Prologue

You cracked me open

Sucked out my filthy core

Held my heart in your hands

And gave in when I begged for more

—Begging Again

“FUCKING HELL,” Forest spat as he fell back into the garbage again. The damned Dumpster’s sides were too tall. Or he was too short. Either way, he couldn’t get the hell out of the thing, and his arms were now shaking from the numerous times he’d tried.

The last thing he wanted was to be there in the morning. Someone would find him, and that someone would bring down the cops on his head. Cops meant social services, and that meant he’d be spending a good amount of time fighting to get out of plastered walls and plastic suburbia.

He’d rather die in the Dumpster.

He just didn’t know if he could try to get out again.

He hurt so damned much.

Mostly—this time—it was his face. It definitely was his jaw. Or maybe his cheek. Whichever. He just knew he hurt. He tried to remember who told him to always trust guys in a minivan, but Forest couldn’t recall where he’d gotten that information. Whoever it’d been, he’d kick the guy’s ass whenever he found him again.

Because apparently guys in minivans with those happy little sticker children on the back glass really didn’t want to pay for their hand jobs ahead of time.

Now Forest was in a Dumpster because minivan guy thought it would be fun to toss him in there when he was done beating the shit out of him, and he still didn’t have more than fifty cents on him.

Fifty cents did not go a long way when someone needed food. Even dog-food tacos cost two for a dollar, and tax ate up a nice piece of the money pie all on its own.

“Yeah, Mrs. Whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is, tell the principal I’m stupid,” Forest muttered as he glared at the Dumpster’s too-high edge. “Go hungry for a bit, bitch, and you learn math real fucking quick.”

He heard a door slamming—a heavy thick-sounding door—and he froze, hating himself for holding his breath because it was stupid, and doing so made his chest hurt. There were bruises there too, Forest was sure of it, and his back wasn’t doing too good either. From the familiar throbbing along his spine, he was going to be pissing blood as soon as he had to take a pee.

Something slippery under him gave, and Forest went down, biting his tongue when he hit the hard floor. He tasted blood—for the third or fourth time that night—and the light from the streetlamps spun, leaving trails of stars on his eyes.

Swallowing at the salty taste in his mouth, he sighed, “Fuck me.”

A SCRATCHING sound caught Franklin Marshall’s attention. It shouldn’t have. Not in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown where the rats grew fat and happy on some of the best cuisine from the other side of the Pacific. No, this sounded different than a rat or any other kind of vermin he normally found in the middle of the night when he was dumping out the empties from his recording studio.

This sounded oddly human. Not so much the scratching but the murmuring noises accompanying them.

And it was coming from the open Dumpster at the end of the alley.

The Sound was a legacy of a hippie co-op he’d once been a part of. As his former lovers shaved their beards, or armpits as the case may be, and drifted off to respectability, he’d remained behind, mixing records for young artists with more talent than money and certainly with less sense than most. A decade ago, he’d finally gotten sick of the restaurant next door changing hands more often than a five-year-old girl changed her clothes, and he’d bought the place out, called it Marshall’s Amps, and turned it into a lounging coffee shop where he could get a good cup of Big Island coffee whenever he wanted.

With the bad restaurant-roulette gone, the vermin population dropped dramatically, but every once in a while, something—or someone—came creeping around, and Frank was forced to move whatever or whomever it was along.

He was too tired to care. All Frank wanted was to toss the trash out and go pack a bowl.

And at three o’clock in the morning, rousting an undesirable from a Dumpster was sometimes quite dangerous, and Frank knew he wasn’t getting any younger. There was only so much more damage an aging hippie musician could take before he’d have to start begging one of the studio guys to come help him change a lightbulb because he’d gotten the shit kicked out of him by a crackhead.

He put the bottles into the recycle bin and set a box of leftover pizza on the café table he’d set up under his RV’s awning. Ever since the city banned smoking within spitting distance of anything or anyone, he’d given up living in the apartment over the studio and instead opted to toss his bag of bones onto a queen-sized mattress in an old motor home. Owning a building was a headache and a half, but owning a parking lot smack-dab in the middle of Chinatown more than made up for the hassle. Especially since he’d found he rather liked living in a quasi-Gypsy state.

It was a long, cold walk to the Dumpster. Set in the tiny alley between his building and the street-front strip of stores backing the private parking lot he’d parked his motor home on, he’d agreed to let the stores use it for their daily trash on the condition they kept it as clean as they could. Still, people had to eat, and they tossed their leftovers into the Dumpster without thinking to close the lid to keep scavengers out. Frank really hoped it was a possum like last time instead of some old man looking for something to eat.

He needed to go grocery shopping, and short of giving a homeless guy a half-eaten jar of peanut butter and a spoon, he had nothing in the RV for a handout. Sure, he could have sacrificed the pizza, but there was going to be a nice tight bowl of Tai before he crashed for the night, and his stomach might catch a second wind by then. Leftover pizza came in handy for second winds.

His sneakers squeaked on the rain-damp blacktop, and as Frank got closer, it became apparent his vermin didn’t walk on four legs and certainly wasn’t an old man. Not by a long shot. Instead, the Dumpster appeared to be hosting a different kind of scavenger—one in the form of a rather scrawny preteen boy.

And like the possum he’d scared the shit out of the last time, the boy froze to a dead stillness when he heard Frank approach, the faint lights from the street beyond catching his eyes and turning them a demonic gold when he cocked his head to spy on Frank over the lip of the battered green bin. If anything, the boy’s hiss certainly was more possum-ish and less grumbling homeless guy looking for aluminum cans to cash in.

Frank cleared his throat and called out to the boy, “Hey—”

That single word spurred the boy into action, and he grabbed at the Dumpster’s edge to hoist himself up. Either he was too short or the rhino covering the interior of the bin was too slick because the boy couldn’t get traction, and he slid back down the side, landing in the—hopefully—mostly paper trash around him.

“Fuck!”

As swear words went, it was an elegant growl—fluid and heartfelt with a tinge of bitterness to flavor its edges.

It also sounded way too world-weary to come from such a young boy.

Because as Frank drew even closer to the Dumpster, he caught sight of the golden hummingbird of a boy trapped inside of the steel bin and instantly took back a few of the years he’d given him.

But then he poured all of those years—and more—back into his assessment of the boy’s dark, liquid eyes.

As kids went, this one was scrawny—dirty-chicken scrawny with a side of bone—barely enough meat on his frame to do more than move his lanky limbs. A mop of tangled, dirty-blond hair covered most of the boy’s face, but what Frank could see straddled the line between delicate and masculine. Sitting on the verge of puberty, the kid should have been fuller in the face, even a bit chunky around the middle as his body stored up fuel for that impressive height jump from child to man.

When that jump came for this kid, his body wasn’t going to have anything to feed his growth. There was barely enough energy stored in his flesh to leave his skin supple, and Frank winced at the crackle of dry skin on the boy’s downy cheeks, a telltale sign the kid wasn’t eating.

As if the jut of his breastbone and rib cage through the thin fabric of his filthy T-shirt wasn’t enough of a clue.

There was a lot of dead in the kid’s gaze. Dead and suspicion, with more than a few ladles of fear. All of that was wrapped up tight with ribbons of challenging aggression. Frank would have been more cautious if it weren’t for the bruises blackening the right side of the kid’s face or his swollen lip turned deep purple where something had cut it.

Even in the wane of the streetlamp light, anyone with sense in his mind and eyes in his head could see the boy’d taken more than a few knocks from life on his chin. And from the chunk of enamel missing in one of his front teeth, he’d taken more than one blow to the mouth too.

“Do you need some help there, kid?” Frank called out loud enough for the boy to hear him over the rustle of paper and debris. The kid ignored him and continued to flounder, grabbing at the lip for another attempt.

Another struggle to get out of the bin and the boy hit bottom again, a flailing bundle of arms, legs, and curses strong enough to fuel Moses’s drive out of Egypt.

“Here, give me your hand,” Frank said, reaching into the bin. “You’re too short. You’re never going to get out of there without some help.”

“Fuck off, old man. I’m fine.” The kid growled and shoved as much of his ratted-together hair out of his face as he could manage.

“Okay, so you’re fine.” Leaning over the edge of the Dumpster opening, Frank looked down into the bin. Despite being a day after pickup, the Dumpster was fairly clean. “Tell you what. I’m going to toss in this wooden box for you to sit on while you think about how to get the fuck out of there and walk away. If you want to shut the lid when you’re out, that would be appreciated. I don’t like thinking someone’s cat might get into one of these things and get turned into a smashed meat pancake because it was open.”

He grabbed one of the discarded shelving boxes the clothing store left stacked up near the Dumpster and tossed it in. The kid jumped back, lifting his feet out of the trash. Glaring up at Frank, he pinned himself against the far wall, coiled up tight, as if waiting for an attack that only Frank knew would never come.

“Now, I’m going to head off to bed. There’s some leftover pizza I’m going to leave out on the table. Grab something to eat and go home, kid.” Large drops of water began to strike the Dumpster’s open lid, rumbling a deep percussion through the thick black plastic.

“Yeah, like I’m going to fucking eat something you leave out—”

“It’s up to you, kid.” Frank shrugged, scratching at his thick graying beard. “Just see if you can close the lid. If not, I’ll do it in the morning.”

He walked away. He had to. The boy’s eyes were burning into him, stealing past the lazy haze of his apathy toward children and his resolute stance on people getting a few handouts, but lifelines were something a person had to braid themselves. Walking away from the kid should have been easy. Even if he couldn’t shake off the wince of pain when the boy pressed his back into the Dumpster or the whimper when he’d landed on his back amid the piles of discarded plastic bags and tissues.

Frank put one foot in front of the other and entered the RV, closing the door behind him with a firm snick. After digging out the chartreuse and orange bong he’d gotten from a friend’s little girl, he sat down to pack in a bowl before he allowed himself to sleep.

Not that he thought he’d be able to sleep with the image of the boy’s haunting face floating behind his eyes.

He was drawing out his first gurgle of smoke when he heard the Dumpster cover slam shut, the lid hitting the bin’s rim with a singsong chime. He’d regret leaving the pizza, especially since he really didn’t think the kid would chance eating it. There’d been talk around the neighborhood of more than one street kid getting roofied and fucked after being given food by strangers.

Bad enough people poisoned cats and dogs. Did they have to go after the kids too? Frank thought as he finished up his hit. The rain struck, drowning out even the pull of his inhale through the bong’s skunky water, and Frank sighed, wondering if he was going to be hit with a raging case of the munchies just because all he had was peanut butter and possibly—now—soggy pepperoni pizza.

When Frank woke up in the early afternoon, the rain was still intent on sliding the city into the bay, and he smacked his lips, tasting a serious need for a toothbrush and possibly a cigarette. Just not in that order. Grabbing his smokes from the RV’s slender kitchen counter, he headed outside to shiver under the awning. Having forgotten about the boy, he stared at the empty box of pizza sitting on the café table outside of his door.

Two quarters on the lid were the only evidence left of the kid’s existence—that and a note scrawled on the inside of the box. The pen the kid used seemed like it was on its last legs or perhaps had higher aspirations on being a tattoo machine for all the ink it leaked. Still, the uneven scrawl was easy enough to read, even if it was a bit misspelled.

“Money’s all I got, but next time I’m around, I’ll give you a blow job, ’cause I took the rest of it and it was a lot. Thanks—Forest.”

“Well shit and Jesus Christ, kid.” Frank frowned as he read the note. “What the fuck has the world done to you?”

IT BECAME a game of cat and mouse—although Frank wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be the cat or the mouse, but it definitely was a game of some kind because not long after the Great Pizza Incident, he found himself lurking in the parking lot hoping the Dumpster kid would show his face again.

Frank left food out and got notes in return—sometimes accompanied by small trinkets, like a beaded bracelet or a Golden Gate keychain. He wore the bracelet, and the tiny metal icon now hung from the RV’s rearview mirror. After a month and a half of chasing the blond kid’s trail, Frank came out of the Amp’s back door with a bag of In-N-Out he’d meant to leave for the boy when he found himself staring at a very filthy Forest sitting at the same café table they’d exchanged food and notes on.

If anything, the kid looked even worse than the first time Frank’d seen him, and the overly hungry look on Forest’s face made his stomach clench in sympathy. There were frozen burritos he could microwave. The Double-Doubles in the bag were going to the kid, even if Frank had to shove them down Forest’s throat.

“Here,” Frank said, tossing the bag to the boy. “Have some dinner.”

“I don’t take handouts,” Forest growled as he dug into the bag and pulled out one of the thick cheeseburgers. “I told you I’d do you for the food.”

“I’m not into little boys.” Frank groaned when he eased into one of the chairs.

“But you keep giving me food,” the kid pointed out through a mouthful of meat and fries. “You gotta want something.”

“Maybe I just don’t want you out on the street.”

“Yeah right, because everyone’s just lining up to take other people’s kids. Whatcha want? Blow or hand?” Forest yanked at the air with his fist. “I’m better with my hand. I can’t throat it right, but I’m working on it.”

The kid’s words hit Frank hard, and he blinked, unsure about what to do with the lump in his throat. “Tell you what, kid. How’d you like a job? I need some help in the studio.”