Chapter 1 #2
I stayed out of the way and took time to charge our phones. We’d acquired them and our tablets during our last stint in the shelter when we had access to some of our monthly funds. They were pre-paid phones, but it wasn’t like either of us had anyone to call but each other.
Mr. Francese, the restaurant’s owner, fed us pizza and sodas and for the first time in several days I actually felt full. At the end of the night, he called both of us into his tiny office and had us sit in the folding chairs on the other side of his desk. “How old are you two? Really?”
I looked at Lilah and let her do the talking. “Old enough,” she said. “She starts summer school for extra credit in a couple of weeks, and we’ll both be seniors next year.”
“And why aren’t you home tonight?” he asked.
“We have alternative living arrangements,” she said.
He sat back in his chair, slowly rocking. “I know runaways when I see them.”
“We aren’t in trouble with the law, and we aren’t truant in school.” She hooked a thumb at me. “Em’s guaranteed a full academic scholarship, as long as she keeps her GPA up. Hence summer school. She’s going for pre-med and was already accepted.”
He nodded, still studying us before finally handing Lilah two twenties, of which she immediately passed me one of them.
“We open at 10am tomorrow,” he said, then pointed at me. “You’re not just playing games on that tablet?”
I shook my head. “No, sir.” I opened the reading app and showed him. “The syllabus listed these as pre-reads. One of the classes I’m taking is English, so I can take two science credits next year.”
He slowly nodded again, looking thoughtful, and I got the opinion he probably wasn’t much of a screamer. “It’s supposed to rain all tonight and tomorrow, too,” he said. “Am I going to find two drowned rats on the back stoop in the morning?”
We shared a glance but I let Lilah do the talking. “We’ve been doing good so far,” she said. “At least this way we’re safe.”
He arched an eyebrow at us. “You must’ve been in hell if you think sleeping on the streets is safer.”
She shrugged.
He held up a finger and made a phone call.
That’s how, an hour later, we were set up on camping cots in his garage with his wife bringing us towels and stuff for a tiny bathroom tucked into the corner of the space.
He pointed at the door leading to the outside.
“I’ll get you a key made for that tomorrow.
Breakfast is at 7am and this isn’t a hotel, so you clean up after yourselves.
No offense, but I’m locking the door from the garage into the house, for now.
You earn our trust and you can keep getting more of it.
” He then pointed at the washer and dryer. “You two know how to use those?”
We both nodded.
“Then help yourselves to those, too.”
I wasn’t sure we hadn’t just been dropped into a dream. There was a fridge in the garage, too, where they put extra bottled waters and sodas and a few snacks for us.
Once we were alone, with the sound of the door locking after them, I slumped onto my cot and started quietly crying. In relief, because we were relatively safe—I hoped—and dry and warm.
Lilah never cried. Not that I saw, anyway.
She knelt in front of me and took my hands in hers.
“We’ll be okay, sis,” she said, squeezing my hands.
“I get a good vibe from him. You can take the bus to summer school every morning because the stop’s only a block away.
Then when school’s in again, we’ll both take the bus. ”
“If we’re here that long,” I whispered, unsure if we could be heard from the house.
“Doesn’t matter. If he lets us eat at the restaurant, I can save up our money and then we can move to that motel near school and get free breakfast and lunch again once school starts.”
She sounded so sure of herself.
She always did. If she felt scared she never let me see it.
“Okay,” I said.
Everything was great until the second week of summer school when I was called into the guidance counselor’s office. I figured it had something to do with filling out my college application paperwork, but I was shocked to see Mr. and Mrs. Francese sitting there with Lilah and our social worker.
My stomach fell and I stood there in shock, fighting the urge to turn and run.
“It’s okay,” the social worker said. “Come in and close the door, please.”
I sat next to Lilah and I didn’t like that her face was red and she looked like she’d been crying. She grabbed my hand and held on tightly as the social worker laid everything out…
And then I started crying, because never in my wildest dreams had I thought Lilah was crying happy tears.
“Is this arrangement okay with you, Esmerelda?” the social worker asked. “Them being your foster parents?”
I nodded hard and didn’t even bother correcting her for using my full first name, which I hated. “Yes, ma’am,” I quietly said. “But how did this happen?”
Lilah sniffled. “He came in today with a friend of his to eat lunch and Mr. Francese saw how I reacted. He put two and two together when I refused to go into the dining room, and he told me if I didn’t tell him the story he’d call the police and let them deal with it.”
Mrs. Francese was a stern but kind woman who wanted things just so in her home, and we’d had no problem learning her ways and abiding by them.
She also wasn’t stingy with hugs. And she stood up now and walked over, scooping us both into her arms. “I had a feeling if we waited you out long enough we’d eventually learn the truth.”
“I’ll file an emergency custody motion with the judge today,” the social worker said. “They’ll be your guardians effective immediately. And we’ll claw back money from the other family.”
“Won’t they fight that?” Lilah quietly asked.
The woman looked grim. “Not when I threaten to have them both thrown in jail for failing to report you two as runaways and continuing to take money from the state. We’ll also be moving the boys out and revoking their license to be foster parents.”
“We can’t testify in court,” Lilah said. “We don’t have any proof.”
“I won’t need you to,” she assured us. “That they didn’t report you missing is more than enough for me to take action. I just wish you’d called me sooner.”
“We didn’t want to be separated,” Lilah said. “We’re sisters.”
“Hope you two don’t mind helping me clean out the craft room,” Mrs. Francese said with as much humor as I’d ever heard her express. “We’ll get you proper beds.”
That’s how, that night, we were sleeping on two mattresses in a room that still needed rearranging and cleaning out as we helped her convert the garage to her craft room.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember I finally felt safe.
Five Years Later
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” I tearfully said as I held Lilah.
She hugged me tightly. “Girlie, you’re going away to med school. You’ve got this. You don’t need me. It’s time for me to figure my shit out and I think the Army will help me do that.”
“Not if you’re dead!”
She pulled back enough to smile at me. “Look, I’m pretty damned tough, right?
If you think something like this’ll slow me down, think again.
I’ll only stay in for one tour. While I do that, you get through med school and find an internship somewhere.
Then I’ll join you. If I decide I want a college degree, I can always do online school or something while I work. ”
“How am I supposed to do this without you?”
“You’re brilliant, honey. Just don’t let any damned guy get in your way or derail you. Promise me.”
“I promise.” Wasn’t like I had much luck with men anyway. If they made it past Lilah’s rigorous bestie screening process, they usually turned out to be douchebags who wanted a bang-maid or trad-wife instead of a doctor as a life-partner.
I knew who I wanted—I wanted a dominant man who wasn’t a domineering asshole. I felt certain they were out there, but so far I hadn’t found one. Not that I’d had much time to focus on that when my full focus had been school.
And if I’d learned anything from Lilah over the years, it was to listen to her advice because she was almost always right. When she wasn’t right, it was usually due to circumstances beyond her control changing the facts without her realizing it.
But we’d made a pact that first night sleeping in that little tent behind our school. We’d stick together, support each other, and always have each other’s backs.
We were now five years out from that. Lilah followed me from our safe haven with Mort and Sara Francese to northern California, where I attended college and she worked a lot of jobs while riding my ass to excel in college and hold on to my scholarship.
Two years after we graduated high school, the Franceses retired, sold the restaurant, and now lived in a one-bedroom condo in the Florida Keys.
They had flown out for my college graduation and invited Lilah to move back to Florida with them if she wanted to start over down there, but she’d declined.
And now…
Now it felt like I was about to walk a high-wire during a hurricane with no net.
“Look,” she said. “While I’m in, I’ll have three hots and a cot and medical insurance and learn to do… well, something. And probably earn college credits, right? After I’m out, we can live together, if you still want to.”
I grabbed her hands. “Of fucking course I want to!”
She smiled. “Then see? That’ll work out perfectly, right?
” Her smile faded. “Sis, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have full confidence in your abilities.
But we can’t stay attached at the hip forever.
You are going to kick ass, girlie. You need to learn to have as much confidence in you as I do. ”
I wanted to believe she was right, but life had a funny way of derailing plans.
Four Years Later
When Lilah awakened from her coma, I was running on maybe four hours of sleep over the previous three days.
A “training accident”.