I hear the woman coming down the hall and shove my phone in the top of my backpack.

  “What the hell?” the woman says. “What do you think you’re doing. Gimme that!” She grabs my laptop.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to grab it back. “I need that. It’s mine!”

  “I don’t care what the crap you need, kid. You don’t get any kind of privileges here. I’m keeping this!” She snaps my laptop shut and tucks it under her arm. “And get in the TV room with the others. No loitering out here on your own and doing God Knows What damage to my living room!”

  I look around, wondering what in this room could possibly be more damaged than it already is.

  “And wipe that damned smirk off your face before I smack you!” she says, turning around and leaving the room. I follow her because I have to know what she’s going to do with my laptop.

  She goes down the hall and turns right at the end, into what must be the kitchen. There are two ancient refrigerators, a stove, a table with three broken chairs and not much else. There’s a big pot of something cooking.

  She clambers up on a step stool and reaches to put my laptop on top of the upper cabinets, pushing it back so that, from down here, you wouldn’t know it’s there. “And that’s where it stays,” she says. “Now go out there with the others until I call you for grub!”

  There’s nothing I can do except what she says. For now. I follow the noise to what looks like it was meant to be a bedroom. Or maybe a dining room. There’s an old couch in there with places where the stuffing is coming out and a lot of dark stains. It’s hard to tell what colour it was, to begin with. Some kind of flower pattern, maybe.

  There’s also another old TV, with a daytime TV show on it, one of those ones where everybody is dressed up like they’re going to a party, but all they do is hang around at home and argue with each other. And drink a lot of alcohol. And get divorced and married. They do that a lot. Or have secret babies. Or try to murder each other.

  There are two boys fighting over who gets the remote. A scared-looking girl who’s maybe 9 or 10 is sitting on the edge of the couch. She looks really sad. An older girl, maybe my age but I can’t tell because she has a lot of make-up on, is hassling her.

  “Hey,” I say. “Stop that! Can’t you see she’s upset?”

  “Oh yeah?” the older girl snarls. “Says who?”

  “Says anybody who isn’t a bully. Would that be you?”

  The girl tries to hit me. I duck.

  “Girl fight! Girl fight!” one of the boys says, then the two of them are chanting it.

  “I don’t want to fight with you. Just stop picking on her,” I say.

  “Ewww, you don’ wanna fight. Who cares what you want?” the older girl says.

  “I do,” I say. “And I bet she does, too.” I point at the younger girl, who looks even more frightened than she did before.

  “And who’s gonna make me? You? As if!” older girl says. But then she changes her mind about trying to hit me again. “Gimme your backpack.”

  “No way,” I say. “Go get your own.”

  She grabs it. I dodge. She shoves me, and I crash into the wall, recovering as fast as I can. But it’s not fast enough, because somehow, she has my backpack. And is going through it. She throws my stuff all over the room. I scramble to collect it while the boys roll around the floor laughing. One of them has one of my pairs of underpants and he’s trying to use it like a slingshot.

  The little girl I was trying to help is just sitting there with her mouth open.

  The bully girl finds my phone. Why didn’t I keep it in my pocket? I don’t know. I should have. But now she’s got it.

  “Ah ha!” she says. “Gimme this and I’ll leave you and the twerp alone. If I feel like it!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I say, grabbing my backpack and trying to get my stuff back in it. “That’s my phone. Give it back!”

  She runs down the hall and up the stairs with me right behind her. She opens a door and tries to slam it behind her, but I’m close enough to get in with her.

  “This is the bathroom, you stupid creep!” she says. “Get out!”

  “I will when you give me my phone!” I say, reaching for it.

  But I can’t quite get hold of it. She drops it in the toilet. Which, not very surprisingly, needs to be flushed. Or probably did, hours ago.

  “Oh, gross!” she crows. “The Asian kid likes to play in crap!” Only the exact words she used were worse than that. Ones I don’t even let myself think, they’re so ugly.

  And then she flushes. My phone, with all my messages and contacts is gone.

  “OK,” she says. “Now get out of here, creep.”

  She shoves me hard and I knock my head against something. I don’t know what. I’m trying to get up when she kicks me. I taste blood in my mouth and try to crawl away from her. She laughs and slams the bathroom door.

  I sit there a while, feeling in my jacket pocket to find a tissue to wipe my face. Feeling dizzy and like I’m going to throw up.

  At least I still have my backpack. And some of what was in it.

  What I don’t have is what I need the most right now. A way to get a message to anyone at all that can come and help me escape.

  The bully girl stays in the bathroom so long that the two boys come and bang on the door. They say they really have to pee. She says “too bad, lousers, do it on the floor.” They start to pound and howl and finally the woman comes up. She hits each of them for all the racket. Takes one look at me and walks away.

  From somewhere else, I hear the baby cry. And feel sorry for it.

  And all of us here in this terrible place.

  The dinner is watery soup with cabbage and some kind of mystery white things floating in it. And white bread that has gray spots on it. And a glass of some kind of sugar drink, the kind you mix up with powder and water. I can’t eat any of it. It’s disgusting.

  My mouth has stopped bleeding and I’m feeling less dizzy. I rinsed my face with cold water at the kitchen sink, when the woman wasn’t looking.

  After dinner, I ask the little girl, the quite sad one, to show me where they sleep. The others are all in the TV room. I have no idea where the woman and baby are.

  “This way,” the girl says. We go up the stairs, up to the third floor, which is just a dark hallway with four doors. She opens one. “This is the girls’ room,” she says. It’s way smaller than my bedroom at home, but it has four bunk beds crammed into it and nothing else. All the beds have a bare mattress. No sheets or pillows. Some have a dirty blanket on them.

  “Where do you keep your stuff?”

  “Anywhere you can hide it. But they just find it and take whatever they want,” she says. “They took away everything I had. I’ve just got this,” she reaches in her pocket and pulls out a child’s change purse. “We were out shopping and I got lost.”

  “And a lady said you had to come here and they’d find your parents?”

  “Yeah. But that was yesterday,” she says. “And I’m scared.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too. My name’s Sam, by the way. Sam Park. What’s yours?”

  “Rachelle Leitkov.”

  I reach out to shake her hand, but I guess she doesn’t know how to do this.

  “Nice to meet you, Rachelle Leitkov. So, which bed is yours?”

  “Whatever one is left when Lakeesha picks the one she wants.”

  “That older girl? The one who was hassling you when I came in?”

  “Yeah,” she says with a sigh. “Her. She got here right after me.”

  “And what about those two boys? Who are they and when did they get here?”

  “I dunno. They don’t talk. I think they might be brothers, though.”

  “Is that everybody who’s here?”

  “There were some others yesterday. But they went somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. This woman just came and got them.”

  “When?”

  “Right after breakfast. So, are you here until they can find your parents to come get you? That’s why I’m here. It’s my fault. I wandered off. That’s what the lady here says. She says my parents are going to be really angry with me. When they come.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, leaning over to hug her. “I think they’re going to be so happy to find out you’re OK.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I guess. But I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to wait for them. They’re taking a really long time to get here.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Hey, you two. Enough of that whispering in the corner. Get back to the TV room if you know what’s good for you!” the mean woman says. “Little shits!”

  Reluctantly, we both walk back downstairs. Me still hugging my backpack. Still wearing my winter coat, though I’m way too hot. And thirsty, now. And hungry.

  I sneak a glass from the kitchen, then go off to the bathroom. Get inside and lock the door, surprised to find it still works. Use the toilet. Get a drink. Rinse my face again. Look in the mirror. There are bruises on my face. I pull up my shirt. More bruises.

  I stay in the bathroom as long as I can. Until someone else is banging on the door.

  Then I sit in the TV room. The TV is on with the sound so loud it hurts my ears. Playing one of my dad’s movies. One I’ve never bothered to watch. It’s about this guy who doesn’t have a name. He keeps moving around. He lives in his car. He gets to a new town and he is on some kind of secret mission. He beats up some guys, and flirts with this woman and then there’s another fight and then the guy is shooting at someone. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

  Then the guy with no name is locked in a room and he has to get out. But I’ve stopped paying attention. I’m thinking, how am I going to get my laptop back and get a message to Eira, or Morley, or Jayden, or SOMEONE about coming to help me?

  There’s nothing I can do but sit here. Wait. Watch my dad’s movie. Feel hungry. And tired. And lost.

  Hope that this nightmare is going to end. That I’ll just wake up, in my own bed, in my own room, in my own home, with my piano waiting. And, soon, Margaret coming in to say, “Good morning,” with my breakfast on a tray. Just like she does every morning.

  My body hurts. My head hurts. My stomach is rumbling. I lie on the dirty mattress, with my backpack for a pillow, my jacket for a blanket. I feel dirty and achy all over and more hungry than I’ve ever been. I just want to wake up somewhere else.

  Except that I can’t get to sleep. I hear the sounds of other people coughing and snoring. Getting up and walking around, making the floorboards of this old house squeak and creak.

  I lie there and wait to sleep. Wait for the house to get quiet. Wait for – what?

  For help.

  I just lie there and wait. And listen. And try to think.

  Finally, it seems like the house is quiet. It must be really late. Midnight, maybe. Or later.

  I’ll get up. If anyone sees me, I’ll say I got lost in the dark. I’m looking for the bathroom.

  I sit up and feel dizzy again. I stay still, listening. Waiting for my head to clear and the throw-up feeling to pass.

  It isn’t totally dark. There’s light coming in the window, through the drooping blinds, from streetlights. Or maybe it’s the moon.

  I pull on my coat, trying not to wince from the pain in my side where Lakeesha kicked me.

  I make my way across the room, to where Rachelle is curled up in a tight ball, her thumb in her mouth. I heard her crying for a long time before she fell asleep.

  “Shush,” I whisper to her. “Be really, really quiet. I’m going to get out of here. Go for help. Come on. Get up really quiet and we’ll go.”

  I’m not sure she understands. “But I can’t go,” she says. “My parents are coming to get me. Soon. I know they are.”

  “Come on,” I say. “We have to get out of here. This is a bad place to be. Get up. Be really, really quiet. We have to escape. Now!”

  “No,” she says out loud, making me scared someone might hear. “No, I can’t. I’m scared,” and she starts to cry again.

  “Please, Rachelle. Just come with me. I’ll get us out of here.” I have no idea if I can get us to safety. But I have to try. Because I don’t believe for a minute that Rachelle’s parents are coming for her. And I know for sure no one is coming for me. They don’t have any idea where we are.

  I didn’t have time to tell anyone.

  Or maybe I did, but I blew it. Too late for worrying about that now.

  “Come on. Come ON!” I say. “We have to go NOW before anyone…”

  She pulls away from me.

  “I can’t. I can’t. I’m so scared! You go. I won’t tell. I promise,” she says. And she rolls over towards the wall and curls into a ball.

  I hate to leave her. But I have to go. Or try, at least.

  I creep down the stairs. Wincing at each creak of the stairs. Stopping to listen. But the house sleeps on.

  I pause at the bottom of the stairs. The door is just down the hall. Willing my feet to walk down the hall, get the door open somehow, then run as fast as I can. To freedom.

  But then what? What if I go to the police and they just send me back here?

  Or somewhere just as bad? Because, they’d say, I’m a thief. And a runaway.

  A criminal.

  No. I need an adult to fight for me. To come and get me.

  Not my father, in California, making movies. He won’t come.

  Not my mother, on a plane. Or maybe off of it now, meeting her new boyfriend, going to his place. To party, her favourite thing to do.

  Not Margaret. In Mexico with her family. So far away.

  Not anyone in my family. Because I don’t really have a family, do I?

  Not Madame. She might have gone back to Paris by now. Or still be here, but I’d be so ashamed to tell her what has happened. The trouble I’m in.

  But I can’t stay here, holding the sticky railing at the bottom of the stairs. I have to do something.

  Get my laptop, I decide. Get out to the kitchen, climb up somehow and get it from the top shelf.

  But the step stool the woman used isn’t here. Or maybe I just can’t see it in the darkish gloom of the kitchen. I’ll have to climb on a broken chair, and then on the counter.

  I do that, hoping the chair won’t break and send me crashing down. And wake everyone up, including that nasty woman.

  I get on the chair. It doesn’t break. Then I get on the counter. Stand on my toes. Feel around for my laptop.

  It’s there. But I can’t quite reach it.

  I try to grab it but end up just pushing it further back on the shelf.

  The longer I spend here, the more chance that someone will wake up. And see me. And then – what? Lock me in a closet? Or in the basement? Or…I don’t know. Something awful, too horrible to think about. Like out of those horror movies Margaret doesn’t let me watch because I get nightmares.

  But this place is a real living nightmare.

  Just leave the laptop, a voice in my head says. You can get another one.

  Not with all my contacts on it, I think. And my Concerto in D. And all the other music I’m working on.

  Leave it, the voice says. You can get all that back. Write your music again. Just get out of here, now!

  I stand on my toes. Reach as far as I can. Stretch my arms. My hands.

  And, finally, I can grab the edge of my laptop. And pull it towards me.

  The floor creaks and I freeze.

  There it is again. Footsteps, on the stairs. Not far away.

  “OK, you little shifty-eyed shit, where are you?” the woman says. “I know you’re down here. If you don’t want to get a beating, you better show yourself now!”

  Decision time.

  Stay here and pretend I’m not doing anything?

  Jump off the counter and try to run past her?

  I have not even a second to decide. She’s in the kitchen doorway now, right in front of me, blocking my escape.

  With a shout I leap forward, trying to barrel into her, knock her off guard, then run as fast as possible.

  But though she’s big, she isn’t as soft as she looks. She reaches out to grab me. I scream, wrenching away. She lunges, but too far, and she crashes into something. I keep running along the hall, to the front door, knowing she is right behind me.

  But the front door is locked. I don’t have time to stop and figure out how to unlock it. I turn to the living room and haul up the broken window. There is no screen, just some cardboard. I knock it out and am climbing over the edge of the window as she catches up, grabbing at me, screaming swear words.

  I turn, ball my hand into a fist and hit her, just hard enough that I get over the window edge and drop to the ground, stunned. But I have to get up. I have to run.

  That’s what I do. I look back at the house, see she has the front door open, she’s dialing her phone, she’s screaming about a robber.

  I’m running for my life.

  When you’re travelling, plans can change.

  Things can get lost.

  Or stolen.

  You have to be smart. To protect yourself.

  Keep your eyes ahead.

  Keep moving forward.

  Don’t stop to talk. To anyone.

  Umma’s rules. Right now, on a cold and dark winter night, when I have no idea where I am and I’m alone, I hear those rules in my head for how to be safe.

  Wondering what to do next. When things are lost. And stolen.

  And you’re in a strange place.

  Alone.

  I run until I’m out of breath. Then I walk. As fast as I can.

  Once, I stop to put my right hand in some more-or-less fresh-looking snow. Because it’s throbbing. Like my head.

  I have my jacket. My ugly sweater. My circle scarf. They aren’t nearly warm enough. I have to keep moving to keep warm. Or find a warm place to go.

  But where would that be, on these streets of mostly dark houses?

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12