SIXTEEN
“HERE WE ARE,” SHE SAID.
Here consisted of a dilapidated building in the middle of nowhere. Broken and boarded windows kept me from seeing inside, but I could tell just from the outside that I didn’t want to go in.
Weeds as tall as me surrounded the building, and rusted tin panels covered the outside walls, making it look as though dried, crusty blood drained down the sides.
It was creepy as hell.
“What is this place?” I asked, sure that at any minute some crazy fuck would come out and murder us.
She crouched down next to a small opening in the building and pulled back a piece of the tin siding. The edges were jagged and sharp, and I knew that with one wrong move, she would probably sever an arm or a leg.
She gestured at the opening she had made.
“You want me to go in there? You’re fucking kidding, right?”
She smirked, her conniving smile annoying the piss out of me. “What’s wrong? Are you scared?”
I tensed, my jaw going so tight it felt like it would pop.
No guy liked being called a coward, especially when it was far from the truth. I had done my fair share of stupid shit, which meant I learned the hard way that it was probably not a great idea to enter the decrepit building.
“I’m not scared. I just have enough sense to know wrong from fucking right. Common sense tells me not to enter an abandoned building with some chick who conned me into robbing a house.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to kill you or anything.”
I threw my head back and barked a loud laugh. “Believe me, sweetheart, I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about the diseases I’m going to get just by being near this place.”
“Just shut up and get in,” she snapped. “I’ve never heard a boy whine so much.”
“I’m not a boy,” I corrected her. “And I’m not going inside until you tell me what we’re doing here.”
She cursed under her breath. “Suit yourself. Come in or not. Doesn’t matter to me.”
She crawled through the small opening, and the sound of scraping metal made me flinch when she released the panel and it snapped back into place.
I sighed and dragged my fingers through my hair in frustration.
I was cold, but at least I still had a full stomach. The main problem was, I knew nothing about this chick, and after the stunt she pulled back at the house, I knew it was probably better to cut my losses and run rather than to hide with her.
The vacant lot beside me was pitch black, making me feel even more alone. Even though I wasn’t convinced I could trust the girl, I honestly had no other place to go.
The truth was, even though she had put me in a bad position, she technically didn’t have to help me when we had almost gotten busted. She could have climbed the fence and left me to deal with the police, but she didn’t.
Maybe the inside of the building wasn’t as bad as the outside.
Never judge a book by its cover, right?
Maybe it was warm and cozy inside—maybe it was clean.
Staying the night wouldn’t kill me. I could get a good night’s sleep and figure out my next move in the morning. If I managed to stay alive until then.
Making a quick decision, I pulled back the dangerous, rusted tin and eyed the tight entrance. It was silent and black inside, but I crawled in anyway.
Once I was able, I stood and grimaced at a sharp pain in my arm. I was much bigger than she was, and I wasn’t as lucky. The tin had scraped me good, leaving a long gash in the arm of my hoodie.
Great.
Now I would have a hell of a time keeping out the cold.
“Finally,” she said from somewhere inside.
I squinted into the black, trying to make out her figure, but the darkness inside the building was even more intense without the soft glow of the moonlight outside. Waving my hand in front of my face, I couldn’t even see the outline of my fingers.
“Where the hell are you?” I asked, stumbling blindly around the unfamiliar space.
“Give me a minute,” she snapped, her voice laced with annoyance.
I didn’t take it personally since that seemed to be the only tone she was capable of.
After a few seconds, a small glow illuminated the corner at my side, allowing me to see her and a bit of my surroundings. She stared back at me in a way that made me a bit uncomfortable, and I looked away.
“Are you going to tell me what this place is?” I asked, scratching at the back of my neck.
She shrugged. “Home sweet fucking home.”
“This is your home?” I said with a frown as I quickly tried to smooth the disgusted expression from my face.
“Yep,” she said, falling back onto an old ripped recliner I was sure someone had tossed out. “Got a problem with that?”
The stench of mildew and rust filled my senses, making me cover my nose with my finger.
“Nope,” I said, taking in the bits of her place I was able to see in the soft glow of the candle she had lit.
I didn’t have a cardboard box to call my own, much less an entire building.
Who was I to judge?
It wasn’t clean, and it smelled like old ass, but at least she had something over her head at night.
She stood from her recliner and moved to another broken down table to light yet another candle. When she did so, I was able to see more of the space. There wasn’t much there. Mainly a few broken pieces of furniture probably tossed out that she had managed to recycle and reuse.
“Hungry? I have some water and food,” she offered as she picked up her backpack and began to pull out the things she had stolen.
Candles, a lighter, and a few other items that would make her stay inside the abandoned building a bit easier.
“It’s not gourmet steak or anything like that, but it’s something,” she muttered, pulling a piece of rope from her bag and tossing it onto the table.
Obviously, she only took what she needed. I guess if you were going to rob someone, at least make it for things you needed to survive and nothing else.
Then she pulled out a handful of jewelry, destroying my new opinion of her. Jewelry wasn’t a necessity. Food and light were. Not that I could say anything. Just because I had lived in a nice place for the past few months didn’t mean I hadn’t ever been a thief.
Steal to survive.
I understood that, but living with the Jepsons had given me new insight on how the other half lived.
“I’m fine.” I turned away from the jewelry and moved deeper into her space.
She moved over to the opposite corner and grabbed a box of matches to light yet another candle. She tossed her now empty backpack down, and it landed with a thump on an old, flattened, piss-stained mattress. Stuffing bulged out a large rip down one side, and a few springs popped out of one corner, bent and broken.
It was her bedroom.
Ratted blankets were folded on a chair next to the mattress, and a black T-shirt looked to be drying from a rusty nail sticking out of the wall behind it. Clothes and bags littered the floor around her bed, but the rest I wasn’t able to make out.
“Holy shit. You really live here,” I whispered in shock.
She had someone managed to make the run-down place a semi-decent home. It wasn’t clean, and it smelled like hell, but it was warmer than outside and kept the rain, which I could hear slowly beginning against the tin roof, from getting inside.
“No,” she said. “I was just telling you that to impress you.”
She was all sarcasm wrapped in a monotone voice.
“Of course, I live here. Again, if you have a problem with that, you can get the fuck out.”
“Easy. I was just saying … it’s nice.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she mumbled under her breath. “Sit down.”
She kicked the back of an old chair, making it slide across the room toward me.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
Motioning to the chair, she repeated herself. “Sit. Down.”
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”
The chair was disgusting, and even though I needed a good shower, I wasn’t about to make it worse by adding whatever was smeared all over the seat of the chair to the back of my jeans.
She bent over another bag and dug through it. With her hands full, she stood and started my way.
“Oh, my God. You’re such a baby.” She chuckled. “I have Band-Aids.” She held up a box and shook her head in aggravation.
When I stared in confusion, she rolled her eyes and huffed. “For your arm? You hurt yourself coming in, didn’t you?”
At the mention of it, I lifted my arm and saw my blood had drenched the arm of my hoodie.
“I mean, if you want your arm to get infected and fall off, then suit yourself.”
She turned to drop the first-aid stuff back into her bag, but I stopped her.
“Okay,” I said, unzipping my jacket and peeling the bloody material from my arm.
I hissed in pain when the long-sleeved shirt I was wearing beneath the hoodie tugged at my wound.
She walked over to me, and her fingers moved over my shirt before she tugged open the hole there. Her fingers probed inside and onto my cut, and I flinched, hissing.
“Watch it,” I snapped.
She snickered. “Such a baby. Take off your shirt.”
“What? Why?”
“Will you stop being a fucking girl and take off your shirt? The light isn’t bright enough, and I can’t see anything through the hole in your sleeve.”
I grumbled, but I pulled my shirt over my head and off my body. The cold air of the room hit my naked skin like a sledgehammer, making me start to shiver.
The rustle of paper sounded as she opened bandages and soaked a clean rag in alcohol.
That would burn for sure.
“Where did you get all this stuff?” I asked.
“I’m a big collector.” She grinned at me. “Anything I might need, I take.”
“So you need all that jewelry over there?” I asked sarcastically.
“Nope, but I need the money I’ll get when I pawn it. A girl’s gotta eat.”
She moved close to me—the closest she’d gotten yet—and I was able to make her facial features for the first time. I had barely gotten a good look at her before, and all I could really see was covered in dirt and ripped clothes. But looking at her in the candlelight up close, she looked like she was about twelve.
Still, something about her was familiar.
“How old are you?” I asked.
She paused just before placing the alcohol soaked rag onto my cut.
“Why does it matter?”
I chuckled, suddenly feeling exhausted from our night.
“Now who’s being difficult?”
“I’m not being difficult. I’m just trying to figure out why you care how old I am.”
I yawned, feeling as though I hadn’t slept in days. “I don’t care. I’m curious. There’s a big difference.”
“I’m sixteen,” she answered.
“Really?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes, really.” She moved closer and wiped at the blood on my arm without touching the cut. “How old did you think I was?”
I shrugged, preferring the antiseptic smell of the alcohol over the rotting mildewed smell of her home. “I don’t know … twelve maybe.”
“Twelve?” She hissed in outrage before pressing the rag on my cut and making me yell out.
“Shit! That hurts!”
The sting settled into my arm as the alcohol cleaned up the dirt and blood from my arm.
“I don’t look fucking twelve.”
She was calmer as she peeled the soaked rag from my arm and blew at my cut.
“What the fuck?” I growled at her as the sting subsided.
“It needs to be cleaned so it doesn’t get infected.”
“The hell it does. You did that shit on purpose.”
“Prove it.” She snickered.
“Are you done?” I asked between my teeth, trying my hardest not to get annoyed with her.
She was doing me a favor, after all. She was right. The cut looked pretty bad, and the last thing I needed was for it to get infected.
No healthcare and all that.
“Done,” she said, covering my cut with several Band-Aids.
She tossed my shirt back at me, and I pulled it over my head.
“I’d better get going.”
“You can stay here,” she said quickly.
She avoided looking in my direction by picking up the wrappers from the bandages.
“What?”
“I mean, you don’t exactly look like you have a place to go. Do you even have a home?”
No.
I didn’t.
Not anymore.
But I wasn’t about to say that out loud.
She was a stranger, and honestly, she seemed a bit off her rocker, but she seemed to be doing the best she could. She was obviously in the same position as I was, and for some reason, that made her presence a bit comforting.
“It was just an offer. If you have some place better to go, then, by all means, leave.”
Despite her tone, which was all cold and annoyed, it was obvious she wanted me to stay.
She was alone too, and even though the night had been insane, I think she enjoyed having someone around.
I didn’t blame her.
It could get lonely.
“If I stay, where will I sleep? You don’t expect us to sleep together on that thing, do you?” I pointed at the piss-stained mattress.
While I didn’t mind the company, the last thing on my mind was fucking some sixteen-year-old on a gross mattress in an abandoned building.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I would be able to get it up with all the bullshit swimming around in my brain.
She made a face that matched the disgust I was feeling.
“Eww. Don’t be stupid. There’s another cot, and I have extra blankets. Besides, I don’t want to catch any of your crotch crickets. There’s no telling what kind of diseases you have.”
I laughed. “Crotch crickets? Really? And I don’t have any diseases. That’s a fucked-up thing to say.”
“Well, so was assuming I wanted to share a bed with you while making a disgusted face at the thought of it.”
I laughed again. “It’s not that. I’m just not into girls.”
“Okay, okay got it.” She looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
Realizing how my words sounded, I corrected her. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
“Hey, I’m not one to judge.” She held her hands up. “You can’t help who you love. I just thought since you were watching the chick through the window … but I guess it was the dude,” she continued.
“No. Fuck that asshole. That’s really not what I meant,” I repeated through my teeth.
She smirked. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
She moved around the room, pulling out another mattress and a stack of blankets. I watched from the side as she threw together a pretty comfortable looking spot for me far from her bed.
“I have water bottles and a place where you can brush your teeth over there. Unopened toothbrushes in the box beside the bucket. Are you sure you’re not hungry?”
For such a young girl, and considering her situation, she was extremely accommodating.
I smiled at her sarcastic way of helping me out.
“Nope. I’m fine.”
And I was.
Thanks to her breaking and entering earlier in the night, I was still pretty satisfied from the sandwiches and chips.
I brushed my teeth, and after days of not brushing my teeth with water, it was heaven. Once I had cleaned up a bit and was feeling better than I had in days, I fell back on the run-down mattress, which was surprisingly comfortable and didn’t smell, and stared up at the tin ceiling.
“Hey,” I said into the darkness.
“What?”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She fell silent for a long while, making me think she had fallen asleep.
“Victoria, but everyone calls me Vick.”
I knew I had to at least tell her my name, even if she didn’t ask. But at that moment, I was considering giving myself a new name. The problem was, no name seemed to fit all the bullshit I had gone through in my life.
I was me.
I was altered.
And I had learned many things along the ride I called life.
And while I could slowly feel myself become hollow and dark, I knew a spark of the boy I used to be still lingered deep inside. I couldn’t disrespect him that way.
“My name’s Sebastian,” I said, deciding I was okay with keeping my first name.
“I know,” she muttered. “I remember you.”
And then I remembered why she looked so familiar.
We had been housed together for a few weeks once, but she was taken away when her caseworker learned the man we were living with had been molesting her. Deloris pulled me out a day later, and I never saw the girl again.
I wanted to tell her I remembered her, too, but something told me she didn’t want to think about the past or that asshole’s hands all over her.
Instead, I rolled over on the strange mattress and slept for the first time in two days.