Page 14 of Liar Byrd
I scream, my heart lodged in my throat, as a bear of a man lunges at me. A dark brown beard covers most of his face.
I kick out, barely seeing him in my terror.
He bellows something as I tumble out of the cardboard andsplatagainst the cold, wet sidewalk.
“You thievingbitch!” The man yells, spit flying from his mouth as he chases me out, brandishing something he swipes in my direction.
I leap to my feet and run, grunting when something hits me on the back of my head, the pain drawing tears to my eyes.
When I twist around, the man is still yelling as he stands outside his sodden cardboard home I tried to claim for myself. A dented can with no label rolls away from me and into a gutter.
It’s not Jeremiah or his acolytes. Just a territorial homeless man.
Being barefoot in the compound was fine. Barefoot in the city is agony. Rocks and stones and tiny bits of trash jab me, making the pain worse.
I hobble until each step feels like I’m walking on razor blades. Then, I tuck myself down a filthy alley, behind a foul-smelling dumpster.
Tears prick my eyes as I huddle into a small ball, trying to keep warm, terrified, alone, and so cold I don’t see how I can survive even a day on my own.
And if I even want to.
Chapter 6
Byrdie
“First time here?” The woman’s smile is sweeter than I’m used to and more honest than most I saw in the compound.
It’s a smile that says she doesn’t want anything from me, but I still keep my distance, my body angled to run if she eventhinksabout moving toward me.
My trust in people has been completely and utterly broken. When your own mother betrays you the way mine did, you start to believe that nobody is worth trusting at all.
Eyes glued to her face, watching for any sign of aggression, I nod.
The rattling of cans jerked me awake from where I slept behind a dumpster. It was a woman pushing a shopping cart. I watched her for a while, curious about where she was headed in such a hurry.
Then I followed.
The church—a beautiful, red-bricked building with a spire that disappears into thick, dark gray clouds—surprised me. Not that homeless people can’t have religion. Maybe they need it more than anyone else.
With my linen ankle-length dress soaked from last night’s rain and my braid long since fallen out, I trailed the homeless woman around the side of the building and peeked at the small queue forming in front of a side door.
A jumble of clothes, ages, and races. Brown skin. White skin. Yellow and olive. So many different types of people fallen on hard time.
I watched them, gripping the side of the wall, careful not to put my feet flat to the ground—it still hurt so much.
And the door opened.
I’d been expecting a priest or a nun. But it was her.
This woman.
Long brown hair in a braid that she kept tossing over her shoulder as she handed out odd-shaped brown paper bags, smiling warmly at each person and motioning to the next forward when the first moved away.
Maybe she is a nun,I thought to myself.
But I didn’t think nuns wore jeans, hooded tops, or sneakers. If they ever wore regular clothes, I imagined they would dress like me in my long-sleeved dress, careful not to attract a man’s attention with their bodies.
Your body belongs to God, Jeremiah liked to say in his sermons.
