Snow and the Wishing Well (Fallen Tales series)

Chapter 24

Chapter 24
Sarah
"Don't shut the doors! We have nowhere else to go!" we chanted outside the doors of the homeless shelter.
I had rounded up as many people as I could to come and make a stand. Nearly everyone that came to the shelter every night were here.
Billy stood next to me shouting and chanting, punching the air as we did.
"Don't shut the doors! We have nowhere else to go!"
On the other side of me, stood two children. A boy and a girl, probably about five. Screaming and shouting just as loudly as me. Their mother sat on the pavement not far from them, chanting every second word but soon gave up. She was pale and shook as the icy winds blew.
Moving away from my post, I walked over to her and rapped my sleeping bag around her.
As she went to reject, I quickly said, "You need it more than I do!"
I had to yell over the chanting that I had started.
She nodded accepting the sleeping bag. I stood up and walked back over to Billy considering that she might not have the energy to be able to speak over the crowd.
"Don't shut the doors! We have nowhere else to go!"
I was surprised to see Steve here though. He leaned against the building walls not chanting. But he was here.
I looked around at the people around me. As the wind blew strongly, the promise of snow growing and growing, they stayed and chanted. The women and men that had children didn't leave in search of a shelter to save them from the coldness. Which improved my opinion of them. These people are strong and brave. Stronger than someone I knew.
I shook the thought of Justin away. I couldn't help but feel disappointed by him. Surely he knew how much these people meant to me. That if the homeless shelter did close, that I would also loose a home. A place that had given me bed on the coldest nights of my life.
My breath was stolen away when I thought of that morning. His handsome face looming over me as he woke me. And his eyes. How I could get so lost in them so easily.  
My thoughts were thrown away when two cop cars pulled up in front of us, with flash lights. Instead on stopping, our voices grew louder.
"Don't shut the doors! We have nowhere else to go!"
The volume had become so overwhelming and loud that the captain had to get out a microphone.
"You have not right to be here! You have to leave!" The captain yelled through the microphone. But we did not move.
"If you don't not move now! We will have to use force!" he warned.
But we didn't listen.
To the other cops that were there, he nodded. The four of them moved in on us, waving their arms at us as if we were cattle.
"Come on! Move!" they yelled.
But we didn't.
When one took Billy's arm, the adrenaline kicked in. The anger from everything that I had ever been put through the past two years came flooding to my mind. I snapped.
"Don't touch him!" I yelled pushing the officer.
I lost all control then. I must have hit the officer serval times before I felt another take my arms, pulling them behind my back and shoving my body against the cop car.
"You have the right to remain silent. If you do say anything, it can be used against you in the court of law. You have a right to have a lawyer present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you if you so desire."

I sat in a cold cell at the police station.
I heard the other officers muttering to themselves, talking about work and sometimes their personally life. Officer Blue-eyes' wife was going to cook him his favourite dinner tonight and Officer too-much-grease-in-hair's daughter was in a play tonight and he was hoping to get off early otherwise his wife would never forgive him. And probably neither would his daughter. So that left me with the Officer that I had 'assaulted'.
I got up from the bed and walked over to the cell door, wrapping my hands around the bars.
"You can't keep holding me here," I said loud enough so that he could hear me from around the corner where the front desk was. I heard his footsteps before I saw him. He seemed like a decent guy.
"You assaulted an officer, that's breaking the law," he told me.
"Well you assaulted my friend, elderly friend by the way. I say that's breaking the law."
He chuckled as if amused.
"We've also had reports of you stealing candy bars at a number of corner shop -."
"I have no idea what your –."
"- And breaking into St Vincent de Paul clothes bins-."
"You can't prove that I -."
"And even reports of prostitution. I say that's also breaking the law."
I bit my lip not knowing what to say. I had run out of options. My bad choices catching up with me.
Just as he started to walk away from me, I called, "don't I get a phone call!"

Justin
"What the hell were you thinking? Stealing, breaking and entering, assaulting an officer!" I yelled walking out of the police station with Sarah following behind me.
"What was I supposed to do? Let him push Billy like that," she argued.
"And what about the stealing, the breaking and entering?"
She scoffed, "it wasn't breaking and entering, I climbed into the bins. How else do you expect me to have clothes! And no one was using them."
"And the stealing?" I asked.
"I can't survive on air, Justin!"
"Survive, survive. You survive by sleeping with men for money, your words," I said remembering that was what she told me when I found out about that, "what do you do with the money?"
She froze. She looked as though she was actually biting her tongue so that she didn't blurt out the next thing in her mind.
"What, Sarah, what? Say it," I told her.
"I can't," she struggled.
"Why, because I wouldn't understand," that was it. I was over it. The hiding, the lying. I wanted the truth, or it was over, "God, Sarah. You are so frightened that someone may actually care about you. You are so incapable of trusting someone, you -."
"Well maybe, I have reasons for not being able to trust!" She said bitterly as tears formed in her eyes.
"Have I?" I asked. She froze again, "Have I given you a reason for you not to trust me."
Her silence gave me the answer.
"I'm done," I stated, dropping my arms to my side.
"What?"
"I'm done, Sarah! I can't keep doing this. I can't be there when you need me and then thrown back into your cupboard when you don't. I'm done."
I turned and started to head in the other direction.
"You're done, just like that!" She yelled after me.
I stopped and turned to face her. I tried to pretend that I didn't see the pain that was spread across her face, the fear in her eyes.
"You're not giving me any reason to stay."
I waited to see if she would. She didn't.
I turned and started to walk down the dark street. I heard her groan in frustration but chose to ignore it. The wind blew and I knew it wouldn't be long till it started to snow. Anger and frustration burned inside of me all the way back to the hotel.
As much as that anger and frustration was about her, it was about me too. I had turned my back on her. Something I thought I would never do. And here I was thinking that she could possibly be...that I could maybe be –
I shook the thought away.