Page 17 of Faithless
She pushed back a wave of thick, blonde hair. “I mean, you are basically family.”
I tried not to outwardly cringe at that. Sure, Daren and I were as thick as thieves, practically brothers ourselves, but I never sawheras my little sister. She had a point though. Her family was really the only family I ever knew.
I barely remembered my life before I ended up in Four Corners. The clearest memories were how badly my feet hurt. The soles of my shoes had worn out, and my blisters were bleeding. I remembered how hungry I was after walking for what had felt like days. The skin on my nose, ears, and neck had been made raw and red from the sun.
Night was falling as I happened upon Four Corners for the first time at twelve years old. After trekking alone through the desert for who knows how long, thinking I would surely die, I’d never been so happy to see civilization again. Even so, I had remembered a vague warning as I entered the town. Something about not trusting people, not letting anyone find me.
I wasn’t ready to die yet, so I took that to heart. I snuck into a building with large roll-up doors and hid in a dark corner behind a large, metal contraption. There was just enough room for me to curl up between the big metal thing and the wall, where my exhausted body finally fell asleep.
I slept so hard that I didn’t hear the roll-up door open the next morning, but I felt the stabbing rays of sunlight and roused just in time to hear a man say, “Que mierda? Who— what the fuck?”
Now jolted awake, I went to scramble away, but the man had me cornered. He crouched low, eying me with confusion but not anger or malice. “Easy, son. You’re alright,” he said in a gentler tone. Not removing his eyes from me, he yelled over his shoulder, “Hey, Lark. Call Mari. Tell her it’s an emergency.”
“Yeah! Everything okay, Jandro?” a voice called back.
“Found a kid sleeping next to the Mustang’s V-8.” To me, he said, “You got a name?”
I just shook my head, curling up to make myself smaller.
“That’s okay. Looks like you had a rough night.” He tilted his head, inspecting me from the painful, blistering sunburn on my face to the holes at the bottoms of my shoes. “Rough several nights, by the looks of it.”
“Papi?” A boy about my age came up to him then, wrapping his arms around the man’s neck as he looked at me curiously. “Who’s that?”
“Do me a favor, mijo.” The man hugged around the boy’s waist and kissed his mop of dark hair. “Get a cup of water from the sink in the break room, okay? He needs our help.”
The boy took off running, his father watching him for a moment before returning his gaze back to me. “I’m Jandro, and you’re in my shop, kid.” He smiled at me, warm and at ease. “My boy is Daren. He’s ten, looks about your age.”
The sound of running water in a nearby room made me realize how thirsty I was, how much everything hurt, and that I didn’t want to be alone anymore. The warnings kept going off in my head, memories of some faceless person yelling and shaking my shoulders. My mother, maybe?
Don’t trust anyone, you hear me? You can’t let any of them find you. Promise me, Torrance. Say it back to me. Again, promise me.
I was made to repeat my promise over and over, but I couldn’t remember by who. Even now, it was a blank hole in my memory. I repeated my promise over and over, miles after I’d been told to start walking. The muscle memory of the words on my lips was probably the only reason I remembered it at all.
It was important to whoever had sent me off. But fuck, I was so tired and so fucking thirsty. And this guy seemed nice. Like, he took care of his kid rather than send him on a death march in the middle of nowhere.
“I’m Torrance,” I whispered through my parched, aching throat. “I’m twelve.”
“Well, Torrance.” Jandro rubbed his jaw, still looking over me with that curious but kind gaze. “I don’t know what you’ve been through, but you’re going to be okay from now on.”
Jandro did more for me in that moment than any parental figure ever had until that point, I knew that much.
Next to me in the present, Rori was silent for a while after calling me family. She chewed her lip, staring at the ground as she swung back and forth.
“So?” I prompted. “If I’m family, you gonna bring out the skeletons in the closet or what?”
She stopped swinging and met my eyes again. “They’re some serious fucking skeletons. I’m still processing it all. And like I said, it sounds crazy.”
I took a stab in the dark. “Because it has to do with…gods?”
“Yes.” She sighed and held out her palm. “I’m gonna need another cigarette.”
* * *
Roriand I had killed off my pack by the time she finished explaining it all to me. Once she fell quiet and I sat back to just process all of the information, my fingers itched for another smoke to help me sift through it. Because she was right. It was a fucking lot.
“That’s not at all what I expected to hear,” I admitted, raking a hand through my hair. “I thought one of your dads had a spiritual awakening or some shit and wanted to go off and live on a mountaintop by himself.”
“None of them would do that,” she snorted. “Okay, maybe Shadow.”
