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The Fugitive Part I (12)
Posted by
Emmalyn
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06 March 2012
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eve prequel cat rick runaway denver
(This chapter begins the adventures of little Eve--almost seven years old--when she runs away from Rick in Denver. )
It was dawn, and the little girl had not slept all night. She didn’t dare. She was sitting at the Whoosh station, trying to look like she wasn’t too young to travel by herself.
It had not been hard to get on the transport tram on the big avenue. It was automated, so all she had needed was to put in her debit card. She had put it in backwards the first time, and almost panicked, but the woman behind her had shown her how to do it right.
The woman’s help, however, had had its problems too.
“What’s your name?” the woman had asked her.
“Helen,” she said.
“And what are you doing riding on the tram this late at night by yourself, Miss Helen?”
The woman’s voice was kind, playful. But the child knew the danger. If grown ups knew you were running away, they would give you back to your parents. She had to come up with a good lie, something that would make the woman leave her alone.
The woman was dressed in fancy clothes and smelt of perfume and of men. The child guessed she was an LC like Stella and other women that sometimes came to see her father. She made up what she thought sounded like a plausible excuse.
“My mom had a customer that kept her late, so she couldn’t come pick me up from my sitter. And the sitter had to go to her day job. It’s okay. I know the way, and Mom will be waiting for me,” she lied.
As she had hoped, the LC empathized with her mother and forgot to question too much.
“Oh, I know sometimes customers can be very inconsiderate! What a smart girl you are, riding the tram by yourself. How old are you?”
“Almost nine,” the child had lied again. She would have liked to say ten, but she didn’t think she could get away with it. When she got to the Whoosh station she would change into the clothes Julia had suggested to make her look older. But right now she was wearing a sweatshirt with some stupid cartoon character and a pink jacket that was too big on her.
“You look younger,” said the woman. “But that’s not a bad thing, if you decide to follow in your mama’s professions, eh?” She laughed in a friendly way, but when she sensed that the child pulled back from her, she looked at the little girl again.
“You don’t have to do anything in the profession yet, do you?” she asked, concerned.
The child shook her head. She wondered what would happen if she told this nice LC what her father and Mama G had her do with men. She wished she could trust this stranger. But how could she?
She decided that the next stop, which had a crowd of people including some women who were obviously LCs waiting, would be a good place to get off before the woman asked any more questions.
She stood up and went to the door saying “There’s my mom!” and got out before the woman could follow her.
When she got on the next tram, she knew how to slide the card into the reader, and she sat towards the back, where no one would, she hoped, notice her too much. At the whoosh station, she stuck close to a family group so that if anyone saw her they’d assume she was not traveling along.
But there was a guard at the main terminal, where people were supposed to board. She couldn’t tell if it was a real person or a really advanced droid, but either one would question her about her age, so she had not tried to get a ticket before changing into her more big-girl looking clothes.
She had put on the little bra and the sweater and vest that Julia had said would make her look older, but she had had to leave the clogs behind. She had needed to run and you can’t run in clogs. So she was wearing her only other pair of shoes, worn airsoles that were tight on her feet. Maybe if she stood very straight, she could pass for a 10 year old who looked eight instead of a seven-year-old. (She thought she must be seven already. Hadn’t she been six a long time ago, at Christmas in Las Vegas?)
And then, when she’d looked at the schedule, she had discovered that the whoosh to Las Vegas only came through at 11 in the morning, so she was waiting for it to be time. The place was mostly deserted, there were just a few people going places at this hour.
“Where are you going?” asked a friendly young-male voice.
She had her story prepared.
“I’m going to ‘Vegas to stay with my Aunt Julia,” she said.
“All by yourself?”
“I’m not as little as I look,” she said.
“Hmm,” he said. “It’s a long way, no matter how old you are. Why don’t you take a plane?”
“The Whoosh is cheaper,” she said.
“Not to Las Vegas it isn’t,” he said. “Who told you it was?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “my parents take care of that,” she lied.
The little girl felt frightened. Why had she thought the Whoosh was cheaper than a plane? Why hadn’t she made up some other story, like she was afraid of flying or something like that? She couldn’t take a plane because you needed identification to take planes. She knew that was why she never flew with her father.
“You’re running away, aren’t you?” the young man asked
She stared at him. How could he know? What would he do now that he knew?
“Don’t be scared. I did the same thing when I was about your age,” he said.
“You did?”
“Yes.” He smiled reassuringly.
“And your father never found you?”
“Actually, I was running away from my mom. But yeah, she never found me. Sometimes I wish she had. It’s not easy, living on the streets.”
The idea of “living on the streets” was new to the child.
“Where did you live, on the streets?” she asked.
“Atlanta,” he said, misunderstanding the question. “It was a hard life. Not enough to eat, people hurting you… “ He paused. The child didn’t need to know more. “ You think you can make a living, as little as you are?” he went on. “People will hurt you.”
It was not what she had wanted to know. She wanted to know how a child could hide and live without grown ups finding her. She wanted to know where the man had slept and how he had gotten money for food. She was used to being hurt. If she figured out how to “live on the streets” would the hurt be more or less than what her father did to her?
“I am not going to live on the streets,” she said. “I am going to my aunt Julia in Vegas.”
“But you are running away,” he said.
“Yes. My daddy hurts me. My aunt Julia was nice to me. She’ll be glad to take care of me.” It was as close as she could get to the truth.
“I see,” said the young man. He was thinking that he should call social services. He had thought this was a runaway from the moment he had seen her, in mussed up clothes and carefully applied lipstick that was at odds with her uncombed hair. And maybe he should stay out of it, but this child was too young to travel to Vegas or anywhere else alone. And he wasn’t sure this Aunt Julia existed, though he thought she probably did.
“I understand how you feel,” he said kindly. “I’ve been in your shoes.” He knew he needed to get the child to tell him who she was, and how to contact this Aunt Julia, so that he could be sure that the child would be safe going to her. “I’m Chris Teeter, by the way. What is your name?”
“Helen,” she said promptly and then, because he seemed to expect another name, added “Wilson.” It was the name that Ted and Julia had used when they were in Las Vegas.
“Well, Helen,” he said. “Does your aunt Julia know you are coming?”
“No,” she said after a pause during which she weighed whether it would be better to say she was expected or not. She decided to go with the truth, “It’s going to be a surprise.”
“But what if she’s not home? What if she has gone somewhere else? Why don’t you send her a link message first, let her know you are coming?”
“I don’t have a link,” she said.
“I can call her on mine,” he offered. “If you give me the codes.”
“No!” The child said quickly. “I want to surprise her.”
She looked terrified.
“Vegas is not a good place to live on the streets, Helen,” he said. “It’s one of the worst places. You can’t just go there with no one waiting for you. Why don’t you go home now, and write to your Aunt Julia about visiting her later?”
The child shook her head violently.
“My daddy will be very mad because I ran away. He is probably looking for me right now. And he will hurt me.”
Something about the way the child said it made the young man, who had suffered a lot on the streets, feel a shiver of dread.
“Look, if your daddy hurts you, you should go to child protection services,” he said. “They will take you away from him and put you in a home with some nice people.”
“You didn’t go to them,” she said.
“And I am sorry I didn’t. When they finally found me, living on the streets, the Child Protection people were very good to me.”
It was a bit of a lie. They had saved him, but the group home they’d put him in had been miserable. Still, he might not have survived another year on the streets. This kid, unless she really had an Aunt Julia who would take her in, would not survive a month.
“Why don’t you let me take you to child protection services?” he offered. It would make him late for his appointment in Boulder, but he thought it was the right thing to do.
The little girl hesitated.
“I don’t know. My daddy said the cops would put me in a dungeon because I am undocumented.”
Chris gave a whistle. Undocumented at that age could mean only that her father planned to sell her for some unspeakable abuse. It also meant that whoever her father was would have powerful friends. Helping her escape her father could put her rescuer at risk. And yet he was a decent young man. He knew that the kid needed to be rescued.
“Your daddy is lying,” he said. “No one will put you in a dungeon. It is not your fault that you are undocumented—your father and mother are responsible, and they are the ones who will get in trouble. Let me call social services right now and they will document you and find you a home.”
It was a brave offer. He had lived on the streets for a few years. He knew the score. And yet, unlike Julia and Mitzi who had chosen to let the child go back to Rick rather than risk trouble for themselves, Chris was willing to put himself out there to save the little girl from what he knew was probably a horrible life that would only get worse.
But the little girl didn’t understand any of this. She didn’t know this man; she had no reason to trust him. And she’d always heard that social services were bad. She would try to find Julia first, and then, if Julia again told her to, she would go to the social services then.
“I think maybe I’ll go back to my Daddy,” she lied.
Chris knew she was lying. He could see how scared she was, but he noticed also how bravely she was holding herself. She couldn’t be more than eight, he thought. And she was acting with such self-control.
“Listen, Helen,” he said. “I know you are afraid, but the social work people are really there to help you. I wish they had come to help me sooner.”
The child looked at him with her huge eyes.
“I don’t want you to call Social Services. Please?”
“I have to call them,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Luckily, the man was having trouble getting through on his link.
“I can’t believe they are putting me on hold again,” he said. “I suppose it is kind of early, but I did tell them it was urgent.”
“I’m hungry,” she said, seeing her opportunity. “Will you watch my backpack while I go get something to eat?” She pointed at the one food stand that was open, on the far side of the terminal.
He hesitated, but as she had hoped, her offer to leave the backpack lulled him into thinking she was planning to come back.
“Okay,” he said. “Here,” he handed her some credits. “I’ll pay for your food, if you’ll bring me back a tube of Coke.”
She felt a little guilty to take the money, but she reminded herself that she was leaving the backpack.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m going to the restroom first, okay?”
She knew he was watching as she went into the restroom. She didn’t go in all the way but stayed in the outer door area. There she pulled off the little vest, the way Julia had told her to do if anyone was following her, and put on a beret that she had folded in her jeans pocket for the same purpose. She lucked out that a few minutes later a group of teenagers came out and she slipped out among them, staying with them until they turned to sit down among some other teenagers. And then she ducked behind one of the seats and crossed behind a vending machine to get to one of the doors leading out of the terminal.
She got on the first tram that came.
She sat quietly in the back and hoped that no one would notice her. She wished she still had her backpack, not only because she had lost all her clothes and her extra candy bars but because it would make her look like a kid going to school.
She got off when the tram stopped at a big shopping plaza. It was still too early for most of it to be open, but there was a twenty-four-hour convenience store and a coffee place that had some people in them.
By now she had realized that everyone who saw her would wonder why she was alone and would ask questions, so she didn’t want to be where there were people, so she walked past the places that were open and found a doorway to sit and think.
She was a little chilly. She put the vest back on. It was padded and her sweater was warm, but she needed the windbreaker she had left with the backpack. She had taken it off in the terminal because she didn’t need it and because it covered her vest that was supposed to make her look older—she wasn’t sure how. And now she didn’t have the windbreaker.
Julia’s disguise had not been much use, she thought. The Chris guy had known she was a runaway and hadn’t believed she was ten. Maybe it was because it didn’t look the same when she put it all on than when Julia had shown her how to put on the bra and the lip gloss. Maybe it was because she didn’t have the clogs. She should have brought the clogs and she shouldn’t have waited for the Vegas Whoosh. She should have taken any other whoosh that took her far away, and she should not have spoken to strangers. How could she be so stupid?
Now she didn’t know what to do. Going back to her father was inconceivable, and going on to Las Vegas would be impossible. And even if she got to Las Vegas, she thought, with the growing common sense of the seven-year-old she almost was, how would she find Julia and Ted? She didn’t even know if they were there. Had they really gone back as she thought they had, after they returned her to Rick? And if they were in Vegas, what good did it do her, when she didn’t know where? She had left her father’s apartment in desperation, and she had not questioned how practical her dream to go to Vegas was. Now she forced herself to move from the fantasy-thinking of the immature child she could not afford to be to the more logical thought of an older child. And she came against the question: what was she going to do now?
Julia had told her to go to social services. Even though they were not great, she had said, they would treat her better than her father did. Chris had said to go to social services, that they would treat her well. She thought he was probably lying a little—she could almost feel the lie—but she thought he did believe that social services would be better to her than her father. Still, she was scared. Her father had told her that social services punished undocumented children. He’d told her too often for her to doubt it. And her father had also told her that the law said that children must be with their parents. If the social work people didn’t put her in a dungeon, they could give her back to Rick. What if they not only punished her but gave her back to her father?
She wondered how people lived “on the street.” In her mind it was sort of like living in your car, but not driving around a lot. She imagined a street lined with parked cars where people lived. Had she ever seen anything like that?
The cat was wondering how to get her to feed him. Each human has to be trained differently, he knew. The first thing was to rub against them, so they would think they belonged to you. If they accepted your tentative ownership, the next step was to meow. He tried that, but the little human didn’t understand the imperative request for food. Ah, of course, it was a young human, he realized. They took longer to train and sometimes weren’t worth the bother because they played too hard and chased you. But this one was gentle. This one looked like she needed a grown up human to stroke her. He rubbed against her and meowed again.
“What do you want, kitty?” she asked, finding the right spot behind his ears to stroke. “Why are you meowing?”
She wondered if he understood words. She didn’t understand meow, so he probably didn’t. Maybe she should try to meow back.
The cat was not impressed with her noise. He knew that humans sometimes tried to speak real cat language, and he thought it was silly. Humans and cats were different species and they could only communicate through touch and service to each other. But he forgave her silliness because she was only a young one. She knew how to rub his ears anyway. That was good.
They were absorbed in one another when Cappy dashed in their direction and startled the cat away. The little girl would have run away also, if she had had the agility of a cat. All she could do was stand up and shrink into the doorway trying to pretend she wasn’t there.
This suited Cappy just fine, since he was doing the same thing. He had just successfully lifted a few credits from the pocket of the person ahead of him in line at the donut place when he had seen cops entering the room. He didn’t think anyone had seen him take the credits—his mark certainly hadn’t—but he always made himself scarce when he saw cops.
He put his fingers to his lips and whispered to the little girl, “Cops.”
They stood side by side quietly until Cappy figured the cops had moved on.
“So, who are you hiding from?” he asked her.
She shrugged. She didn’t want to tell him.
The boy understood what the shrug meant and didn’t push it. He was a runaway himself.
“I was running in case the cops or someone saw me lift some credits from a guy’s pocket. But it looks like I’m safe.” He grinned with relief.
The little girl said nothing.
“I’m Cappy,” he said looking at her shrewdly. “ What’s your name?”
“Helen,” she said. “Did you really steal some credits?” she asked admiringly. Many years later she would be concerned with obeying the law. At this point in her life, however, everyone around her stole, it was normal. And though she’d never yet picked a pocket, she knew that Ted and Julia did it whenever they felt it was safe, and she thought everything Ted and Julia did was right.
“Yes I did,” he said. “I have very clever fingers.” He smiled proudly. “Are you out on the streets?” he asked, wondering if she would answer.
“No—I mean yes—I mean, I want to be,” she said. “I ran away from my dad because he beat me… and hurt me in other ways. I don’t want social services to get me. So I guess I am living on the streets, if I can find out how.”
She looked at the boy hopefully. If she couldn’t find Aunt Julia, maybe the best thing was to get another child to teach her how to escape the grown ups until she was a grown up herself. Maybe Cappy would tell her what she needed to know to survive on the streets.
“How long ago did you run away?” Cappy asked.
“Yesterday,” she said. “In the afternoon. I was going to take the Whoosh to look for my aunt Julia, but people kept asking me questions about my age and my parents. I had to run away from there too, or they would have called social services. “
Capp nodded wisely.
“The whoosh terminal is a bad place for runaways,” he said. “When it isn’t the pimps, it is the do-gooders.” He thought for a minute. “You did good to hide. “
“But I lost all my stuff,” she said. “I left it behind with … a do-gooder.”
“Man, that sucks,” said the boy.
“Yeah, that sucks,” she agreed, loving the scornful, grown up way he said it.
“And your money?” he asked. “Did you lose all your money?”
“Most of it,” she lied. Cappy seemed nice, but she knew that folks who told others how much money they had were usually marks. She didn’t want to be a mark.
“How much do you have?” asked the boy, confirming her fear.
“Around twenty dollars in credits,” she lied.
“That’s not a lot for sure,” he said. “But I know a place where you can stay for 10 bucks a night. And then you can work to make more.”
That sounded good.
“Where is it?”
“I’ll show you,” said Cappy. “I used to live there myself, but now I have better digs.”
On the tram going back towards town, the little girl got nervous. They were heading towards where her father lived. She told Cappy this, and he reassured her that where they were going, her father couldn’t find her.
She wasn’t sure about that, but she didn’t know what else to do than to trust Cappy for now. At least, he wasn’t trying to call child protective services. He was a child himself, wasn’t he?
She was so tired and so alone. She wanted to trust Cappy.
(The next section will show a little of what Rick did when little Eve ran away as well as continue the story focused on her experience.)
It was dawn, and the little girl had not slept all night. She didn’t dare. She was sitting at the Whoosh station, trying to look like she wasn’t too young to travel by herself.
It had not been hard to get on the transport tram on the big avenue. It was automated, so all she had needed was to put in her debit card. She had put it in backwards the first time, and almost panicked, but the woman behind her had shown her how to do it right.
The woman’s help, however, had had its problems too.
“What’s your name?” the woman had asked her.
“Helen,” she said.
“And what are you doing riding on the tram this late at night by yourself, Miss Helen?”
The woman’s voice was kind, playful. But the child knew the danger. If grown ups knew you were running away, they would give you back to your parents. She had to come up with a good lie, something that would make the woman leave her alone.
The woman was dressed in fancy clothes and smelt of perfume and of men. The child guessed she was an LC like Stella and other women that sometimes came to see her father. She made up what she thought sounded like a plausible excuse.
“My mom had a customer that kept her late, so she couldn’t come pick me up from my sitter. And the sitter had to go to her day job. It’s okay. I know the way, and Mom will be waiting for me,” she lied.
As she had hoped, the LC empathized with her mother and forgot to question too much.
“Oh, I know sometimes customers can be very inconsiderate! What a smart girl you are, riding the tram by yourself. How old are you?”
“Almost nine,” the child had lied again. She would have liked to say ten, but she didn’t think she could get away with it. When she got to the Whoosh station she would change into the clothes Julia had suggested to make her look older. But right now she was wearing a sweatshirt with some stupid cartoon character and a pink jacket that was too big on her.
“You look younger,” said the woman. “But that’s not a bad thing, if you decide to follow in your mama’s professions, eh?” She laughed in a friendly way, but when she sensed that the child pulled back from her, she looked at the little girl again.
“You don’t have to do anything in the profession yet, do you?” she asked, concerned.
The child shook her head. She wondered what would happen if she told this nice LC what her father and Mama G had her do with men. She wished she could trust this stranger. But how could she?
She decided that the next stop, which had a crowd of people including some women who were obviously LCs waiting, would be a good place to get off before the woman asked any more questions.
She stood up and went to the door saying “There’s my mom!” and got out before the woman could follow her.
When she got on the next tram, she knew how to slide the card into the reader, and she sat towards the back, where no one would, she hoped, notice her too much. At the whoosh station, she stuck close to a family group so that if anyone saw her they’d assume she was not traveling along.
But there was a guard at the main terminal, where people were supposed to board. She couldn’t tell if it was a real person or a really advanced droid, but either one would question her about her age, so she had not tried to get a ticket before changing into her more big-girl looking clothes.
She had put on the little bra and the sweater and vest that Julia had said would make her look older, but she had had to leave the clogs behind. She had needed to run and you can’t run in clogs. So she was wearing her only other pair of shoes, worn airsoles that were tight on her feet. Maybe if she stood very straight, she could pass for a 10 year old who looked eight instead of a seven-year-old. (She thought she must be seven already. Hadn’t she been six a long time ago, at Christmas in Las Vegas?)
And then, when she’d looked at the schedule, she had discovered that the whoosh to Las Vegas only came through at 11 in the morning, so she was waiting for it to be time. The place was mostly deserted, there were just a few people going places at this hour.
“Where are you going?” asked a friendly young-male voice.
She had her story prepared.
“I’m going to ‘Vegas to stay with my Aunt Julia,” she said.
“All by yourself?”
“I’m not as little as I look,” she said.
“Hmm,” he said. “It’s a long way, no matter how old you are. Why don’t you take a plane?”
“The Whoosh is cheaper,” she said.
“Not to Las Vegas it isn’t,” he said. “Who told you it was?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “my parents take care of that,” she lied.
The little girl felt frightened. Why had she thought the Whoosh was cheaper than a plane? Why hadn’t she made up some other story, like she was afraid of flying or something like that? She couldn’t take a plane because you needed identification to take planes. She knew that was why she never flew with her father.
“You’re running away, aren’t you?” the young man asked
She stared at him. How could he know? What would he do now that he knew?
“Don’t be scared. I did the same thing when I was about your age,” he said.
“You did?”
“Yes.” He smiled reassuringly.
“And your father never found you?”
“Actually, I was running away from my mom. But yeah, she never found me. Sometimes I wish she had. It’s not easy, living on the streets.”
The idea of “living on the streets” was new to the child.
“Where did you live, on the streets?” she asked.
“Atlanta,” he said, misunderstanding the question. “It was a hard life. Not enough to eat, people hurting you… “ He paused. The child didn’t need to know more. “ You think you can make a living, as little as you are?” he went on. “People will hurt you.”
It was not what she had wanted to know. She wanted to know how a child could hide and live without grown ups finding her. She wanted to know where the man had slept and how he had gotten money for food. She was used to being hurt. If she figured out how to “live on the streets” would the hurt be more or less than what her father did to her?
“I am not going to live on the streets,” she said. “I am going to my aunt Julia in Vegas.”
“But you are running away,” he said.
“Yes. My daddy hurts me. My aunt Julia was nice to me. She’ll be glad to take care of me.” It was as close as she could get to the truth.
“I see,” said the young man. He was thinking that he should call social services. He had thought this was a runaway from the moment he had seen her, in mussed up clothes and carefully applied lipstick that was at odds with her uncombed hair. And maybe he should stay out of it, but this child was too young to travel to Vegas or anywhere else alone. And he wasn’t sure this Aunt Julia existed, though he thought she probably did.
“I understand how you feel,” he said kindly. “I’ve been in your shoes.” He knew he needed to get the child to tell him who she was, and how to contact this Aunt Julia, so that he could be sure that the child would be safe going to her. “I’m Chris Teeter, by the way. What is your name?”
“Helen,” she said promptly and then, because he seemed to expect another name, added “Wilson.” It was the name that Ted and Julia had used when they were in Las Vegas.
“Well, Helen,” he said. “Does your aunt Julia know you are coming?”
“No,” she said after a pause during which she weighed whether it would be better to say she was expected or not. She decided to go with the truth, “It’s going to be a surprise.”
“But what if she’s not home? What if she has gone somewhere else? Why don’t you send her a link message first, let her know you are coming?”
“I don’t have a link,” she said.
“I can call her on mine,” he offered. “If you give me the codes.”
“No!” The child said quickly. “I want to surprise her.”
She looked terrified.
“Vegas is not a good place to live on the streets, Helen,” he said. “It’s one of the worst places. You can’t just go there with no one waiting for you. Why don’t you go home now, and write to your Aunt Julia about visiting her later?”
The child shook her head violently.
“My daddy will be very mad because I ran away. He is probably looking for me right now. And he will hurt me.”
Something about the way the child said it made the young man, who had suffered a lot on the streets, feel a shiver of dread.
“Look, if your daddy hurts you, you should go to child protection services,” he said. “They will take you away from him and put you in a home with some nice people.”
“You didn’t go to them,” she said.
“And I am sorry I didn’t. When they finally found me, living on the streets, the Child Protection people were very good to me.”
It was a bit of a lie. They had saved him, but the group home they’d put him in had been miserable. Still, he might not have survived another year on the streets. This kid, unless she really had an Aunt Julia who would take her in, would not survive a month.
“Why don’t you let me take you to child protection services?” he offered. It would make him late for his appointment in Boulder, but he thought it was the right thing to do.
The little girl hesitated.
“I don’t know. My daddy said the cops would put me in a dungeon because I am undocumented.”
Chris gave a whistle. Undocumented at that age could mean only that her father planned to sell her for some unspeakable abuse. It also meant that whoever her father was would have powerful friends. Helping her escape her father could put her rescuer at risk. And yet he was a decent young man. He knew that the kid needed to be rescued.
“Your daddy is lying,” he said. “No one will put you in a dungeon. It is not your fault that you are undocumented—your father and mother are responsible, and they are the ones who will get in trouble. Let me call social services right now and they will document you and find you a home.”
It was a brave offer. He had lived on the streets for a few years. He knew the score. And yet, unlike Julia and Mitzi who had chosen to let the child go back to Rick rather than risk trouble for themselves, Chris was willing to put himself out there to save the little girl from what he knew was probably a horrible life that would only get worse.
But the little girl didn’t understand any of this. She didn’t know this man; she had no reason to trust him. And she’d always heard that social services were bad. She would try to find Julia first, and then, if Julia again told her to, she would go to the social services then.
“I think maybe I’ll go back to my Daddy,” she lied.
Chris knew she was lying. He could see how scared she was, but he noticed also how bravely she was holding herself. She couldn’t be more than eight, he thought. And she was acting with such self-control.
“Listen, Helen,” he said. “I know you are afraid, but the social work people are really there to help you. I wish they had come to help me sooner.”
The child looked at him with her huge eyes.
“I don’t want you to call Social Services. Please?”
“I have to call them,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
*****
She needed to get away from him. Maybe he really just wanted to be nice, but he was going to call the social services and she would end up in a dungeon until her father came and then he would take her away and beat her inside and out.Luckily, the man was having trouble getting through on his link.
“I can’t believe they are putting me on hold again,” he said. “I suppose it is kind of early, but I did tell them it was urgent.”
“I’m hungry,” she said, seeing her opportunity. “Will you watch my backpack while I go get something to eat?” She pointed at the one food stand that was open, on the far side of the terminal.
He hesitated, but as she had hoped, her offer to leave the backpack lulled him into thinking she was planning to come back.
“Okay,” he said. “Here,” he handed her some credits. “I’ll pay for your food, if you’ll bring me back a tube of Coke.”
She felt a little guilty to take the money, but she reminded herself that she was leaving the backpack.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m going to the restroom first, okay?”
She knew he was watching as she went into the restroom. She didn’t go in all the way but stayed in the outer door area. There she pulled off the little vest, the way Julia had told her to do if anyone was following her, and put on a beret that she had folded in her jeans pocket for the same purpose. She lucked out that a few minutes later a group of teenagers came out and she slipped out among them, staying with them until they turned to sit down among some other teenagers. And then she ducked behind one of the seats and crossed behind a vending machine to get to one of the doors leading out of the terminal.
She got on the first tram that came.
She sat quietly in the back and hoped that no one would notice her. She wished she still had her backpack, not only because she had lost all her clothes and her extra candy bars but because it would make her look like a kid going to school.
She got off when the tram stopped at a big shopping plaza. It was still too early for most of it to be open, but there was a twenty-four-hour convenience store and a coffee place that had some people in them.
By now she had realized that everyone who saw her would wonder why she was alone and would ask questions, so she didn’t want to be where there were people, so she walked past the places that were open and found a doorway to sit and think.
She was a little chilly. She put the vest back on. It was padded and her sweater was warm, but she needed the windbreaker she had left with the backpack. She had taken it off in the terminal because she didn’t need it and because it covered her vest that was supposed to make her look older—she wasn’t sure how. And now she didn’t have the windbreaker.
Julia’s disguise had not been much use, she thought. The Chris guy had known she was a runaway and hadn’t believed she was ten. Maybe it was because it didn’t look the same when she put it all on than when Julia had shown her how to put on the bra and the lip gloss. Maybe it was because she didn’t have the clogs. She should have brought the clogs and she shouldn’t have waited for the Vegas Whoosh. She should have taken any other whoosh that took her far away, and she should not have spoken to strangers. How could she be so stupid?
Now she didn’t know what to do. Going back to her father was inconceivable, and going on to Las Vegas would be impossible. And even if she got to Las Vegas, she thought, with the growing common sense of the seven-year-old she almost was, how would she find Julia and Ted? She didn’t even know if they were there. Had they really gone back as she thought they had, after they returned her to Rick? And if they were in Vegas, what good did it do her, when she didn’t know where? She had left her father’s apartment in desperation, and she had not questioned how practical her dream to go to Vegas was. Now she forced herself to move from the fantasy-thinking of the immature child she could not afford to be to the more logical thought of an older child. And she came against the question: what was she going to do now?
Julia had told her to go to social services. Even though they were not great, she had said, they would treat her better than her father did. Chris had said to go to social services, that they would treat her well. She thought he was probably lying a little—she could almost feel the lie—but she thought he did believe that social services would be better to her than her father. Still, she was scared. Her father had told her that social services punished undocumented children. He’d told her too often for her to doubt it. And her father had also told her that the law said that children must be with their parents. If the social work people didn’t put her in a dungeon, they could give her back to Rick. What if they not only punished her but gave her back to her father?
She wondered how people lived “on the street.” In her mind it was sort of like living in your car, but not driving around a lot. She imagined a street lined with parked cars where people lived. Had she ever seen anything like that?
*****
She dozed off for a while and woke up, startled, when something furry began to rub against her hand. She was a little scared and then realized that it was only a cat. She had seen cats before, though never this close. She kind of liked how it felt under her hand as she stroked it. She didn’t know how she had known to stroke it, maybe it was instinct or some memory from the early childhood she no longer remembered, or maybe she had just seen it on the vid. But stroking the cat felt good, and it soothed her in a strange way.The cat was wondering how to get her to feed him. Each human has to be trained differently, he knew. The first thing was to rub against them, so they would think they belonged to you. If they accepted your tentative ownership, the next step was to meow. He tried that, but the little human didn’t understand the imperative request for food. Ah, of course, it was a young human, he realized. They took longer to train and sometimes weren’t worth the bother because they played too hard and chased you. But this one was gentle. This one looked like she needed a grown up human to stroke her. He rubbed against her and meowed again.
“What do you want, kitty?” she asked, finding the right spot behind his ears to stroke. “Why are you meowing?”
She wondered if he understood words. She didn’t understand meow, so he probably didn’t. Maybe she should try to meow back.
The cat was not impressed with her noise. He knew that humans sometimes tried to speak real cat language, and he thought it was silly. Humans and cats were different species and they could only communicate through touch and service to each other. But he forgave her silliness because she was only a young one. She knew how to rub his ears anyway. That was good.
They were absorbed in one another when Cappy dashed in their direction and startled the cat away. The little girl would have run away also, if she had had the agility of a cat. All she could do was stand up and shrink into the doorway trying to pretend she wasn’t there.
This suited Cappy just fine, since he was doing the same thing. He had just successfully lifted a few credits from the pocket of the person ahead of him in line at the donut place when he had seen cops entering the room. He didn’t think anyone had seen him take the credits—his mark certainly hadn’t—but he always made himself scarce when he saw cops.
He put his fingers to his lips and whispered to the little girl, “Cops.”
They stood side by side quietly until Cappy figured the cops had moved on.
“So, who are you hiding from?” he asked her.
She shrugged. She didn’t want to tell him.
The boy understood what the shrug meant and didn’t push it. He was a runaway himself.
“I was running in case the cops or someone saw me lift some credits from a guy’s pocket. But it looks like I’m safe.” He grinned with relief.
The little girl said nothing.
“I’m Cappy,” he said looking at her shrewdly. “ What’s your name?”
“Helen,” she said. “Did you really steal some credits?” she asked admiringly. Many years later she would be concerned with obeying the law. At this point in her life, however, everyone around her stole, it was normal. And though she’d never yet picked a pocket, she knew that Ted and Julia did it whenever they felt it was safe, and she thought everything Ted and Julia did was right.
“Yes I did,” he said. “I have very clever fingers.” He smiled proudly. “Are you out on the streets?” he asked, wondering if she would answer.
“No—I mean yes—I mean, I want to be,” she said. “I ran away from my dad because he beat me… and hurt me in other ways. I don’t want social services to get me. So I guess I am living on the streets, if I can find out how.”
She looked at the boy hopefully. If she couldn’t find Aunt Julia, maybe the best thing was to get another child to teach her how to escape the grown ups until she was a grown up herself. Maybe Cappy would tell her what she needed to know to survive on the streets.
“How long ago did you run away?” Cappy asked.
“Yesterday,” she said. “In the afternoon. I was going to take the Whoosh to look for my aunt Julia, but people kept asking me questions about my age and my parents. I had to run away from there too, or they would have called social services. “
Capp nodded wisely.
“The whoosh terminal is a bad place for runaways,” he said. “When it isn’t the pimps, it is the do-gooders.” He thought for a minute. “You did good to hide. “
“But I lost all my stuff,” she said. “I left it behind with … a do-gooder.”
“Man, that sucks,” said the boy.
“Yeah, that sucks,” she agreed, loving the scornful, grown up way he said it.
“And your money?” he asked. “Did you lose all your money?”
“Most of it,” she lied. Cappy seemed nice, but she knew that folks who told others how much money they had were usually marks. She didn’t want to be a mark.
“How much do you have?” asked the boy, confirming her fear.
“Around twenty dollars in credits,” she lied.
“That’s not a lot for sure,” he said. “But I know a place where you can stay for 10 bucks a night. And then you can work to make more.”
That sounded good.
“Where is it?”
“I’ll show you,” said Cappy. “I used to live there myself, but now I have better digs.”
*****
On the tram going back towards town, the little girl got nervous. They were heading towards where her father lived. She told Cappy this, and he reassured her that where they were going, her father couldn’t find her.
She wasn’t sure about that, but she didn’t know what else to do than to trust Cappy for now. At least, he wasn’t trying to call child protective services. He was a child himself, wasn’t he?
She was so tired and so alone. She wanted to trust Cappy.
(The next section will show a little of what Rick did when little Eve ran away as well as continue the story focused on her experience.)
(Why doesn't Cappy sort of take her in in a "you're a runaway, I'm a runaway" sort of thing? I know plot importance, suchandsuch, but it seems in-character for him.)
[There's a new chapter on my Roarke backstory, if you missed it.]
Loving it!
-Wolf