9
There is a phone booth in every town.
No matter the size of the town or the phones that fit in our pockets, there is one constant—
A dingy, stained phone booth.
The first town we tried to settle in, the phone booth was old, scratched, and awkwardly placed on the main street.
I saw it in passing a few times before Sofía called, and told us we had to move on. That she could feel the shield being breached, and that it wasn’t safe there anymore.
We lost all our deposit and rent on the house.
Hightailed it out of there in the middle of the night.
We found another town.
Then another, and another.
Every time we were even close to relaxing, Sofía called to push us out again.
Now, three years on the run, and we’re on our fourteenth town.
In this town, the phone booth is next to a bus stop, bolstered to the brick veneer of the general store.
I stare at it as I pass by, until that tether in my hand suddenly pulls down.
Sal drops his weight, leaning to the side, and practically dangles from the child-safe harness. The leash scrapes over my palm, but I tighten my grip and tug him back to me.
“Stand up,” I snap at him.
But he just sings the Scooby Doo theme song, like I haven’t said anything at all, and completely butchers it.
Still pulling down on the leash, he pauses his song to ask, “Where’s Mumma?”
The corners of my mouth pin to my cheeks. “In the city. Like I told you already.” About five times.
His weight tilts me aside. “I want Mumma.”
“I told you,” I start, after a deep inhale through my nose, “she will meet us here, once she is back from the city.”
“I don’t want to go,” he whines. “I don’t want to go. I want Mumma.”
My face tenses at the sound of his grating, pitchy voice. My teeth start to grind, and my fist is too tight on the leash, knuckles turning white.
I take another breath, deep enough to expand my stomach, then narrow my eyes on him—
I give him that stare of mine.
It only works when Serena isn’t around, because in his short life, he’s already figured out that he can pit her against me in parenting. He can hide behind her, call out for her, and she blackballs me.
Every single time.
But now, it’s just me and Sal.
And the patience is withering in me.
I miss when he couldn’t talk.
My stare throws him upright, and he at least walks with me around the corner of a closed shop—and we see the crowds gathering ahead.
The parade hasn’t started yet, but—like us—everyone is getting here early.
An older couple cuts ahead of us, both carrying those sorts of pop-up chairs, and a cooler.
I don’t rush.
I don’t need to watch the parade myself. I can always put Sal up on my shoulders and he can have a view from there.
My focus is on the stalls around Town Hall. The courtyard is full of them.
I make a beeline for the stalls with snacks.
And that perks Sal up.
Maybe pumping a toddler full of sugar isn’t the best idea, but I buy him a candied apple, and it keeps him complacent as I wander the market.
Stall after stall, nothing really stands out.
Between the tables full of old junk, a lot of the same sweets over and over, and a woman who insists on selling a bunch of Beanie Babies for too high a price, insisting they are collectables, my purse goes untouched after the candied apple.
The Founder’s Day celebration is a weekend-long affair, and I’m glad that our apartment is a few blocks out from the town centre, away from the heart of the chaos.
The whole town is out, and those from other neighbouring, smaller towns and settlements and farms.
The parade is about to start.
Town Hall’s clock tower is a mere minute from striking noon.
That’s when I spot it.
The stall with the second-hand treasures.
A treasure in particular has me handing over a few dollar bills.
The man running the stall is familiar to me—then I place him as the very same one who runs the antique shop.
He gives a stiff, judgemental smile as he hands over the music sheets.
And it startles me.
Then, Sal pulls on the leash again, and it cuts into my flesh. “Look, look, look!”
I stuff the sheets of piano compositions into my back pocket. “The parade is about to start—”
“Cars!”
I trace his little finger that points over to the carpark, nestled behind the buildings of Main Street, but with direct access from Town Hall’s courtyard.
I let a sigh deflate me.
I am so not interested in cars.
But Sal is.
Serena spends too much time telling him about the past, about a grandfather he’s named after, the one who loves cars.
It’s not worth the argument with Sal while he’s hopped up on sugar, in public, and my patience is thinning.
“You don’t want to watch the parade?”
He shakes his head, face scrunched up in that stubborn expression of his that threatens a full-on tantrum, and honestly, I can’t blame him.
The parade doesn’t sound too interesting.
Rumours from the pharmacy, where I work, is that the parade is mostly beauty queens from the towns around here, going all the way back twenty years or so.
I did think that was strange when Sawyer—a guy I work with—told me, but then I looked up what beauty queen means, and the oddness just became something dull.
The internet is my favourite thing about the krum world. Maybe the only thing I like about it.
The closer we get to the carpark, the more Sal bounces his steps with glee.
It irritates me.
Sal’s love for cars is fake.
It’s performative.
It’s a love borrowed from his mother, who was taught it from her grandfather, and Sal imitates that passion annoyingly for the next whole hour.
He wants to sit inside every car.
He wants pictures with every car.
He wants to tell anyone nearby about the cars—which is really just regurgitated warbled lines from a cartoon film about cars that he’s obsessed with.
For the most part, he garbles nonsense, because he’s not even three years old, and if it’s not nonsense, it’s a string of random words and broken sentences.
Finally, his attention homes in on a buggy, a sort of horse-drawn cart, and he gets a few pictures on that.
The parade is cheering and dancing down Main Street by the time we wander back.
But all the good spots are taken.
Over heads, ribbons are slashing and curving through the air, trumpets are blasting my eardrums. And it’s all very exciting to Sal.
It should be.
His childhood is actually dull most of the time.
So I crouch down and let him climb onto my shoulders. It’s something we’ve picked up in the krum world. The aristos would never.
But Sal sits on my shoulders to get a great view of the parade, and I slump against the brick facade of the local shops, keeping one hand gripped firm on his thigh.
I fish out my phone from the back pocket of my jeans.
Stiff jeans. Crispy, almost.
Before I ran, I owned maybe two pairs of jeans. Both black. These aren’t those. These are stiff, cheap jeans I picked out of a ‘bargain bin’ at a major store in the city.
I got a good deal on them.
But I feel the cheapness. That low-quality fabric scratching over my skin, like an unwanted, rough exfoliation on my legs.
Worse is the t-shirt.
It has some logo for a band I know nothing about, but it seems that’s custom in the krum world.
It’s hot under the t-shirt, it’s sweaty and clammy. Nothing breathable about polyester.
Same with the baseball cap.
Sweat gathers on my scalp with each passing second out here in the heat.
I keep the cap low over my eyes, welcoming the shade as much as I can, and wait it out.
The next while, Sal shouts and claps and laughs on my shoulders, and the parade is deafening.
Slumped against the brick wall, I scroll through news articles on my phone.
It’s the best I’ve got to entertain myself.
Social media isn’t something we can risk having—especially because Serena thinks I’ll start stalking everyone’s social media from back home.
And she’s right.
The urge to type their names into the search engine clutches me. It hesitates my thumb over the glowing screen for a heartbeat—
Then, as though she knows, Serena calls.
The name in my phone takes over the whole screen.
‘Mumma.’
I’m Auntie Em.
That was chosen when Sal started to talk more, and my cover name was Emily. Now, we stick to names beginning with M.
Like here, in this town, I’m just plain old Mary.
I hit the answer button and lift the phone, firm enough that the pressure immediately aches the shell of my ear. But it’s so loud out on the street with the parade thumping by and Sal screaming above my head.
I shout into the phone, “Hello?”
Serena hisses a curse. There’s a fumble, then, “Can you hear me?”
“Hang on.”
I side-step along the brick facades, weaving around shopfront doors and people, until I reach the lane between the pharmacy—closed for the parade—and the butchers.
I dip into the lane.
Just a couple of steps. If I move away any further than that, Sal will have a fit. He’s too absorbed by the parade.
“Better?” I ask.
“Better.” Serena’s voice comes sharper, not in tone, just in sound. I don’t hold the phone so tightly to my ear now. “I pulled off the highway a couple of minutes ago. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“We’re near the pharmacy,” I tell her. “We can meet you at the markets—”
“Where are the markets?”
“Out the front of Town Hall. It’s packed here. You’ll be better off parking at home, then walking to—”
“Wait. Sofía’s calling.”
My brow furrows. “Didn’t she get the deposit?”
That’s the whole reason she heads into the cities. The whole point of Serena changing her illusion, leaving me with Sal, then driving out of town. So she can deposit cash for the monthly fees.
The risk with going into the cities so often is more than we can afford.
But it’s not like we have another choice.
Can’t transfer from apps on our phones, or from bank accounts, because Sofía said that’s easier to trace.
“I’ll call you back.” That’s all Serena says before the line cuts off.
I wait.
Bordered by brick walls, in the echoes of the lane, I stare down at the screen and wait for her call.
Sofía might not be happy with the deposit for some reason. Maybe she’s increasing the fees. Again.
She’s done it twice already. Just a few hundred dollars each but it’s too much. We can barely keep up.
She says we are a great risk to her and what she does, and the safehouse, that she doesn’t have to work so hard to keep other rogues shielded, just us.
I think she’s an opportunist.
A serpent, like any other.
But gentry.
And rogue.
Trackers probably aren’t getting close to us at all, she just moves us around all the time so she has a reason to extract more money from us.
We’re not a risk.
We’re just a pair of suckers.
I’m about to give up on the call, put my cell back in my pocket and get closer to the parade again, just for Sal to get a better look at the float passing by now, the one that has him shrieking above me, pulling on my baseball cap.
The float is stacked with a bunch of knockoff cartoon characters, a mouse, a mouse in a dress, a dog with a long face, and they all wave for the shrieking children.
But before I can put the phone away, it buzzes in my hand. I’m quick to answer it.
The huff is restrained in my voice, “What did she want?”
Serena’s words come out whooshed and fraught, “Get out. Get out of there now!”
My illusioned face shutters.
The angular face of a woman in her thirties—not much older than me, but with a warmer complexion and lovely dark hair and chocolate brown eyes—slackens.
Serena’s shout clangs like an instrument, “They’ve breached the shield! They’re in the town! They are in the town right now. Get out of there!”