A STORM RIPPED THROUGH THE city that night.
The rain and hail sent dwellers scurrying for heat and shelter, and the ones who didn’t have a home—like me—were left defenseless against the elements. I remember the wind and snow that followed most vividly, and it wasn’t because of its harsh swiftness or icy chill.
It was because the wintry tempest had blown an even more unforgiving storm right into my path.
“It’s colder than a witch’s tits,” Leo grumbled. He was a foster care runaway like me and a year younger at fourteen. In just a couple of years, he’d be beating girls off with a stick. His thick, blond hair, striking green eyes, and bubble gum pink lips made him an instant dream boy. It didn’t help that he was kind, intelligent, and shy. I rarely opened doors around him, and he’d even absurdly offered me his jacket, willing to brace the biting cold in just his sweatshirt.
“Nah,” Miles argued with a violent shiver. He was another runaway, and at sixteen, he was older than Leo and me. Where Leo was light, sweet, and easy, Miles was dark, broody, and complicated. Leo asked permission while Miles demanded. “It’s colder than a pile of penguin shit.”
“You’re both wrong.” I clutched my thin jacket and ignored the ache in my bones. The only thing useful about it right now was the pockets, and being a pickpocket, I never used them. Instead, I entrusted everything I cared about to the camel-colored rucksack my mom wore when she used to hike and backpack across Europe. Other than the Polaroid camera my parents gifted me the Christmas before they took off, it was the only thing I never left behind whenever I took off, too. “It’s colder than the hair on a polar bear’s ass.”
We huddled around the fire we had fought to make inside a trash can with only the fire escape hanging over a barbershop as our awning. We didn’t have long before a cruiser ran us off, but I tamped down my rising dread for the hellish night I had ahead of me.
Both of their lips turned upward, and I knew they would have been laughing if it didn’t require more energy than we had.
My stomach chose that moment to growl—a reminder of the other reason I had trouble keeping my strength up—and it was loud enough to be heard over the howling wind.
“Jesus, when was the last time you ate?” Miles grilled.
“I’m on a diet.”
Miles ignored my sarcasm and pulled a shaking hand from his jacket pocket, revealing a half-eaten McChicken.
“So that’s where you were earlier,” I mused while ignoring his offering. “Begging for change.” I turned my nose up, and his lips flattened into a line.
“It’s better than risking my freedom picking pockets.”
I met his dark gaze and almost laughed at the frustrated gleam. “We were never free, Miles.”
“Take the sandwich, Louchana.”
“No, thanks. I’m saving my appetite for steak and lobster. Those Wall Street jerk-offs really love to flash their cash around.”
“Look around you, Lou! The entire city will be snowed in by morning. There will be no one to rob.”
When he tried to force the sandwich into my hand, I snarled and said, “I’m not eating the fucking sandwich, so you can stop pretending you don’t need it more than I do.”
We both knew his run was almost up. He ran home as often as he ran away from it. Miles had type one diabetes and was on his last injection. Without insulin…
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be as dead as a doorknob.”
I didn’t miss the guilty look he exchanged with Leo or the way their bodies slowly straightened from their hunched positions.
“Please eat the sandwich,” Miles urged, changing tactics.
I was immediately on edge. My gaze narrowed. “You’re going back, aren’t you?” At his reluctant tight-lipped nod, my attention swung to Leo. “You too?”
Leo weakly shrugged and shuffled his feet in the thin layer of snow that blew into the barbershop walkway. Leo was in the system like me, but Miles had a home that he shared with parents who didn’t just decide one day that they didn’t want to be parents anymore. And he didn’t fucking appreciate it. Almost every other month, Miles ran away from home to show his parents he wasn’t some fragile thing that needed to be coddled and protected. Leo, while possessing many virtues, didn’t excel at thinking on his own, so whenever Miles called it quits and ran back home to mommy and daddy, he’d suddenly have this great epiphany that foster care wasn’t so bad after all. The truth was he’d never survive on the streets without Miles’s grit and temper, and Leo knew it.
“Why bother sticking around?”
“We were hoping to convince you to go back to the Hendersons,” Leo meekly stuttered.
A second later, a harsh gust of wind slammed into me, and my body locked up tight in a feeble attempt to ward off the chill. At that moment, I considered the warm safety of my foster home before discarding the thought. It had been a week since I pretended to leave for school and never came back. By now, they would have reported me missing and asked my social worker to find me another placement. No, the Hendersons were no longer an option.
“I’m fine here, boys. Run along.” I flicked frozen fingers toward the snow-dusted street.
Instead of looking relieved, Miles’s scowl only deepened. “Come on, Lou. Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t call me Lou. Only my friends get to call me Lou.”
“According to you, you don’t have any friends and never will.”
“Precisely.”
Miles shook his head with a scowl while Leo whistled and said, “You’re a cold piece of work, Louchana Valentine.”
“Much better,” I praised with my eyes firmly fixed on the dying fire. It was no match for the cold, wet wind.
They didn’t stick around much longer after that although Miles took his time walking away. I made sure to keep my expression blank as I watched him glance over his shoulder before rounding the corner.
The breath I’d been holding shuddered out of me in relief and clouded the air. And even though I was alone in the middle of a storm, I was grateful. I knew Miles wanted more from me than friendship or someone to watch his back on the streets. I even suspected that the times he ran away from home weren’t always because of his parents. Every single time, he sought me out, and it wasn’t because he couldn’t take care of himself.
The wind howled.
My body shook violently.
And then that howl began to sound strangely like a roar.
I didn’t have the faintest clue why my heart skipped a beat, and my breath drew short as my stomach tightened. The part of my brain responsible for rational thinking told me it must have been a car approaching and not some monster searching for its next meal, but when a black muscle car with gleaming chrome jerked to a stop across from the barbershop, I was suddenly less sure.
There wasn’t much that shocked or scared me anymore, but the figure that emerged unhurriedly, unlike his driving, did both without doing anything at all. Then again, I was so mesmerized by what my eyes were unveiling that perhaps my mind had chosen to record the moment in slow motion. I only wished I dared to capture it with my camera because one day, in the not-so-distant future, I’d call on this memory. I hoped for the sake of lonely, future me lying in the dark with her hand in her panties and a pleasured sigh on her lips that the picture my mind painted would be in vivid detail.