Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
“You’re going to love this place,” I hear the realtor’s voice announce. “It has two bedrooms, which, you know, is impossible to get in the city at this price.”
I push open the window. Cool morning air blasts us. The girl climbs through, and I shove all the shit out onto the fire escape. “Up,” I mouth. She climbs up the stairs like the monkey I’m nicknamed after.
“How long has it been for let?” a male voice asks.
“A month, give or take,” comes the smarmy response.
Bullshit. The place has been empty for at least three. I toss the bags up and then scramble up the stairs.
“The window,” the girl urges.
“Oh, fuck.” I heave off the backpack and swing down the side of the fire escape, dropping as lightly as possible. I grab the window sash and start to press it down when the realtor and his two clients enter the spare room. I drop to the bottom of the landing and roll myself flat against the side of the wall.
“This room’s closet is small,” the woman says.
“It’s the city. You’re not going to get big closets and two bedrooms in the city at this price,” Mike advises.
“It’s cold in here. Are the utilities included?” the woman asks.
“It’s covered by the maintenance fee,” he answers. “Feel free to crank it up as high as you want. Ladies—they always like to keep things hot, don’t they?”
I don’t hear an answer, which means the clients have moved on. I glance up. The master bedroom shares the same fire escape. The open iron work of the landing digs into my shoulder. The girl is curled into a ball behind the sleeping bags. She’s good at hiding. I don’t like thinking about how she picked that skill up.
My hiding skills are well-honed, too. Last night, I broke into the cop’s apartment and sat in his closet until he came home. He changed, shat, brushed his teeth and then climbed into bed—all without figuring out another human was sharing the same space as him.
I plugged him while he was watching a porno. It might’ve been safer to kill him while he was sleeping, but that didn’t sit right with me. I kinda regret the decision. I’ll be seeing his wide-eyed shock in my dreams for a long time.
It takes fucking forever for the realtor and his clients to leave. I make the girl wait out on the fire escape until the realtor gets into his car and drives away. Finally, I go retrieve her.
Her legs are wet and she smells like urine. Poor kid.
I carry her into the bathroom and turn on the bathtub, making sure the water is only lukewarm. “Wash up real quick. We’re going to find a new place.”
“This not yours?” she asks quietly.
“No. I’m squatting, but I have some money, so we’ll go and stay in a hotel tonight.”
Her face is blank when I say that. She doesn’t know what a hotel is, but, hell, at her age, I probably didn’t either.
I shut the door and hurry into the kitchen. The refrigerator is empty and the milk is gone. The realtor must have dumped it. He knows something is wrong, then. My instincts are right. We can’t stay here another night. The biggest problem I have is that I don’t have an ID. I can’t rent an apartment. Shit, I don’t even know if I can get a hotel room.
I scrub my hair back. What’d Mary say? That I looked old enough? I straighten my shoulders. Okay, then. Step one. Get an ID. On the streets, you can buy anything. I just need to find a place to stash the girl until I can get the ID.
I pack up everything, attaching the two sleeping bags to the backpack—one on top and one underneath. I tug the pack over my shoulders and knock on the bathroom door. “You ready?”
The door opens and she comes out, carrying the towel all carefully folded as best as her little hands could do.
“We’re going to find someplace new.”
She nods and walks straight to the front door. Man, the little kid’s got a lot of courage. I don’t bother to lock the apartment behind me. Mike the realtor will be back as soon as he dumps his clients.
We take the stairs and exit out back in the alley. It’s quiet back here. Most everyone’s working. It’s a pretty nice neighborhood, all things considered, but in order for the money I made to last, we’re going to have to go to a place where it’s not so nice.
Something brushes my hand. I look down to see that she has slipped her fingers into my palm. As I watch, my own fingers close reflexively around hers.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Helping me.”
“You got a mom somewhere?” I should take her to her family.
Her eyelashes flick down, but not before I see the pain in her eyes. “Not now.”