal didn't say anything to her, but turned back to Jasmin. "We don't steal. Got it?"

Jasmin's lips were compressed into angry red slugs that twisted with contempt.

Neal shoved her away, and Bella moved out of his path as he left the room.

Jasmin said nothing to Bella with her words, but her face was twisted and ugly, sneering at her as she got up onto her bunk.

It was harder to get to sleep that night, sore and restless form the bruise on her stomach, anxious on the inside for what she'd seen. Distracted, she forgot to wedge the door. So when the hands arrived this time, one cupped her mouth, and another tightened at her throat. The moon had risen enough, so when he moved just right, Neal's face was clearly illuminated. "Thieves pay here, Bella. You clear?"

All that was clear to Bella was the hand at her throat, and the promise of violence she knew both he and Abi were capable of. Swinging her foot up, she planted it as hard as she could into his neck, the move dislodging his hold, and sending him off the edge of the bed. She ran, bolting down the stairs, grabbing the first jacket and pair of shoes she could find, running outside and down the street. She kept running, until her lungs were just two fires sucking air, and her legs ended in a jellied tremble.

It was freezing outside, and her sweats and tshirt offered little resistance to the cold. The jacket was too big, but not warm enough, and the shoes sloughed around on her feet.

She'd found herself in an area of town not familiar to her, large and industrial in nature, with a few office buildings scattered in between. She found a doorwell that was sheltered, and curled herself up into a corner there, waiting for daylight.

When it came, it also arrived with a poke from a baton. "Hey, up'n onwards kid. Homeless shelter's down the street."

A pair of sturdy shoes were in front of her face, and she stood up abruptly, nervous they belonged to a cop.

But no, the cheap slacks and jacket screamed cheap security. "That way," he said, waving the baton. "This's private property."

She nodded, tripping over her uneasy legs as she moved in the direction he was pointing. Seeing a large building, signed with a "north-east district shelter" come into sigh, she wanted to cry.

The entrance was utilitarian, a woman sitting behind a glass cage, an intercom for them to speak through.

"Hi there, how can I help you?"

"I need a place to stay," Bella said.

"You over eighteen?"

"Yes," she lied.

"OK, then we can help you. ID?"

"Don't have any."

The woman looked at her.

"Someone hurt you?"

"No."

"Someone hurt you," she said, pointing her pen towards her neck. "You need me to call the police?"

"No," Bella said more vociferously.

"OK," she said cautiously, looking at Bella, and tapping her page. "Someone'll be out shortly. Just have a seat."

What Bella really wanted to do, though, was pee, and then fall asleep somewhere, anyway, that wasn't outside on concrete.

No such luck.

A woman with hair dyed in a rainbow pattern came out, waving Bella inside, and directly to a bathroom. "Clean clothes here," she said, pointing to a stack on the counter. "Just give me yours once you step into the shower. I'll wash them."

"Oh, they're—"

"Policy, sorry. Prevents things like bed bugs."

This place had barred windows too, and the light that filtered in from the weak sun, shadowed her in them as she cleaned herself. Clad in a clean t shirt and sweatpants, Bella looked in the mirror, where yes, fingered bruises ringed her neck.

"So we close up in about an hour, and then open at six. There's no storage here, so you'll need to take your clothes with you."

"You close?"

"Yeah, we only get funding for evenings, so you're on your own for the day."

The tears were vibrant and hot, and utterly independent of anything Bella wanted.

"Someone hurt you, hey?"

Bella nodded.

"We can call the police—"

"No."

The woman sort of breathed out, nodding. Accepting there were reasons. "OK." After a moment, she said, "the library's a good place during the day. No one bothers you much there. The salvation army has a hot lunch program, too, if you're hungry. You looking for work?"

What was she going to do? If the group home supervisors were selling drugs, and her social worker didn't believe her the first time, she didn't trust him to take her word on this. And if the police thought she was stealing or mixed up in drugs—she groaned mentally. It was just too much, on not enough sleep.

"I don't know," she said. "It's been...a lot to deal with."

"Maybe just get through the day, then, hmm?"

Her freshly laundered clothes in a plastic bag, Bella left the shelter just over an hour later, fed and clean, with bus fare and a map to the library.

There were worse things than a day reading books, she told herself.

- 0 -

Shelters run on capacity numbers, and those numbers oscillate depending on the weather, and the economy.

It was a bad night for those wanting shelter, when Bella returned close to six, the shelter's scheduled opening time.

There was a line snaking around the block, and she was at the tail end of it, a few straggling in behind her, mumbling about the pointless wait. They expected to be turned away.

Moving along the line were workers with the shelter, Bella presumed, and as angrier and more frustrated words were exchanged, her heart sank. She'd arrived too late.

When one of the men reached her, Bella asked, bluntly, "should I go? Try to find somewhere else for the night?"

"Oh no," the young man said, "I'm asking people if they want to be part of our program."

"Oh," Bella said, disappointed.

"We offer housing for work."

Her attention snapped back to him. "What?"

"It's a charity that offers young people housing for casual work, and helps them move into the formal workforce."

"I'm interested," she said, hoping she didn't sound as desperate as she felt.

"Well that's great!" he said, "Here, just let me get you to fill in some forms."

He handed her a clipboard and pen, and she began writing. It was simple: Name, birthdate, next of kin / family, contact numbers, medical conditions. She filled it out and handed it back to him.

"Van'll be here in a bit. Just hold tight over there with my colleague."

The van was there in a few minutes, Bella and a few other young women hopping inside. What they didn't see, looking forward, and not back, was the running form of a woman with rainbow hair, yelling at it to stop, as it sped away.

DISCLAIMER: S. Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement is intended.