Warren walked silently along the sidewalk in his usual brooding mood. The sun was just starting to set, and he had to get home for dinner before his mom threw a fit…like he really needed another person to throw a fit after his boss at work. Sometimes he wished he wasn't bilingual, so that her yelled complaints would fall upon deaf ears, and the only thing he'd have to worry about would be blocking out the high pitch of her voice.
Glancing around the corner as he went, he turned into a side street. Sure, it might not be the normal route to his house, but it was a short cut, and he did need to get home. It wasn't that there was anything particularly intimidating about the side street, it was just completely deserted….which for Warren, was all the more reason to go through it.
The street was actually very wide, with a few narrower alleyways that lead almost directly to neighborhoods nearby, one of whom being Warren's. He walked to the end of the wider passageway and prepared to turn into the left alley, but stopped as he heard a sound. It was coming from the alleyway opposite the one he had been about to turn into.
Walking over to it without thinking, he moved a trash bin that looked like it had been pushed over clumsily. Behind it was a small girl who was crouched over something, hovering protectively over it. Her sobbing was what he had heard apparently, because her blue eyes were leaking huge wet tears that drenched her face.
"Go away! Go away," The little girl cried at Warren, flailing her tiny fist at him and refusing to move from whatever lay behind her.
"I'm not going to hurt you," said Warren slowly, trying to catch her hands to calm her.
The small girl eventually tired of punching air and collapsed, sobbing once more, onto the object.
"Sis-sy," She sobbed, hiccupping.
"What's wrong?" Warren asked her.
He didn't dare blow up at her as he did with everyone else, but he was impatient to find out what could be so important that the girl remained protecting it in the middle of a slowly darkening cramped alley.
The girl shook her head wordlessly, hiccupping every time she attempted a start at a sentence. Warren gently pried her away from the object on the ground. When he saw what it was he froze.
"Oh God…"
The object was a person. That person was someone he knew, someone he was often annoyed with, someone who had just thrown French fries at his head earlier that day. The person was Alexis.
If it hadn't been for her oddly mismatched and hard to miss outfit, complete with purple and green striped arm warmer, he wouldn't have recognized her. There was a fresh bruise forming on her right temple, and several others decorating her arms and what he could see of her legs. Her head was tipped to the side, and there was blood dripping down from the back of her head. It had dried and was crusting in a thick puddle at the base of her neck and shoulders.
Warren fought the sudden queasiness that had taken hold of his stomach, and felt for a pulse….still there. The girl was still crying next to him and he looked at her.
"Are you her sister?" He asked. The girl nodded shakily. "I know her. She goes to my school. You can come to my house, ok? She'll get better."
The little girl shook more but nodded again nonetheless. Looking away briefly to clear his mind of the mental image of blood and bruises, he lifted Alex up off the ground and carried her across to the opposite alleyway with the small girl scampering after him.