Clothes were yet more items on the long mental checklist I kept adding to. I was thankful for my good memory because without skills to write what I needed, I couldn’t afford to forget anything vital.
During daylight hours, I rested out of sight or wandered streets unvisited by locals, going over my upcoming vanishing act back into the forest.
Occasionally, my thoughts tripped back to Della, and I’d stop short, wondering if she was safe. Was she fed, clean, warm? Had she forgotten all about me?
The hatred in my heart slowly faded, leaving behind an uncertainty that I’d done the right thing.
On the third night, I was tempted to return to the house with the bay windows and welcoming blue paint to see if she was happy. I let my thoughts convince me that I was responsible for her future even though that was an utter lie.
She was the daughter of my enemies, and I shouldn’t care about someone who had such tainted blood running in their veins.
Besides, she wasn’t my responsibility.
She was never supposed to get mixed up in my life.
She was better away from a kid who didn’t have a plan apart from staying hidden, staying alive, and figuring out what he wanted to become.
Did I want to be Ren? The kid with no last name, no parents, no home? Or did I want to be someone else? Someone who had every right to walk down neat streets and sit at fancy restaurants?
Someone who was someone not something.
I did want that, but I also wanted more.
I couldn’t explain it, but whenever I looked at the treeline on the outskirts of town, the itch inside built until I physically scratched with the desire to disappear inside it.
I wanted twigs cracking beneath my shoes and grass swaying around my legs. I wanted the reward of hard living because every day was sweeter for having survived with no one and nothing.
Perhaps I was punishing myself, or maybe I’d lost all trust in people.
Either way, on my fourth night, I found myself in front of a camping store in the middle of the shopping district of the sleepy little town.
My fingers smudged the glass as I pressed my nose up and stared past the streetlight reflections to the tempting merchandise beyond.
Tents and sleeping bags and everything I’d ever need to turn the wilderness into my home.
It didn’t take me long to figure out how to break in, spying the back delivery door with a flimsy lock and no reinforcement. All it took was a twist of my dull blade and the mechanism gave up, swinging the door open with a whisper of invitation.
No alarm shattered the night.
No security guard grabbed me by the scruff of the neck.
I spent the rest of midnight wandering aisles, staring at pictures on packets and squinting at words I didn’t understand.
I tested the weight of tents and camping stoves. I snatched sharp knives and Swiss army blades and stashed them deep in my pockets. I stole a foldable saw, small hammer, and a handy toolkit with screw drivers, pliers, and other miniature hardware I’d no doubt need.
Scooping up two first-aid kits complete with everything from needles to painkillers, I gathered a pile of water purifiers, strange dried food, bendable plates, cups, and cutlery, and finally, after much deliberation, I chose the smallest one person tent I could find that weighed less than Della.
Trading my dirty backpack, I upgraded to a cleaner one with waterproof flaps and hardwearing zippers. Khaki green with navy blue stitching, it fit my tent, sleeping bag, and everything else I needed with plenty of space left over for food.
Once I’d exhausted my checklist, I headed toward the clothing racks and helped myself to two of everything.
Two long sleeves. Two t-shirts. Two undershirts. Two trousers. Two belts. Two jumpers. Most were too big, but they were well-made and warm and would last me a lifetime if I took care of them.
For the heavier things, I deliberated far too long, doing my best to make the right choice. Eventually, I settled on a windbreak, waterproof duck-down jacket along with tramping boots a size too big, a four-pack of woollen socks, and some underwear.
At the last minute, I also shoved in a pair of flip-flops for reasons I wasn’t entirely sure of, along with a beanie, scarf, gloves, and sunglasses.
Dawn slowly blinked fresh eyes and yawned away the night, giving me a heads-up that it was time to leave.
Hoisting up my new bag of possessions, smoothing my stolen wardrobe, I crept from the camping store, pulled the door closed behind me, then headed to the supermarket across the street.
* * * * *
I had everything I needed.
I was ready to trade closed-in civilization for wide open spaces.
For the first time in my life, I felt an unfurling of excitement.
No one had caught me raiding the supermarket. No one saw the small smashed window in the staff bathroom even though they’d opened an hour ago and customers came and went.
I strolled boldly down Main Street in my clean earth-coloured clothes and dared them to say I didn’t belong.
My eyes latched onto the horizon where beckoning trees and twinkling sunlight promised a new beginning.
And then, I made the second biggest mistake of my life.
I glanced to my left, toward an appliance store selling computers, stereos, and TVs, and there, on the four giant screens in the window was Della.
Her scrunched up face, purple from crying, her fists flailing, her mouth wide in an ugly scream.
My legs shot across the street before I could stop myself, slamming to a stop with my heavy backpack bashing against my spine as I pressed a shaking hand against the window.
Della.
Why was she crying?
Why was she on TV?
And where the hell was her ribbon? Her little fists were empty of her favourite belonging.
Her blue eyes shot red with tears, her little legs kicking as some strange man held her with a heavy scowl.
I wanted to kill him for holding her with such disgust and inconvenience.
My fingernails clawed at the glass, trying to comfort her even though I’d been the one to throw her away.
Then screaming Della was replaced with a severe woman in a pink suit.
Her mouth moved but no sound came.
There was nothing more important to me. I had to hear what she said.
Shoving my way past a customer exiting the store, I stomped my way inside and latched onto the closest TV. The sound was turned down but loud enough to make out words I never wanted to hear.
A few nights ago, a baby girl was found in Mr. and Mrs Collins home. No sign of forced entry, no note explaining who she is, no hint where she came from or if whoever left her plans on coming back.
Mr. and Mrs Collins kept the child for a few days, hoping whoever had left her would see the error of their ways and return, but when no such visit occurred, they contacted local authorities and requested she be collected by Social Services until a foster family can be found.
If you or anyone you know is missing a baby girl, approximately one and a bit years old, blonde hair, blue eyes with a birth-mark similar to a sunburst on her left thigh, then please, ring the number below or call the police.
For now, the baby girl is having one last night in Prebbletown before facing an unknown future tomorrow.
Social Services.
Unwanted.
Unknown future.
My knees turned to water as images of Della being sold, same as me, to a fate worse than me crashed through my mind.
She’d end up being the girls with ponytails forcibly taken into the house by Mr. Mclary to do special tasks. She’d become broken and rageful and full of vicious hate at a world that’d failed her.
At a boy who had failed her.
My heart traded hate for something else.
Something that tasted like obligation, commitment, and a tiny thread of affection but most of all, like sour seething possession.
Della Mclary had become mine the m
oment she ended up in my backpack.
I was the only one who could hurt her.
Not that man holding her. Not Social Services. Not Mclary or false parents or men who might buy her for special tasks.
Only me.
I spun in place, the cutlery clanking loudly in my backpack.
“Hey, what are you doing in my shop? Where are your parents, buddy?” an elderly shopkeeper waddled from behind his desk, but he was too late.
I bolted from his store as the little bell jangled my departure.
I ran down the street.
I sprinted all the way to the pretty blue and white house where something of mine waited for me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REN
* * * * * *
2000
SCENARIOS RAN IN my head as I careened to a stop outside the house where Della Mclary waited for me to fix what I’d broken.
Midmorning meant people inside would be awake. Bright sunlight meant I wouldn’t go unnoticed.
I could wait until darkness and steal her back, but then I ran the risk of stumbling into the wrong bedroom and being caught. I could wait until Social Services arrived tomorrow and grab her, but then I ran the risk of being grabbed myself.
Or—and this was really my only option—I could march up to the front door, knock, and demand Della be given back to me.
I looked over my shoulder at the forest in the distance, seeing my dream of living alone vanishing bit by bit.
I wasn’t afraid of darkness or predators or being completely vulnerable with no one to rely on but myself. But I was afraid of taking Della to such a place.
She was useless.
She was a baby.
I already knew she didn’t fare well in the wild thanks to the previous few weeks we’d survived. She’d inched closer toward death every day.
Only because you weren’t prepared for her.
Only because you didn’t take what you needed.
It wasn’t because I didn’t know how to live off the land, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t provide for us.
She’d been a surprise.
And this time…I had shelter, tools, and equipment that meant we’d flourish not perish.
She wouldn’t be a death sentence anymore, merely a complication I willingly chose.
I stepped back from the house.
Wait, did I willingly choose this, or was I doing it out of fear? Was living with me better or worse than living with another? Just because I’d been sold and the girls sharing the barn with me cried themselves to sleep every night, didn’t mean that would happen to Della.
Perhaps the best thing for her would be to wait for a foster family to take her, love her, house her in a pretty little home and feed her with supermarket purchased food instead of being carried for miles by a boy then bedding down in a tent with a belly full of hunted rabbit.
After all, wasn’t that what I tried to do by leaving her with a family who already had a baby? Why didn’t they want her? They already had one. What was the difference in raising two?
Mclary had sixteen and managed.
The sun beat down on my head, making my back sweat against my pilfered gear. I had to make a decision. I had to leave town before I was noticed—before the owner of the camping store saw his merchandise walking down the streets unpaid for; before the supermarket manager noticed his broken window.
But…Della.
My eyes shot back to the house.
The front door swung open, revealing a woman with a lemon dress and a blue dish cloth in her hands. Her brown hair hung down her back while pink spots decorated her cheeks from chores.
I froze.
We stared at each other.
We stared some more.
Slowly, she lowered the dish towel and stepped off her porch then down the pebbled path to the front gate.
My knees jiggled to sprint. My thighs bunched to flee.
She smiled, cocked her head, and said, “Hello.”
I swallowed.
I hadn’t spoken in days. I’d almost forgotten how. Before I could be polite, she added, “I saw you in the window. Are you okay? Are you lost?” Her gaze landed on my backpack, questions scrolling over her face. “What’s your name?”
Her questions were landmines, and I didn’t want to get blown up.
Looping my fingers under the straps of my bag, I raised my chin, narrowed my gaze, and said coldly, “You have something of mine.”
“Excuse me?”
“I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“I left something behind.”
She frowned. “Left what—” Realization widened her eyes. “Wait, are you talking about—”
“Della Mclary.” I nodded sternly. “She’s mine. I want her back.”
I noticed my stupid error too late.
I’d given her true name.
I’d revealed her family—the name connecting her to everything I was running from. Once again, I looked over my shoulder at the forest with its waving leafy arms and the message on the wind to hurry, hurry, hurry.
“Give her to me.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Now.”
Her gaze slid over me from head to toe. “But…but you’re a kid. What do you mean, she’s yours?”
My heart sped up. I hadn’t thought this through. How could I tell a stranger the truth of how Della and I ended up as a we?
The reality…I couldn’t.
So, I told the first lie of many.
I boldly looked into a stranger’s face and spun the beginnings of a tale that would last the rest of our lives.
“She’s my sister. And I want her back.”
* * * * *
It took what I assumed was fifteen minutes or thereabouts.
I couldn’t tell the time, but the sun’s shadow didn’t move from the beginning where I stood on the street and demanded a baby, to the ending when I bolted from the house with her in my arms.
The woman was home alone with two of her own children, harried and split in all directions, so I was yet another mess to her already messy morning.
A boy about half my age drew on the walls with her pink lipstick—only for her to scream at him to stop. Another boy, a little older than Della, tossed his mug of milk from his booster seat, spraying the kitchen and his mother with white.
Two little devils, undeserving of love and protection and a life littered with possibilities.
They didn’t know how lucky they were.
They didn’t know how evil the outside world could be.
And then, there was Della.
Forgotten and alone on the very same rug where I’d placed her, her little shoulders sank almost to her tiny hips. She was a puddle of despair, and it tore me up inside.
Her hair was cleaner than I’d last seen but not sparkling like the two boys causing mayhem. Her cheeks were a little fuller, but her colour wasn’t perky, just blue.
Blue eyes, blue heart, blue aching sadness.
Left behind and unwanted, she sat sadly, silently, staring at the rug with no toys in front of her, no cat to cuddle, no fish to coo at, no love or friendship or company.
And I’d done that to her.
My feet glued to the kitchen floor as an axe cracked through my ribcage. I wasn’t much older than the boy running circles around his mother, yet in that moment, I felt like a man.
A man who’d made a terrible, heart-clenching mistake. A man who’d left behind a baby but had returned for a friend.
The woman said something, but I didn’t hear her. All I could hear was the eternal emptiness, the sucking vacuum, the crippling need to fix all the pain I’d caused little Della.
My backpack crashed to the floor, clanking and clunking, uncared for as I took my first step toward a future that would mean a life of struggle, hardship, unpredictability, uncertainty, and an unbelievable consequences.
She looked up as my newly booted feet stomped onto the rug.
For a moment, she
stared at me blankly. Her mouth pressed together, her blue eyes distrusting, wary, and hurt.
But then a change happened in her.
A change that stole the sun and radiated from her every golden strand and poured from every infant pore.
Something physical slammed into my chest.
Something unmentionable and powerful and so damn pure, I’d never felt anything like it before.
I thought I’d wanted to be on my own.
And I did.
But I wanted to be on my own.
With her.
And then, she cried.
Her arms swept up, her lips spread wide, her joy manifested into tears and gurgles and a crawl so fast and lurching, she looked like a drunken crab desperate to reach the ocean.
I ducked on my haunches and waited for her to scramble into my arms.
And when she did, I knew I would never let her down again. I would die for her. I would live for her. I would kill for her.
In my ten measly years on this unforgiving, cruel, terrible earth, right there I found home, and no matter where we ended up, I’d always be home because I would never let her go again.
“I’m sorry, Della Mclary.” I hugged her tight, squishing her face into my chest, pressing a kiss to her strawberry smelling hair.
That would be the last time she’d ever smelled fake. The next time she’d have a bath, she’d smell like streams and grass and silver-scaled fish.
As much as I didn’t want to upset her by moving too swiftly, I also knew we couldn’t stay here. Behind me, the woman was on the phone, muttering to someone, whispering about me and Della, telling them to come quick and stop whatever I was about to do.
Because she knew what I was about to do.
Della knew too, and the biggest grin split her tiny lips, revealing equally tiny teeth that I’d only just noticed. At the supermarket, I’d grabbed a toothbrush and two tubes of paste. She’d have to share mine. She’d have to share everything of mine.
Yet there were some things she couldn’t share.
I stood upright, and she squalled in fear, wrapping fierce arms around my legs.