Shay…
The industrial back door slammed shut behind me as I slung my backpack over my shoulder. I hoofed it out of the back alley, rounded the corner, and stepped into the far shadows of the side street before the drops of moisture leaked from my eyes. With a frustrated headshake and a slow, deep breath, I blinked the stupid tears away and set myself straight again.
You’re made of tougher stuff than this.
And I’d already begun to chameleon back to my old self: those newer distressed-leather mules, their open tops now tucked between curved fingers, had been exchanged for well-worn Converse; Loading Zone’s T-shirt had been tossed on the end of a bench in the locker room in favor of my standard threadbare basic black. By the time I walked the length of the building to its front, I’d downshifted my attitude to its core: wary, controlled, and indifferent.
Ahead to the right, a thick line of hopeful bar-goers buzzed with energy, cordoned off by black velvet ropes. When the end of the line blocked the entire cobblestone sidewalk, I hopped over the gutter and veered toward the centerline until side street met Main Street.
A gust of wind smacked me in the face as a glossy black Hummer barreled by. Its driver’s head was bent down, oblivious face illuminated.
“Slow down!” I chased after the idiot for a few steps, itching to throw a rock through his disappearing back window. But all I had was a pair of leather shoes I had other plans for. “And stop texting,” I grumbled, realizing what that bright bluish glow had been.
Furious at the parade of ignorant people with no regard for how their selfish actions affected others, I continued across the street, out of the exhaust-wake belched from Mr. Entitled Hummer. Once on the far corner—a respectable distance from both of my offenders—I shifted my glare from dimming taillights up toward the building I’d just left, to the flickering glow behind windows that arched two stories above the line of bar customers waiting outside. Then my heart softened as I took in the entire grand structure. There she stood in all her restored splendor, my ghostly factory building, vibrating with new life. Far different than the shell she’d been: broken windows framed for years by sooty bricks now gleamed, whole once again.
Back then, I’d hoped to see her shine one day.
“You do,” I whispered, grateful that if I couldn’t be a part of it, at least I’d been able to witness her becoming something better than her former self, beautiful in her unique way. And she’d do so with a loving family of people dedicated to her welfare. “Sorry that it also couldn’t be me.”
Anger fired hot in my belly again at the reason. Ben.
For the second time in my life a selfish man had tried to take something from me, stomping on my naïve dreams with a crushing boot. The first time? I hadn’t seen coming. Eight years later, a little older and plenty wiser, I had dared to hope I could have something more, had trusted that I had more control this time, could prove my worth.
“That’s what you get for trusting again.” Burned.
I spent a handful of slow breaths memorizing the scene beyond my reach, erasing every good thing that I’d experienced inside, replacing fluffy dreams with my harsh reality. Like every other night that had come to mean anything to me, I stood on the outside. But I stood far out on that edge stronger for it, making a bigger difference where it mattered most.
Then I struck out in the opposite direction. “Got better things to do tonight anyway.”
And thanks to Ben, not much time to do them.
September’s late-night air kissed coolness over my skin, but I welcomed the splash of reality. Ben had done me a favor, actually. No point in getting too comfortable in a world that had never made any sense. Better to stay on my own, take care of myself. Safer that way.
After a dozen blocks at a brisk pace, the familiar sprawling park that had become home base for me over the years opened up. I eased my pace, then stopped and spun in a slow circle, getting my bearings again as I inhaled a deep breath.
The crisp air smelled of freedom spiced with a hint of salt, the ocean saying hello with the help of an onshore breeze from the Atlantic a few blocks over my left shoulder. Farther behind me, Loading Zone pulsed some unheard beat, out of sight.
Out of mind.
Dead ahead, across dozens of neighborhoods and hundreds of lives, lay where I’d come from so many years ago: the past, and yet my present, the very thing that made me who I’d become.
Farther north and stretching inland? Philadelphia, glimmering with equal parts beauty and danger, steeped in history. She wore triumphs proudly and scars deeply. Both could be seen at once to someone able to see, someone who knew.
I turned my back on the bright glare of the city, like I’d done long ago when I’d been unwilling to get sucked down into the gutter like forgotten trash, and jogged to the bench in the center of the park. I dropped the shoes on the grass, and as I’d done on a million other nights, I leapt up, planted a foot on the wood-slatted seat, a second at the bend of its wrought iron handrail, and launched onto the leading edge of the massive boulder that guarded the base of an ancient rock outcropping. Then I scrabbled up familiar gritty surfaces, fingers into a crevice here, toes into weathered footholds there, until I reached the top.
Pools of light from streetlamps at the perimeter of the park fringed my vision, but I stared off into the distant north where the Appalachian Trail bordered. Old-growth forest waited there, protective and life-giving. I’d spent many long days there over the years, pretending I was one of Peter’s Lost Boys. Not Tinkerbell. Never Wendy. I didn’t have magic. Or a family. And after everything I’d ever believed in had been shattered, I didn’t want either. I needed real. The truth as I determined it to be. That’s all I’d wanted then.
“All I want now,” I whispered. “True. Real.”
I held out my arms to the darkness of the night sky, rotating to take in the small town of Glenhaven, my haven, and reminded myself who I was, what I’d been shaped into. With knowing eyes, I scanned over my streets, watched a throng of rich drunk tourists stumble by, imagined urbanites tucked into warm beds, the new generation gentrifying old neighborhoods.
What had first been jealousy, as I peered out at the entitled world from my leafy forest hideout, had soon turned into curiosity. Until the possibilities of what someone invisible to the world could do slowly transformed into an obsession, much like a religion. Before long, hiding in the shadows, and what I’d learned to do when I darted out of them, had become second nature...as easy and right to me as breathing.
Because I hadn’t just imagined myself a Lost Boy in those woods. As I’d grown hungry, when desperation had hit—and thankfully luck had shined down on me with a few well-placed guardian angels—I’d dreamed of more...and then made it happen.
Destiny had met determination.
A gust of wind rustled through the leaves of the nearest tree, dipping a young branch shaped like a perfectly curved bow into my sightline. I laughed and nodded up and out at Mother Nature. “I remember.” Back then, I hadn’t actually fashioned a bow and arrow, but I had pretended. And I had stolen, for real.
“First for myself, then for others,” I murmured the mantra, my code, as I worked my way down the outcropping, the boulder, the park bench, picked up my shoes, then started off across the grass.
People were waiting on me; I had connections to make. Would’ve been after my shift and with my own money from the tip-out for the night. But shit happened—tonight Ben happened—and I got over it and moved on. After years of the repeated lesson, I’d gotten used to the first and perfected the rest.
Two turns down adjoining alleys brought me to the back of a closed bookstore. Under the protection of a weathered awning—beside an empty bistro set where bookshop employees took their breaks and a rectangular planter filled with flowers whose petals had closed for the night—a pile of dingy jackets topped by a wide-brimmed hat leaned against a brick wall.
I scuffed the soles of my sneakers on the gravelly pavement, claimed an open spot a respectable couple of feet from the jacket-pile, then planted my butt against the wall and slid downward until dry jeans pockets hit damp ground. The layer of grime and soot I’d just painted my backside with didn’t faze me. Matched my tarnished soul.
“Cold tonight.” I rubbed my hands together, ignoring the familiar stench of uncleanliness.
The jacket-pile stirred to life, its hat brim lifting a bare inch. “Same as evah.” The deep timbre of her voice croaked out from parched lips.
“Lookin’ warm, Charlene.” Not Charlie, or any other nickname. When someone gave me their name, it was sacred. And nothing gave me or anyone else the right to twist it into something different. That right belonged to its owner, no one else. “Plenty of jackets.” Four, if I’d counted correctly. Every last one needed for the scrawny frame I knew hid somewhere beneath them.
“Hand-me-down,” she explained. One of them, a thicker blue fleece whose cuff extended beyond her fingertips, she’d graciously received from me. The tattered others she’d collected from free piles at thrift stores. The hat brim dipped an inch lower, hiding any traces of a face behind a sliver of shadow. “What we lucky ta git in ah sucky world.”
A weary smile tugged my lips at her common phrase. And as was our habit in these last few years, I finished her statement—one I’d been reminded of not more than an hour ago. But with Charlene, I devolved into our local street-talk, her language, the only way she’d listen to me. “Scraps o’ joy ‘tween all da sufferin’.”
And that’s what my visits had become for her and for me. A gift of hidden joy, of solace in a human connection.
Balancing what I’d brought farther onto the pads of each fingertip, I stretched my arm far in front of me before drifting the leather mules closer to her, slow and deliberate. “Brough’ ya somet’n.” I settled the shoes onto the empty pavement between us, a little closer to her than to me, but still in the neutral zone, safe. “Got no use for ’em anymo’.” The truth, but she needed to hear it. Pride prevented her from accepting a hand-me-down any other way.
Time ticked by without further words. The mountain of jackets remained motionless. I waited. Distant traffic sounds rumbled a couple of times, marked by an engine accelerating, its bass tones growing in decibels as it neared, then fading away once again.
After the third passing car’s exhaust disappeared, so did the shoes. I’d been looking away at the time. How our exchanges had always been. And what Charlene needed? I respected.
No thanks came, but she didn’t have to. We took care of each other, her, me, and dozens of others hidden in the shadows of our city-forest. The gratitude was understood, humbled us—made us strong.
The shoes would never be worn by her, whether or not they were a good fit. They were worth their weight in gold for a barter of her choosing, maybe for something she needed immediately, or a trade for another link in the barter-chain for some unknown thing she’ll need in the future.
“Don’t got none mo’.” Nothing more than shoes. Asshole Ben had seen to that. “Not yet.”
“I be a’ight. Fret none on me.”
I did anyway. She was one of mine. And we took care of our own.
“Hit Tony’s, latuh. I give’m da drop, if I can.” Hadn’t missed one. No lost bartending job would make me start now. Later bought me a couple of hours. And I would do everything I could to provide for the only family I could handle, the one who never asked a thing of me—never took. A situation I controlled. Because I was the one that provided.
I waited another full minute, just in case Charlene had another pearl of wisdom, or request. None came.
The hat brim settled back down onto the peak of jackets piled over bent knees. A low raspy grunt sounded. I’d been acknowledged and dismissed.
With a nod, I flexed my thighs, planted my hands low on the cold bricks behind me, and pushed up from the ground while shouldering my backpack once again. Then I headed off farther down the alley toward the next interconnected street on my habitual route.
A short side street, another turn, then an informal alley created by two hedges between houses dumped me out onto the beginning of the street that edged my beloved park, only four blocks beyond where I’d begun.
On the sidewalk ahead, stood a guy about my age, unofficially guarding a storefront whose wide plate glass windows had gone dark for the night to hide a vintage music store that boasted the largest collection of vinyl on the eastern seaboard. The guardian watched over more than the neighborhood’s cultural relic, so permanent a fixture in that same place, in his same bent position, I often imagined him made of stone, immovable unless he wanted to be.
And he wanted to be, coming to life by straightening his lanky frame the moment he spotted me. Because we were the same, the keepers of our streets. He jerked his chin up the slightest fraction at me. “Lookin’ good, Shay.”
Anyone else would’ve thought it was a pickup line. Which was fine, we liked our camouflage.
His eyes darted down the street behind me, then shifted to a squint as he turned his head and scanned the path he knew I’d yet to take.
“Same as, Lando.” Landon served as eyes and ears for our network. Informal security for the record store, for me, and for anyone else from our crew who went out of their way to cross his path for his nightly report.
My gaze drifted across the street toward a lamppost on the corner, frequently occupied but vacant at the moment. “Chrissy okay?”
“As evah.” He shrugged.
Not much we could do for her. She’d fallen beyond our reach. Had gotten snatched up a couple of years back by a pimp that governed her. She didn’t pick up johns on our street; the territory this close to the park didn’t belong to her or her pimp, it belonged to us. And we kept it a prostitute-free zone. Always had been, at least for the time I’d made it my home. And as long as I pulled breath in my lungs, it always would be. We’d become a safe haven for the lost, a defended place where forgotten souls could heal and flourish the way we chose to, as best as we were able to.
But even though she’d left the safety of our territory, she religiously visited the pool of light under that streetlamp at least once every night, in full view of Lando. As if to say to her former world See me. I’m here. I’m still alive.
We couldn’t say anything back. She didn’t belong to us anymore, by her choice. No parting letter, no explanation. I’d guessed at what’d happened, as way of explanation to myself when nothing else made sense, that Chrissy had needed more than our invisible existence. Flying under the radar, right under the noses of a society that didn’t have room for us, that overlooked us, hadn’t been enough for her. She’d needed attention, someone’s affection—even if it wasn’t real, even though her body had been bought, even if her soul paid the higher price. Too high a price.
Any care I’d had for Chrissy had been severed at the why of it. Because nothing would ever make me surrender control of my body. No one would ever again get the chance pull me under. I’d rather die first.
“Tony’s?”
I blinked at the question that brought me back from the mental whirlpool. Lando shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, his penetrating gaze on me. The question he asked of me wasn’t for him, even though he benefited from the answer just like the rest of us; the information allowed him to play telegraph with every other soul who’d yet to wander by.
“Latuh.” I gave him a sharp nod, determined.
Then I turned and continued on with my nightly patrol path.
But different than any other night, an unusual urgency began to buzz through my veins, a sudden need to touch base with my roots drowning out all else.
My mentor waited.
“I’m coming,” I whispered the promise to myself, resigned to my fate.
On my streets. Where I belonged. No place for people like Ben.