Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
23 YEARS AGO
H is new neighbor was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen in his whole life.
Granted, Ren, having never been outside the state and didn’t have much of a control group to compare her beauty to. And he was only eleven. But still, looking at her was like staring at the sun. That’s how bright she shined.
Her family had the misfortune of ending up in the trailer next to his about a week ago. Her father was an engineer who’d lost his job when his wife got sick and hospital bills for her treatment swallowed the family whole. The American dream, right?
Thankfully, the wife seemed OK now. She was recovering. But they’d lost their house in the suburbs, their car, and their entire savings along the way. All that had been easy to uncover with a little internet snooping.
OK, a lot of internet snooping (maybe some light hacking) on the library computer. He had a genius-level IQ and was stuck in a shitty trailer park, in the shittiest school district in the state, with a family who routinely used their foster stipends for drugs instead of food. What else was he supposed to do to pass the time?
The thing that struck Ren as odd about the Shaw family, though, was how happy they seemed. Everyone else in this shithole was bitter as fuck at being stuck in a place where the crime rate was so high the cops didn’t even bother showing up in the rare instance when anyone here actually bothered calling them. Hope and joy were strangers here. But this family that had lost everything but each other? They had both. They smiled all the time.
Especially her .
He’d learned a lot about her in the last week, too. Her name was Lark. She was close to his age. Had gotten all A’s at her previous school, which meant she was way too smart for his crappy school.
But at least she’d be able to avoid that place for another month. It was only July, after all.
Which was why he was a little surprised she wasn’t headed to the public pool today. That’s what all the other kids did when the temperature outside was roughly ten degrees hotter than Satan’s asshole like it was today.
Not Lark, though. She was sitting in the little patch of weeds behind her parents’ trailer, weaving a crown out of dandelions, humming a tune he wasn’t familiar with, smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world.
She just looked so…clean. Unburdened by life. Loved, cared for, and well-fed. Pretty much everything Ren wasn’t. By all rights, he should hate her.
But he didn’t.
He wasn’t even jealous. He didn’t want to be her. He just wanted to be with her, absorbing all that joy through osmosis.
Meanwhile, he was peeking at her from behind a tree like a creeper, wearing jeans that were starting to fall apart at the seams, a T-shirt that used to be black but had been washed so many times it was now a dingy gray, and a black ball cap pulled down low to hide the black eye he’d gotten for stealing twenty bucks from his foster father’s wallet to buy bread and peanut butter.
That sandwich had been the best thing he’d eaten all week. Totally worth the punch.
“I know you’re there.”
Ren nearly dropped his camera (which would’ve sucked because it was an awesome old Nikon F2 he’d picked up at the pawn shop and it would cost a fortune to replace) when he realized Lark was talking to him .
Shit. His stalking skills were clearly lacking.
“You might as well come out and talk to me,” she added.
Stepping out from behind that tree and skulking up to her as slowly as humanly possible, Ren had never felt grubbier or less…worthy than he did in that moment. Especially when he was a few feet away from her and his dark shadow blocked out the sun that had been shining so lovingly on her face.
That’s when she grinned up at him, showing her shiny white teeth and mouth full of braces, and it was like the sun had peeked out from behind a cloud once again. His IQ dropped twenty points just standing near that smile.
“I’m Lark,” she said.
“I know,” he mumbled.
She paused, and he knew her expectation was that he would introduce himself. But he’d learned long ago not to give out his name unless he had no other option. Flying under the radar was always a better idea.
Eventually, she gave up with a genial shrug and said, “You don’t have to hide from me. We can be friends.”
He had no idea how to respond to that. He’d never been with any one foster family for very long. Sometime after his third—or maybe it was the fourth—home, he’d given up on trying to get to know anyone. And honestly, even if he’d been inclined to meet people, he wasn’t exactly known for his sparkling personality. So, building friendships had never been high on his to-do list.
But for some reason, in this moment, he’d do some pretty sketchy shit to be Lark’s friend.
He kicked at a dandelion with the toe of his too-small sneaker. “OK.”
The wattage of her grin kicked up a few notches. She gestured to the camera around his neck. “You want to take my picture?”
He’d taken a ton of pictures of her, but all from a distance like a proper creeper. Having the opportunity to take one up close was a temptation he definitely wasn’t strong enough to resist. Without hesitation, he snapped a dozen or so pictures while she aimed her happy, carefree grin at him.
“So, why haven’t you said hi to me before?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I dunno.”
She squinted up at him. “What happened to your eye?”
Ren tugged his hat down self-consciously. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“That’s what my parents say,” she admitted. “So, what happened to your eye?”
See, this was why he didn’t have any friends. They’d ask him questions he didn’t want to answer. “I walked into a door,” he said dryly.
Her nose wrinkled up. “Looks like someone hit you.”
He didn’t answer, because clearly, someone had hit him. But having this girl with her perfect family and carefree smile ask him about his black eye felt…embarrassing. “Well, they didn’t, OK?”
The look she gave him held more than a little pity, and he didn’t care for it. Not. One. Bit.
But all she said was, “OK. Wanna play cards or something?”
He pretty much wanted to do anything she wanted to do. If she’d suggested they go rob a bank, he would’ve done it. So, he waited while she ran into her trailer and grabbed a deck of cards. And for the next two hours, they sat in the sun and she taught him how to play gin rummy, then she proceeded to beat him every single time like it was her damn job.
Every time he lost, he pretended to be disgruntled and she tipped her head back and laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. It was the most fun he’d had in, well, maybe ever.
Until Dave, his stupid foster dad, came out of his Jack Daniels coma. He slammed their trailer door open and staggered outside, wearing nothing but a dingy tank top and a pair of even dingier boxer briefs.
“Did you steal my wallet again, you ungrateful little fuck?” he shouted.
Ren’s heart leapt into his throat as Lark’s eyes widened. “Go inside,” he told her. “Now.”
But she didn’t. She sat there, probably too stunned to move, as Dave staggered across the yard in their direction.
“I didn’t steal anything,” Ren told him.
It was a lie, of course. He’d stolen the wallet, cleaned it out, and bought enough groceries to get through the week. The evidence was stashed in the go-bag he kept hidden in the woods just outside the trailer park.
And if the missing wallet pissed Dave off, wait until he found out Ren had hacked the state’s records and made sure all future foster stipends would come in Ren’s name to the PO box he’d paid a homeless guy to get for him. He figured he’d get a few checks before Dave got up the balls to call and figure out what was going on. In the meantime, he’d blame his wife for spending the money and she’d blame him. It was the perfect crime as far as Ren was concerned.
Dave grabbed a fistful of Ren’s T-shirt and yanked him right up onto his toes. “You’re lying,” he hissed, making Ren cringe at the stench of body odor and alcohol that clung to the guy like cologne. “You’ll give me back what’s mine or you’ll be missing the days when that black eye was the worst of your injuries.”
Ren tried to shove him back, but Dave outclassed him in height and weight. “You probably lost it at the bar.”
A plausible explanation. Dave spent every other night at the strip club. Yvette, his equally unpleasant wife, was a bartender there. Best Ren could tell, she was skimming at least 10% off the nightly take, based on the money she usually came home with.
He’d save that information to use against her on a rainy day.
Dave drew back his fist, and Ren closed his eyes, bracing for the blow. He couldn’t fight back and he couldn’t argue his way out of this. All he could do was hope he didn’t cry in front of Lark.
“Fuck!”
Ren cracked one eye open in time to see Dave clutching the back of his head. His gaze shot back to Lark, who was wielding a shovel like a baseball bat. She swung it again, this time whacking Dave’s shoulder. “Leave him alone!” She turned toward her trailer. “Someone help! Call the police!”
She wasn’t strong enough to really hurt him. Hell, she looked like she was struggling to even hold that shovel up at all. But she’d pissed Dave off, nonetheless. He growled like a pissed off bear and lunged at her.
The thought of that asshole getting anywhere near her set his blood on fire. Rage like he’d never felt roared through him and he kicked Dave as hard as he could in the back of the knee. He landed in a heap with a grunt of pain that was music to Ren’s ears.
“I’m gonna kill both you little shits,” he spit out as he tried, and failed, to get back up on his feet.
He’d do it, too. Ren knew that. The only reason he hadn’t killed Ren yet was that he was still worth some money, and Dave was generally too lazy to do much more than smack him around a little. But this was the angriest Ren had ever seen him, and he was looking like at Lark— his Lark—with blood in his eyes.
“Run,” he told her.
Tears filled her eyes. “I’m not leaving you!”
His heart cracked wide open. His parents had abandoned him. Every foster family he’d ever been with had abandoned him. But this girl who’d only known him for two hours was ready to do battle at his side.
And he couldn’t let her do it. She’d already seen way too much of his twisted life. It was time for him to leave this place—and her—behind.
Ren snatched the shovel from her and swung it with all his might. The sickly sound it made when it connected with Dave’s thick skull was something Ren would never forget. Dave hit the ground, face first, unconscious.
“Is he dead?” Lark whispered, looking horrified.
Ren glanced at Dave’s back, both relieved and irritated that he was clearly still breathing. “He’s alive. I can’t be here when he wakes up, though. When the police show up and ask, you tell them I hit him with the shovel to defend myself. Don’t tell them it was your shovel.”
“You’re leaving? Like, for good?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll go into town and call CPS. They’ll put me with another family. Maybe even in another town.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and it was the most beautiful and terrible thing he’d ever seen. Someone like her should never cry. But having her cry for him was…humbling. “I won’t see you again?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“No.”
Her face fell, but she nodded bravely. “I understand.” With shaking hands, she pulled the turquoise and orange woven bracelet off her wrist. “Here. Take this.”
“What’s this for?”
“It’s a friendship bracelet. To remember me by.”
Something told him he wouldn’t need a bracelet to remember her by.