❝I'll wrap up my bones
and leave them
out of this home,
out on the road.❞
— Still, Daughter
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SEVEN
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"Will you please calm down?" Emma had been assuring Mr. Scaredy Pants over here that no one was gonna deliberately mug him inside a halfway house. They'd wait for him to be at least two blocks over.
Kidding!
She didn't say that, nor would the guys there actually do anything remotely close to that—not now, at least. They were pretty good guys, still unsteady on their own but they were trying.
"I am calm. I'm as calm as a fucking potato. See? Calm. Calm. Calm!"
Midway through his very public rant, half the bus turned to gawk at him and a very apologetic Emma. She was waving her arms at everyone, chanting sorrys left and right.
She pointed at Luke and said loud enough for the whole bus to hear, "First date."
"Uh-" Luke started to protest but was silenced by Emma's glare, followed by a flirty wink.
Oh, she was milking this! Emma figured out early on that Luke wasn't one for affection, much less a very public one, but she knew too well that Luke would never want to be in any sticky situation, so he'd take all the help he can get. If they were held at gunpoint, he'd mostly likely hide behind her back. At least, he was honest about it.
They got off at Red Oaks station and made their way to the halfway house. Unlike most halfway houses which specialized on different kinds of addiction, this particular one was more akin to a next step housing. They took in victims of abuse, young addicts unable to afford or get through rehab, recently released inmates who find living on their own too tempting or nostalgic. To locals, it was more popularly called as the "shelter for the trapped".
It was a fitting name because most people who occupy their rooms felt trapped at one point in their lives: trapped by an abusive husband or parent, trapped by his addiction to heroine or literally trapped by the bars of a cell. Some of them still are.
Organized chaos filled the halls. There were teenagers loitering the main entrance, some 30-something men dressed in construction clothes seated near the coffeemaker, a few older fellows reading and a clump of people in what looked like an arts and craft room.
Emma led Luke to a small office off the main rooms. He could hear laughter and people talking inside. Any normal person, like you and me, would find this normal, but this got Luke's heart racing. He genuinely thought Emma was gonna sell his body parts, so he checked the hall for any possible exits. There were none.
"Emma, where ar-"
"Late again. chachi!"
I don't think Luke has ever been more happy to hear a familiar voice ever in his life.
"Jay? Wha-"
"He volunteers here every other weekend." Emma whispered to him.
She was now motioning everyone in the room to come with her. As they were walking towards what Luke recalled as the art and crafts room, he turned to Jay and asked, "So people here actually listen to her?"
Jay nodded mindlessly. He was busy reading Will Grayson and didn't even bother to look at Luke to respond.
"What the hell could she possibly tell them that they'd find interesting? Gore?"
Jay looked at him, a blank expression on his face, and forced a laugh when he said, "Patience man, you'll see."
The room was now full capacity— the construction workers from earlier, heavily pierced teenagers, tattooed bulky men and a few scrawny high school kids. Everyone found a place to sit and was looking at Emma when Luke and Jay finally caught up with her. There was something about her when she was sat on a stool, waiting to tell a story. People are just drawn to her; it was almost instinctive. Luke understood this now. This wasn't something anyone could fake or even learn. She just had it.
An eager silence settled as Emma prepared to begin.
"If it was a picture, people may consider it art. It may stop them in their tracks to admire the framed still of a girl, no more than 16, with a gaunt face, pale skin and a blank stare. They'd call her haunting and beautiful, but she was real; so to them, she didn't matter at all.
Every day that girl sat by her broken down window and admired a sweet old couple, John and Mary, across the street. She reminded them of colors—very familiar colors.
Red
Red were the roses John picked from his garden and gave his wife, Mary, every Monday. He said it was important to remember how it started. It started on a Monday.
Blue
Blue was the color of berries Mary put on John's pancakes for breakfast. She was allergic, but she loved him enough to compromise.
Purple
Purple was the color of John's raggedy magician's cape which he used to wrap Mary's shivering arms with as they sat on the lawn.
Yellow
Yellow is the bright afternoon sun when they took their walks to the park, hand-in-hand and sporting a smile.
Brown
Brown was the color of the tree trunk their names were clumsily carved on. She was 7, and he was 9 when they sealed their promise with a heart on a bark.
She wondered if she'll ever meet them, John and Mary. They seemed nice enough; enough to make her forget why those colors were so familiar.
Red
Red was the color of rose petals painted on the girl's skin. These roses she didn't like; she'd much rather have the roses on the other side, but they would never let her out."
"I don't get it. Why those colors?" Luke asked, bewildered.
He looked around to check if anyone else was as confused as he was, but no one else seemed to even want to ask why. They looked somber, like a cape of melancholic gray clouds swept over the room and gifted them with a steady downpour of introspection.
Jay tapped his shoulder lightly and motioned for him to move closer.
"These colors," he said as he lifted his shirt. There it was, all the colors: blue, purple, brown, yellow and red, smeared all over his exposed skin. It could almost pass as graffiti had Luke not known what it was.
Bruises.
Bruises from a week ago, from two weeks ago, from a month ago.
Suddenly, Luke didn't wanna know about the colors.
He especially didn't want to know how she knows.
YOU ARE READING
In Her Words
General Fiction"When he first heard her, he knew. She was his bestseller." Before there were great stories, there were only words. Luke's were smart and eloquent but hollow. It was nothing like Emma's story, bleak and awkward, but honest to a fault. This is a comi...
