He stops short, the name of the gang leader a ghost standing between them.
‘And AD sent you after me?’ Her voice is so soft now, as gentle as the touch of my whiskers as I come up behind the boy. This close, I see that he is shaking, his tiny frame trembling in his oversize rags. Whatever the men have threatened, it has stayed with him. He reeks of fear and sweat, and of that acrid sharpness. The chemical tang almost obscures another scent, dark and earthy. The boy has soiled himself recently. The funk clings to him like the shame that makes him hang his head. I do not believe he dissembles now. This boy is wretched. A tool of those savage men – nothing more.
‘I’m sorry.’ The whisper barely reaches me. The girl, still ten feet away, cannot have heard, but still she starts at this, rushes forward, garnering through some undetermined sense the meaning of his words. But I step in between them, glaring up at her with fierce concentration. Pity is a luxury, I want to tell her. And a boy may be a victim and a tool both, more dangerous for his apparent weakness.
She steps by me to take him in her arms, even as I growl. And as she does, I see her reach into his pocket to retrieve the foil-wrapped packet AD had given him, the source of that acrid scent.
‘It’s just to sell, Care.’ He struggles in faint protest. ‘I wasn’t going to smoke it.’
‘Tick.’ She holds him still, ignoring his protest. ‘You don’t need this. You’re not your mom. What you need to do is tell me what you did with the book.’
TWENTY-ONE
‘You do have it, don’t you?’ Her voice is low; her question direct. The boy continues to stare at the ground. ‘Tick?’
He nods. ‘I saw you drop it the other day,’ he says. ‘Before Brian and Randy— Before they came for you.’
Care looks thoughtful as she works back over the memory of our escape from Fat Peter’s – and our brief respite here. I recall the smell of the volume, the black leather worn soft by the pawnbroker’s hands, but do not know how the girl disposed of it once I fell asleep. I watch her face for my answer. Yes, what the boy says apparently fits with what she remembers.
He sees this as well and begins to spill words like water.
‘I thought you’d want it,’ he says, doling out his explanation like an offering to win her back. ‘I mean, I know how you feel about books.’
From my vantage point several feet away I see a pained expression pass over the girl’s face. The boy has evoked a shared memory, that much is clear. I can only hope that this touchstone does not cause her to lay down all of her defenses.
When she fails to comment he goes on, eager to fill the void. ‘I came back here while I was … while I was on my errands,’ he says. He looks down as he says this. In humans, this could indicate shame. It may also be a ploy of distraction, an adult usage I do not think beyond this hard-used child. His next words support this. ‘I didn’t think that AD would care.’
AD. I have come to hate this man, and not simply as the source of that foul-smelling substance. He has a power over this child – over the girl as well – that I fail to understand, and that I believe he will use without compunction. From my vantage point I watch the girl, waiting to see her reaction to his words. The mention of their former colleague – no, leader – should be warning enough that this child is compromised, and yet I have reason to be concerned. Emotion makes this young woman vulnerable, no matter how well schooled she may have been. Its influence, as much as the persistent sadness, is a sign of how that training was cut short.
‘AD.’ She sighs, and in her voice I hear the echo of something I cannot explain. Not the nightmare vision that I wrestle still to understand, but something other. There is longing and sadness, and I see her face go slack for a moment. ‘Tick, you can’t go back to him. You know that.’
The boy’s shrug is eloquent in its way, dismissive of her concern and powerless all at once.
‘When we first came to him, he wasn’t so mixed up with all that crap.’
‘He always used and cooked, too.’ The boy speaks and my ears prick up. Would that Care’s did, too. His tone reveals an allegiance she would do well to mark. ‘And he’s doing great.’
‘He’s doing—’ She shakes her head. The fight, it seems, is one to which she is accustomed, one she will not win today. ‘Tick, where’s the book?’
He smiles as if he’s won and nods his head back across the tracks. I stand and lash my tail, willing her not to act on his lead. Those thugs have tried to snatch her here, in open land, and failed. How easy would it be to lure her into a confined space? To subdue her in some hideaway, away from passers-by or their uniformed henchmen? She turns toward me and sees my back begin to arch. She pauses. ‘Tick?’