I followed the taller red-haired boy as he navigated his way through the streets with a new sense of purpose. The crowd of refugees were now becoming more distant and I could no longer hear anguished sobs or heated shouts. The sun had begun to set and soon it would be getting dark; already the buildings we passed were falling silent and homeowners were blowing out their candles. I watched as my guide halted at a small shop with darkened windows. It had clearly been closed for the night and I couldn't hear any sign of people inside.
"Why are we-?" I began to ask, but was suddenly hushed by the boy, who turned and held a finger to his mouth. He started to creep towards an alleyway that ran between the shop and the next building, and then waved his hand in a quick gesture for me to follow him. Too worn and emotionally exhausted to question him, I merely slipped behind. He had begun taking a stack of crates and lining them up against the wall of the shop, making what appeared to be a rough stairway. Before I could question further, the boy stepped over and climbed on each one until he reached a shuttered window by the roof of the shop. There, he opened the shutters and climbed inside.
"Come on!" He called to me in a whisper. I looked around to see if anyone was watching us. Something told me that this was going to get us into trouble if the Military Police were nearby. Seeing no one, I took a deep breath and followed, carefully holding my balance on the creaking crates. The boy reached over and grabbed my arms to help pull me up inside.
"See? Isn't this great?" He grinned with pride as I stood and looked around at the room. It seemed to be an abandoned floor of the shop, possibly once used as an attic or for storage. Now the entrance to the downstairs had been boarded up and old crates lay gathering dust in corners. To one side, the crates had been clearly disturbed and lined up in a wall with a blanket beside them. I realized then that this had been where the strange boy had been sleeping for the last couple of days.
"How did you find this place?" I asked him. In the little time we were here, he had somehow managed to find a place to stay, which was more than any of the survivors could have hoped for. "Do they know you are staying here?" I quickly pointed to the floor, indicating to the shop below. The upstairs may have been closed, but the shop had appeared to be decent enough to still be in business.
"I find places like this all the time. It's easy when you know where to look," the boy answered with confidence. "Here," he tossed me a blanket from inside one of the crates. It was old, frayed, and had holes from where moths had chewed through, but it was a blanket all the same. "As for the shopkeepers, don't worry about them. They are elderly and they hardly notice anything while they are here in the day. No one has come up here for years by the looks of it. As long as no one sees us, then this place can be our home. It even has a roof that's in pretty good shape!" He gestured toward the ceiling. I followed his point, and realized that he was right. While there were small holes in the roof here and there, it was still mostly in tact; at the very least, it did not look as if it were about to fall on top of us. Still, looking around the room made me long for the safe and clean home I had left back in Shiganshina. Back there, there was a blanket without holes and a roof that kept out the cold and wind completely.
I cursed myself as I had to force the wistful image out of my mind; my home didn't exist anymore. I was lucky to get a place more sheltered than the open alleyway I had been leaning against the past two nights. Suppressing my complaints, I crawled over to the other side of the room and pushed aside a few of the crates to make a space for where I would sleep. The floor was made of wooden boards that were cold and uncomfortable, so I tried to lay my blanket down first before settling into it. It didn't help as much as I had hoped.
The red-haired boy nodded in approval as he watched me get settled in, and then lay down in his own bed and stared up at the ceiling. For a moment we both simply lay on opposite sides of the room, dwelling on all the events that had happened in a short amount of time. Though he didn't say it, I could imagine that he probably wished he was at home as well.
"What's your name?" I asked suddenly, breaking the silence. It was up to this point that I realized I had never really known his name. If we were going to be surviving here, then I guess I'd have to address him by something aside from "red-haired boy".
"Huh?" He looked up in a blink, startled by my sudden question, but then slowly lay back down and resumed staring at the ceiling. He seemed to be hesitating, thinking for a bit, before replying. "You can call me Jarin. What about you?"
"Alora Hayes," I answered. I wondered why he had waited so long to answer, but I didn't feel like pressing him any further. I didn't care what he called himself as long as I had something to refer to him by. I attempted to smooth out the ratty blanket he had found for me. I tugged at a loose thread that hung by one of the holes and watched as it started to unravel. Afraid to ruin it any further, I rolled the blanket aside. "So, did you lose someone too…?" I found myself asking very quietly, knowing that I probably shouldn't bring up the subject, but not being able to stop myself.
"No," To my surprise, Jarin didn't seem upset or even slightly phased by the question. He stretched out his arms and leaned one hand to rest against his nearby crate. "Unlike most people, I didn't have anyone to lose. That's how I'm lucky, really..." He sat up and then looked at me in a sudden seriousness. "It's going to be ok you know; it's not as hard as you think to live on your own. You don't need the ones you lost and you can forget about them soon. We can still get money and food, and here we'll have better shelter than any of the others."
"How do you know?" I asked bitterly, the hurt evident in my tone. His self-assuredness had become grating the instant he had mentioned he had never lost anyone. How could he think that I could just forget my brother so easily? How did he know that I didn't need him?
"Because, I've been living alone since I was six years old." His brown eyes shone grimly from across the room, and I realized then that he wasn't lying. He had been living on his own for that long? How was that even possible?
"I know everything about surviving. You'll see. Tomorrow I'll teach you the tricks I've learned on how to get by. Then, you won't even need me to help you."