Prologue 2 #2
She was a gorgeous little mixed-race girl, with startling blue eyes in skin so black it was almost blue.
She huddled in a dirty dress, her arms wrapped around something that looked like a stuffed animal.
My heart felt like it stopped when I saw her.
She couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, and if she was in Ricky’s hands, I knew what he intended to do with her.
She looked at me, tears running down her face, a bruise already purpling her right cheek.
When I started to reach for her, she shied back, terrified, and began screaming again.
“Shhh!” I whispered urgently. Ricky wasn’t joking.
If she kept this up, he and Dreyven would punish both of us.
Her tears continued, so I did the only thing I could think of.
I started telling her one of the stories my mom and I had made up when I was little.
We’d often told each other fantastical stories.
We’d never had a TV, so imagination was all I ever had.
The story was of a little boy and a little girl who found themselves trapped in a magical forest made of stone, imprisoned by the evil ogre and his minions.
Slowly, she began to relax, eventually sitting in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest.
“Is he big?” she whispered.
“Who?” I responded, trying not to draw attention to the fact that she was talking.
“The ogre, silly,” she said. “What did he look like?”
“Well, there’s two of them, you see. Once of them is short and fat, with four arms, three legs and…” I paused to see if she would help me tell the story.
“Four arms, three legs and… six butts!” she whisper-squealed. I shushed her, trying to get her to keep voice down, but her laughter was infectious and we both started giggling.
“What are their names?” she whispered, her voice thick with the tears she’d shed just a few minutes before.
“I dunno. I haven’t given them names yet,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Zem,” she said, straightening her dress and trying to sit up straight, extending her tiny hand out to me. “Zemphirina Misty Graham, I’m very-happy-to-meet-you,” she said, the words running together in practiced politeness.
“Zem, huh?” I said, smiling at her manners and insistence of her full name.
I solemnly took her small hand in my own and shook it.
“I’m Mason Cameron Malone, Zem. I’m very pleased to meet you, too.
Now, who’s this?” I asked, pointing to the much-bedraggled stuffed animal she held in her hands as if it was a lifeline.
“That’s Wolfie. My grandma gave him to me before I was born.”
We huddled on the thin mattress, and I got her to tell me more about her life.
She told me her mom had been sick for a long time, that she’d died, but that her grandma lived in Solon Springs – someplace called Howling Wolf.
She remembered the name, because her mom had often told her about how her grandma had given Wolfie to her mom when she was a little girl.
I looked at the dirty stuffed animal and wasn’t sure if it was really a wolf, or some other creature, but I wasn’t about to disabuse her of the notion.
We talked about Wolfie for a long time: what he ate, what he drank, what he did for fun.
I quietly comforted her until she fell asleep, her head on my shoulder, leaving me to ponder my next move.
My growth spurt had hit late. It had only been in the last year or two that I realized how much I was growing. I was almost as tall as Dreyven, and a lot taller than Ricky.
Ricky had started making noises that he was having a harder time finding me clients willing to pay what they had when I was younger.
He started sending me out to work the streets when I was fifteen or so.
I’d stay out for days to try and get the money I knew he’d want in order to avoid a beating from him or Dreyven.
Dreyven loved taking videos of those he controlled.
He’d taken videos of me when I’d been “broken in” as he liked to put it.
He kept some of the videos in the house and had made me watch them from time to time.
They were horrible, showing this frightened young kid being hurt in so many different ways.
Dreyven had a very particular clientele. Every now and again, he would send a prostitute out who never came back. He and Ricky would joke about what happened to them, but it was clear someone hired them to provide people no one would miss.
I knew the time would come when I would be worth less alive than dead.
So I started hiding money. Every stolen dollar bill, spare dime, every dirty penny I found on the street.
I knew I’d need money to get away from Ricky.
I thought I had maybe enough for a bus ticket out of here, but probably only one.
I’d known that if I wanted to live, I’d have to run, but Zem’s presence sped up my timetable. If she was here, he didn’t need me anymore, and I knew what that meant. I was almost ambivalent. What did it matter if I lived or not? Nobody cared about me, nobody wanted me.
Ricky certainly wouldn’t kill Zem, she was his new meal ticket. But as I stood at the locked door of my closet, thinking about leaving, my fingers on the doorknob, I saw her eyes open, her face solemn, not judging.
I tried to leave her there. God knows, I wanted to.
No one had rescued me. No one had saved me from the bastards who held us.
There were no white knights in our world.
I couldn’t go to the cops. Dreyven had lots of neighborhood cops on his payroll, and they all got lots of freebies.
I’d tried telling the social worker on one of her rare visits what Ricky was doing, and she had turned a deaf ear to me… after telling Ricky what I’d told her.
As I looked at the little girl, with her bruised cheek and tear-stained face cuddled up next to that stupid stuffed animal, something…
broke inside me. Or maybe it healed. She was still so young, so innocent, so trusting.
If there was a way to save her from the life Ricky had in mind for her, I had to find it. I had to at least try.
I’d long ago learned how to pick the lock on my closet door, but I’d had nowhere to go. Nothing to run to. It had been…easier in some ways to stay. Safer. Ricky and Dreyven had made it clear very early on what the penalty for running would be. If they caught us, I knew what I was in for.
Ricky had fallen asleep in the living room, his belly full of beer. I’d been too cowed for too long. He wasn’t really afraid of me running anymore. I had no idea where Dreyven was. Sometimes he stayed at our place, but I knew he had an apartment of his own and could come back any time.
I couldn’t leave Zem there. Maybe there were no white knights, but I could pretend to be one for her, couldn’t I?
I did a lot of pretending in my head, imagined stories and worlds far away from this one.
I could pretend to be her white knight at least long enough to get her away from Ricky.
I wrapped the ragged blanket I used around her shoulders and told her she had to be very quiet, that we were sneaking past the ogre.
I held her hand as we tiptoed past the sleeping drunk who filled my nightmares and escaped outside.
The feeling that coursed through me when we hit the street in front of our apartment building was exhilarating.
I stopped in the alleyway next to our apartment and fished inside the sewer grate for the plastic bag where I hid all my hoarded cash.
As soon as it was in my pocket, I grabbed her hand and we ran, as fast and as far as we could.
We were out of breath and giddy with the joy of freedom when got on the bus at the nearest stop. I found the bus line that would take us to the main station.
At the station, I played dumb and innocent and asked the ticket agent if she could look up a phone number for me. She grumbled at me for a minute, but it was late and there was no one else around. Her eyes fell on Zem, and her frown softened.
“Is she yours?” She asked.
“No,” I whispered, leaning against the counter as my pulse pounded. “I’m trying to get her back to her grandma,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster. I was starting to get nervous – Ricky could have woken at any time, or Dreyven could have shown up and he had eyes all over the city.
It took her a minute to decide whether to help us, but a stray thought seemed to decide her.
“I got grandbabies her age,” she said nodding at Zem.
With some questions to Zem, we finally found the number for Zemtira Graham in Solon Springs.
When she showed me the phone number, I begged a piece of paper and pen from her, then borrowed a stapler from the ticket agent.
I wrote the name and address of her grandmother on one side, and I wrote another note and stapled it inside her shirt.
The ticket agent looked at me suspiciously when she heard me tell Zem it was a secret message for her grandma, but she promised me she would have the bus driver look out for Zem and make sure she got there okay.
I hugged Zem, and she wrapped her too-skinny arms around me for a moment.
“Thank you, Mason,” she whispered, her startling blue eyes looking up at me. “Mama always said I had a guard...guar” she stumbled over the unfamiliar word, then finished “Guardian Angel. You’re my Guardian Angel. Mine, and Wolfie’s.”
I hugged her tight, unexpected tears welling up.
It had been years since I’d cried, about anything.
I’d thought something might be wrong with my eyes, because I couldn’t seem to cry anymore, but this little girl, with her faith in me had somehow broken – or healed – something inside me and the tears rand down my face.
She got on the bus. I saw the bus driver get her settled in the seat right behind him and then they were gone.