Page 3 of Roma King
Everyone looks at me. Even Sarah, out of the corner of her heavily mascaraed eye. I donotwant to be dragged into a conversation about how ridiculous society is becoming, and how sensitive the general populous is when it comes to offending minorities. Unlike Sarah,Ihate arguments, and my opinions on the matter are very clearly very different to Andrew’s: people have the right to be called whatever they want to be called in my book. If someone wants to be identified as a fucking toilet brush, then let them be a fucking toilet brush. Just don’t expect me to sit for hours and bicker about it. “I believe they’re called Travelers. I could be wrong, though.”
“Travelers. Ha!” Waylon shakes his head as he drains his glass. “If they were travelers, they wouldn’t have settled here. They would have stopped for supplies and then they would have disappeared. But no. They’re out there, robbing banks and raising hell by the sounds of things.”
“I think it’s time for me to get on home now,” Sarah says abruptly. She slides from her seat and collects her shawl that was draped over the back of her stool. “I think I forgot to feed Sparks, and we don’t want to keep you here all night, Henry. Zara, will you walk me over, darling? I could use an arm to hang on.”
“Of course. I don’t mind. My bed’s calling me, anyway.” I rise, placing a ten-dollar bill down on the bar that Henry promptly pushes back toward me, telling me the same thing he always tells me whenever I try to settle my tab with him.
“We don’t charge for apple juice here, sweetheart. We’re not monsters.”
Andrew and Waylon make reluctant noises about seeing us home—they’re big, strong men after all, and it’s their duty to protect us weak and feeble women. Ha! Garrett even goes so far as getting to his feet, but Sarah waves all three of them off with a dismissive flick of her bangled wrist. “Don’t you worry yourselves, gentlemen. We’re going twenty feet. We’ll be just fine. You can see the door to the building from here, anyway. If it looks like we’re about to be raped, you can come pound on your chests and frighten away our attackers.” She snickers wickedly as we leave.
Lakes of water have gathered in the street, and Sarah and I have to weave our way across, trying to avoid the deepest sections. It rained earlier—nothing newthere—but now the night sky is free of clouds. The moon hangs like a polished silver dollar overhead, the unusual amount of light it gives off casting long, stretched out shadows from the lamp posts and the cars that are parked at the side of the road.
“Something’s up,” Sarah says, as she slips her arm through mine, leaning into me. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
Ironic, since I was about to say the exact same thing to her. “I don’t know what you mean,” I reply.
“You’ve been quiet all night. And you didn’t cuss a single one of those boys out for being stupid. Not even once.”
I smile. Stepping up the curb, I assume my familiar stance, leaning against the public payphone at the foot of the stairs to our building while Sarah rifles in her purse for her keys. “I’m just tired. It’s been a crazy long day. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
She stops rummaging and sends me a sharp, narrow-eyed glance. “There’s something else. I know there is. Tell me, or you won’t be able to sleep tonight.” For the longest time after I moved into the Bakers’, I had trouble sleeping. I tried herbal remedies, Nyquil, exercise, and eventually was prescribed some pretty heavy hitting sleeping pills, but nothing helped. And then, after one of our first Tuesday night gatherings, Sarah turned to me and said,“Not sleeping? Oh, that’s simple. What’s on your mind right now?”
“Nothing. Nothing important, anyway.”
She’d given me the same flick of her wrist that she gave the boys just now and told me to tell her anyway, no matter how unimportant my thoughts were.
“I need to remember to pay my gas bill tomorrow. And I have to send off a birthday card for my father, or my mom will kick my ass.”
Sarah had just grinned and squeezed my hand.“Easy. I’ll remind you to do both in the morning, I promise. Now you don’t need to worry about anything.”
I slept properly that night for the first time in weeks. And, for the first time in weeks, I’d dreamed abouthim.
Ever since then, she’s relieved me of my stresses before bed, promising that it’ll make the difference between dreaming and lying awake all night, staring at the ceiling. Thus far, she hasn’t let me down, and I’m thankful for that. They may be graphic to the point of pornographic, but I’m used to my scandalous dreams, now. I’ve kind of come to look forward to them. I rest my temple against the side of the payphone, sighing. “I had a call today. A hard one. A five-year-old little boy, trapped in a house with his dead brother. Kind of shook me up. I heard the door being kicked in by the EMTs, and then the call ended. Now I have no idea what happened to the little boy. Ihatenot knowing.”
Sympathy washes over Sarah’s face. “Can you ask the EMTs?”
“Not supposed to. We accept the call. We help any way we can. We send whoever we can. The call ends, and we accept another. We can’t get invested.”
C-o-r-e-y. Corey. His call was one of the first I received at the beginning of my shift, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his soft, reedy, high-pitched voice for the rest of the night. I assisted countless other callers, but the whole time I was filled with a deep seeded unrest. He’d said he didn’t know where his parents were. Did that mean they’d abandoned him with his brother? Gone out to score, or to drink, or to party and not given him a second thought? Or did it mean they were at work, and they were going to be returning home to tragedy, one of their sons lost forever, the other so traumatized that he was going to be in therapy for the rest of his life? The later would still be terrible for Corey, but at least in that scenario he had a loving mother and father who’d help him through what happened.
In my mind, however, I can’t escape images of a wide-eyed little boy, thrust into the care system, confused, hurt and alone, without anyone to really look out for him. And that…that just fucking kills me.
Sarah has found her keys. She places a hand on my shoulder and leans in close. “You’re a tiny thing, Zara Llewelyn. A five-foot four red head, who can’t weigh more than a buck thirty. For all that, you’re a superhero. Don’t forget it. You also need to remember that you can’t save everybody.”
“I know.” And I really do, but still… I’m going to be hearing Corey’s voice replaying for a long time to co—
A blast of soundexplodesin my ear.
Holy shit!
I leap…
I don’t know which direction to leap in, only that I’m surprised out of my own skin and my heart is thundering in my chest, and my feet are no longer on the ground. Sarah staggers back, clutching at her chest, her mouth forming a perfectly shaped O.
“Jesusfuckingchrist!” she hisses. “The phone? The phone’s fuckingringing!”
And it is. Shrill, and loud, and unexpected. I find myself three feet away from the payphone, one foot in the gutter, my body coursing with adrenalin. I start to laugh, mainly from sheer hysteria, my pulse giving one last hiccup before it begins to slow, and then Sarah is laughing, too.
