Pathetic Lies ~ Mirna
The bus comes to a hard stop, and I rock back and forth in my seat. Tequana grabs my arm to keep me put, while all the passengers shuffle past to exit the bus. Drunks, bums, crack heads, the usuals of the community bus crowd.
I need someone to tell me we don't fit in here, but the only people who ride this bus are the people who have to. I guess this is where we belong, so why ask for a lie?
"'Kay, go." Tequana nudges me, and I grab my bag and hurry down the aisle. The bus driver turns sideways to watch us. Why do we have to be last off, with the creepy driver?
He gives us one of those sleazy grins. My heart pounds. Get me out of here! I squeeze by and jump down the stairs and out of the bus, which hisses, squeals, and pulls away. The line to the soup kitchen is so long it's trailing outside of the building, all the way down the block. My stomach twists with hunger. I pull my bag onto my shoulder and heave a sigh. It's going to be a long wait.
"Hey, Miri." Tequana points across the street at a McDonald's. "Feel like a hamburger?"
"Uh, we don't have any money."
"But all we need is a bit of luck, and some acting skills." She tilts her head. "Come on, I'll show you."
I follow her to the crosswalk, across the street, and inside the building. Holy cow, it smells good.
Instead of going up to the line, Tequana turns and goes through the bathroom door. I follow her in. She goes up to the sink and starts digging through her bag for something.
I go into the first stall to pee, then unzip my bag, pull out the empty bottle of pills to read the label. Dilantin: 30 mg, Take one capsule three times daily with food or water.
I don't know why I kept this stupid bottle. I ran out of pills last night. If something hasn't happened by now, then maybe I never needed them. Maybe the seizure was just another lie, like the rest of my life. All one big pathetic lie.
I toss the pill bottle into the tiny trashcan on the side of the stall, flush, and go back out to the sink to wash my hands. Tequana looks like a completely new person with her hair up in a ponytail and a baseball cap. She's wearing a nice clean short-sleeved shirt. She takes off her old dirty jeans and puts on a clean pair that doesn't have holes or frayed edges.
"What's with the wardrobe change?" I ask.
"This is my poor stranded middle-schooler getup."
"Um, okay?"
"Here." Tequana holds out a brush and a hair tie. "Fix your hair. Got any clean clothes?"
I take the brush. "Not really."
She digs inside her bag as I run the brush through my long hair, picking out the snags. Lucky me; my hair is so dark it almost looks clean just from putting it up into a ponytail.
Tequana hands me a light blue t-shirt, and I pull it on over my old dirty tank top. She nods at me. "Should work. Just follow my lead."
We grab our bags and go for the lines. Tequana waits for a while, and then chooses one of the longer lines. We get behind a lady in a nice leather jacket. She looks about forty, well off.
The line moves pretty fast. The lady in front of us orders something to go and stands in front of her receipt on the counter.
Tequana steps up. "I want a number two, large, and a sundae to go." She jerks her head toward the guy at the register.
"Um, I'll have the same thing," I say, following her lead.
The man rings us up and says, "Fourteen sixty-two."
Tequana puts her hands in her pockets, digs in her purse, checks her pockets again, then goes for her bag, making a big show as she searches for money we both know she doesn't have.
"No way ... uh." She looks through her purse again. "Did I give you the twenty my mom gave me?" She turns to look at me.
"No." I wrinkle my forehead. Her mom? Hah, that's a good one. So, the act is to pretend to lose our money? Then what?
"Oh, god, I can't find it."
The man behind us clears his throat loudly.
"You sure you don't have it?" Tequana asks.
"T, you didn't give anything to me."
"Go check the bathroom for it?"
I nod and go back to the bathroom. I pace around the tiny room twice, then go out and walk back up to her. "Well?" she asks.
"It wasn't in there."
"Do you have any other way to pay?" the man behind the counter asks.
"No, that was all I had," Tequana says. "My mom dropped us off. She won't be back for two hours." She is doing a great job of acting frantic. "God, what are we gonna do?"
"If you can't pay then move it," says the man behind us.
"Wait."
I turn to see the lady with the leather coat.
"I'll pay for you," she says with a smile.
"Really?" Tequana says. "Oh, thank you!"
The lady hands a twenty to the cashier. "Don't you worry about it." She smiles. Her food comes up, and she takes her change, picks up her bag, and walks out the door.
Wow, Tequana is a genius! I smack her hand and she smacks me back, playing on my hand like a gangster chick.
Our food comes up on the counter in a to-go bag. Tequana grabs the bag, and I grab the sundaes and follow her out the door.
"T, you are so awesome!"
"It doesn't always work. You have to pick the perfect target and—" she snaps her finger, "Free lunch."
"I'm so lucky you're here. I'd be so lost without you," I say. It's true too. When I ran away from my newest foster home, I was this close to getting caught when I met Tequana in a park, and we've been like this ever since.
"Yeah, you would be." She smiles.
"You're my best friend."
Tequana tilts her head and smirks at me. "You're my best friend too."
Suddenly I can't see anything but white out of my right eye. The loud roar of the traffic fades out. All I can hear is this low buzzing noise, like the hum of a radio turned down too low to figure out what you're listening to. The sundaes slip out of my hands and splatter onto the sidewalk.
For some reason, as the white spills over everything, all I can think about is how much it sucks that I didn't even get to taste my ice cream.
Jane Doe ~ Deb
"Whoa!" A deafening crash breaks the calm serenity of the ER.
I hurry around the corner toward the emergency doors. Frank is halfway through the doors with a gurney leaning against the wall, about to topple over. A girl is trying to slide out of the loose straps holding her on the gurney.
I rush forward to help. The girl sees me coming and kicks out—her shoe catches me right in the chest.
I grab at my breast. "Can we get some help here?" I yank the gurney away from the wall. She kicks again. I dodge, grab her feet, and pin her to the gurney.
"No!" She screams, arches her back, and claws Frank's arms. She's hysterical—what happened to her? "Tee!" She takes a quivering breath. "Tee, where are you?"
Rick runs up, takes the girl's wrists and pins them down.
"No! Get off me!" She swears and spits in Rick's face.
My God, this girl couldn't be more than ten or eleven years old. What a mouth! Suddenly it's impossible to ignore the state of her—dirty clothes, smudged face, oily hair, and she smells like a port-o-potty. "What happened to her?" I ask.
"Not sure," Frank says. "The caller was a bystander who found her seizing on the side of the road, completely alone—"
"Liar!" the girl shouts. She gets one of her legs free and knees me in the chin. I instinctively back away from her. "Where did you put my stuff?!" she shouts. "Where's Tee?"
Rick drops her arms and grabs her legs instead, holds them together, and pushes them down.
"There was nothing with you, there was no one with you, when we found you," Frank tells her. His voice is loud, to carry over her screaming.
The girl goes limp. The adrenaline wore off and the exhaustion from the seizure finally caught up to her. "Bitch," she says under her breath. Just like that, she's out like a light.
Lacey runs up. "What have we got?"
Frank tightens the gurney straps and says,"Postictal Jane Doe with an attitude."
Sapphire Eyes ~ Jim
I take the automatic door into the waiting room. It's practically full to bursting with the typical assortment of patients needing emergency care. They're sure having a busy day.
"Deb, Jim's here," Lacey shouts. She doesn't look up from the computer on the nurse workstation counter, which seems to be mesmerizing her.
I put the takeout food on the counter-top. The computer screen is filled with faces of kids.
"What's that?" I ask.
"Database of missing children," Lacey replies without looking up. "Deb!" She shouts again, but this time she sounds excited. "Take a look at this!"
I look around, but I don't see Deb anywhere. Then I catch a glimpse of what Lacey found. Staring back at me from the computer screen is a girl, maybe eleven or twelve years old, with deep brown hair, a freckled face, and a genuine big grin complete with somewhat crooked front teeth. Her eyes grab at me. Bright clear blue crystals. Sapphire eyes. Her name is Mirna Conlins.
Lacey is still looking at the computer screen. "My God," she says under her breath. She turns to me. "It says here this girl went missing ... two weeks ago."
I let out a low whistle. On the streets for two weeks? She's only a child!
"Deb will need to call child social services." Lacey leaves the workstation to go on a search for Deb.
I grab the takeout bag and follow after her, down the hallway. "Mind if I tag along? Deb and I have a lunch date."
Lacey nods, checks a couple rooms, and continues on down the hall. Eventually, Lacey goes into a room, and I spot Deb before the door closes.
I inch my way up and look through the window in the door. I recognize the girl on the bed, even though she hardly resembles the girl from the computer database of missing kids. She's there, though, somewhere underneath the grime and the frown. She looks ready to bolt.
Lacey flits out of the room and disappears back down the hallway. Then Deb comes out. "Jim!" She grabs my arms, happy to see me. "You'll have to wait a second." She gazes back into the room. "Do me a favor?"
"Sure," I say.
"I need to go call social services, but I'm worried this girl is going to make a run for it. Can you ... ?"
"Watch her?" I ask. Deb nods. "I'll make sure she doesn't take off," I say.
"Great! I'll be right back, okay?" Deb spins and disappears around the corner toward the main desk. As soon as she's out of sight, I go through the door.
"What do you want?" the girl says.
Right, I'm obviously not a doctor or nurse. Maybe she thinks I'm a social worker. With my khakis and polo shirt I could pass for one. I probably should have stayed in the hallway, but now that I came in, I feel like I can't leave. I put my food on the chair and step up to the bed. "Hi, I'm Jim Horton." I hold my hand out.
Mirna eyes my hand. "What the hell is that?"
"This is a handshake. Well, not yet anyway. That would require another hand. Currently it's a wannabe handshake." I look down at my hand and back up at the girl.
"Why would I shake hands with you?" She crosses her arms.
"Because that's what people do when they meet someone."
"Yeah, whatever," she says under her breath. I focus on her eyes until she holds her hand up.
I take her hand and shake. "It's nice to meet you ... ?" I cock my head and raise my eyebrows.
"Like I'd actually tell you my name." She knocks my hand away and eyes my bag of food. She can smell the roast beef.
I step back and glance down at the chart at the foot of the bed. On the line where her name should be, someone quickly scrawled Jane Doe. And below that, where the description of the symptom belongs, is the word postictal.
That means this girl had a seizure. Only twelve years old, on the run for two weeks, and on top of all that, she has epilepsy too? Living with seizures is bad enough—I would know. I can't even imagine a life of foster care and homelessness added to the mix.
"That's too bad," I say casually. "If you don't want to tell me your name, I'll just have to give you one. Hmm ..." I gaze into those sad gray eyes. Where has the fire gone? "How about Sapphire."
"Sapphire?" She practically spits the word in my face.
"Sure, Sapphire, like the blue in your eyes. Sapph for short."
"That is lame."
"Too bad. You gave away your right to complain the second you chose to let me pick your name for you."
The girl scoffs. "What'd you say your name was? Jimmy?"
Jimmy? No one's called me that since high school. Before I can correct her, she says, "Why are you here, anyway? You're not a doctor, and no way you're a social worker."
"How can you tell?"
She swears. "They always give you their title, like it's something to be proud of." She points at her heart like the spoiled princess of Whales. "I'm Mary from Child Social Services, where we screw over every child who has the good fortune of falling into our care." She drops her condescending tone. "I can't wait to screw you too." She crosses her arms and rolls her eyes.
She let her guard down enough to let it slip that she has a history with social workers. But her posture tells me she still isn't ready to start talking about herself.
"My mistake. Let me introduce myself correctly. I'm Jimmy the painter."
"Painter?" She looks into my face for the first time, but she turns her head away like she's trying to deny her own curiosity. "... What do you paint?"
"Whatever my client wants me to paint, which is usually walls."
"Walls? You paint walls?"
"Sure, walls, siding, trim. I honestly prefer the murals. Ever been to Balmy Alley?"
The girl shakes her head like she couldn't care less.
"That's too bad. I have a nice size piece of wall there. You should go check it out some time. Everyone should see the murals at least once in their life."
She eyes my lunch bag again. Was that a growling stomach I just heard?
"You look hungry," I say. "Go ahead." I pick up the bag and hold it out to her.
She only hesitates for a moment before she grabs it, pulls out my roast beef sandwich, unwraps it, and goes to town on it. I must have a comical look on my face, because when she looks up, her face cracks into a big grin. There's the fire.
"Thank ... you," she says around the mouthful. Well, well, manners now too?
I take a seat in the chair. "So, I understand you had a seizure," I say.
She doesn't react; no tough comment, no denial. She sits and chews on the sandwich. That surprises me just as much as her bad mouth and the way her mood changes in an instant, and how her eyes shift color like a mood ring.
Her sapphire orbs take on a green hue, and I can see her forming some witty reply in her head, testing the words first to ensure success. But I don't make her say them.
"Since I know your secret, I think it's only fair that you have something on me too, so here it is." I hold my hands up. "I have seizures too."
Her surprise and interest is only visible for a second. Then the wall is back up. "Right, I believe you, because you're such a great guy."
I hold back my retort. It's her turn to talk.
"Even if it was true, you're only telling me to earn my trust."
"What's so wrong with that?" I ask.
"Everything! It's fake, it's dirty, it's ... just like a social worker, trying to earn my trust just long enough to ditch me."
This poor girl has seen more than her fair share of our cold dark world.
"You forgot. I'm not Mary the social worker. I'm Jimmy the painter, just a guy trying to do some honest good in a world that could use it."
"But why?"
"Because the way I see it, there are two kinds of people in this world. People who help themselves, and people who help each other. I decided a long time ago that I would be someone who helps other people."
"By painting walls. Congratulations Jimmy. You've helped so many people."
Ouch. What sarcasm, coming from someone so young. "You know." I stand up. "I can't help someone who won't let herself be helped." I walk right out the door.
~*~
2,896 Words
Sorry for the long chapter, but lots happens in this backstory section, so I had to break it apart into two parts. Hope you enjoyed seeing how Jim and Mirna met!