“I never had my own phone before, not a smart one. It’s hard.”
I contemplated her meaning of hard, deciphering it to mean difficult. “Yes, sometimes I think my smart phone is smarter than me. You’ll figure it out. Just keep playing with it. Did you like the pink? I wasn’t sure what color to get you.”
Ignoring my attempt to distract her, Jaq whispered in my ear, “They’re here. I hear them.”
“I’m here, too. They’ll be out of there before you know it. What do you like on pizza?”
“You want to talk about pizza at a time like this?”
I chuckled a little at the reaction. She was so young, so naïve, and childlike. “I hope you don’t like onions. That might be a game changer. I could never share a pizza covered in onions.”
“We’re not sharing. I hate onions.”
“I planned on sharing a pizza with you tonight. I think I might order myself one when you have one. What about mushrooms? Are you a mushroom eater?”
“They’re okay.”
“Yeah, that’s sort of me, too. I’ll eat them, but I’m not ordering them.”
“I hear talking.”
“It’s just Wallace and the guy turning on your internet. Do you read? What do you like to do in your spare time?”
Sarcasm followed a snort. “Spare time? You do realize I am alone twenty-four-seven, right? I don’t read much. I play Sudoku.”
“Oh, Sudoku. I haven’t played that since college. I’ll challenge you to a game once you’re online.”
“I’m not that fast. I only started playing it when I moved here. I used all my books. I don’t have any more puzzles.”
“I’ll send you some online.”
“Okay, I guess that’s fine.”
An awkward silence filled the space, neither of us knowing what to say. I had a million questions, but I had to take it slow. What I really needed was to find those composition books. They had to be back at the house. How long it would be before I talked her into getting into a car with me was a different story.
Just when I started to ask another trivial question, I heard Wallace and then a frightened gasp. “Yo, we’re leaving. The eagles are watching and the internet is live. Catch you on the flip side.”
“It’s okay, Jaq. Just stay on the phone with me. They’re leaving. Wait until you hear the door close and walk out. I’m right here.”
“But what if it’s a trap? They might want me to think they’re gone just to get me to open the door.”
“It’s not a trap. I would never put you in danger. Remember that.”
“I heard it. The door. It closed.”
“See, now go lock the door. Nothing bad happened at all.”
The sound of relief was evident in her tone. “Thank God. Can I go now?”
“Yes. I will call you later on to find out what you want on your pizza.”
“I don’t want it. Don’t get me pizza. I can’t do that again.”
A sadness fell upon me; a sort of empathy I had never felt before. These were the feelings my father spoke of in his writing, but I could barely remember them. I was twelve when I found them, and I had only gotten a few pages in when he caught me. He was so mad, but I didn’t know why. I did, however, remember most of the formula. Sort of. LSD, sertraline, something, something, and sertraline hydrochloride, and maybe one more ingredient I couldn’t remember.
“Okay, we’ll talk later.”
“My favorite color is pink. Goodbye.”
I smiled, unsure of why. The innocence maybe. Scribbling my name, I signed the order form for the internet and handed Wallace over his twenty. “You going to be around later?”
“Depends on if it pays.”
“You ever want to do something for someone because it was the right thing to do?”
“Over money? Nope.”
I rolled my eyes, sure I would never raise a child on this messed up planet around the shallow way people thought. Humanity was gone. “I’ll pay you. I might need you to walk a pizza up to her later. You’re the only one who can seem to get in the door.”
“Well, she could lock herself in her bathroom again. You could do it and she would never know it was you.”
“Yeah, believe me I thought about that. Except I have to stay on the phone with her to keep her away from the ledge.”
“I’ll be around.”
My drive home was spent speeding through side streets, thinking about the wild girl my father had tamed. I needed to take a trip. Besides the journals, it would give me a chance to scope out the place, see if living there was even an option. One second my mind was on all that I had to do, unsure if it was even livable, and then…Her. I was about to see what she looked like for the first time. Three hidden cameras and the one on her laptop. Hopefully Wallace got one in her bedroom and I could see her from every room.
My doorman parked my car, and rather than waiting on the elevator, I sprinted up the stairs. I couldn’t get there fast enough. The blonde haired, blue eyed girl I was sure I was about to see sent a surge of nervous energy through my veins.
Knowing how big the file was, the first thing I did was start the camera app download, and then I coded into her laptop, linking them all together. A proud smile took over my lips when I saw her right in front of me, happy I couldn’t see her face, only her torso and small breasts hidden beneath a baggy hoodie. With the clothes she wore, I couldn’t really tell anything about her. I needed the other camera’s help for that, and I prayed that Wallace got them right.
My eyes watched as she lifted a leg covered in ripped jeans. Even with the boy’s clothes she looked small and frail. I glanced through the article on her computer, skimming the symptoms; headaches caused by a brain tumor.
“Yes, I have that,” she said in an excited, yet sad tone, like she’d just diagnosed herself with the horrible disease. By the time my camera app had finished downloading, she’d clicked on several other diseases, audibly detecting two other illnesses she was sure she had.
The first camera came into view when I clicked on it, opening it up to somewhat of surprise. Her complexion wasn’t pale and ghostly like I had assumed. Not at all. The caramel tan in her skin came from her DNA and not the sun. I was one hundred percent sure of that. There was no doubt that Jaq was biracial, and breathtaking beautiful. Whoa. I wasn’t expecting that. Not in the least. Her hair was dark and somewhat unruly, like she hadn’t brushed it in a while. Her eyes were unforgettable, a unique mixture of teal and baby blue, and her lips... I can’t even begin to describe their sensuality. Her face was full of fear, noticeable worry I wanted to ease, and not for my own scientific experiment, but because I felt I could. It was the right thing to do and she only needed a voice. Someone to believe in her and show her the way.
I switched to the other two cameras, one in the kitchen and one in her very small bedroom. Good Lord, I knew that poverty was real, but this was the first time I had seen it up so close. Even though I only had the view of the place that should have been condemned years before, I could smell it. An old musty stench. The carpet was yellow shag, more than likely from the seventies. A spot in the ceiling sagged with a brown ring, remnants from an overflowing toilet from above, perhaps. The filthy sofa was shoved against the door, and one little table set lonely in a corner. The girl had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Where the hell was her family? That’s what I wanted to know. Who left her there?
Chapter Three
Jaq wouldn’t let me order her pizza because she didn’t want to open the door again. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t do it. She was fine with what I brought her, only she wasn’t. The girl had no idea what to do with real food. Her nose snarled at the chicken when she opened the plastic and she placed it back into the refrigerator. Same thing with the fish, but she did boil some potatoes and broccoli, mixing them together on her plate, a scoop of butter over the top. I realized why she was hungry when I caught a glimpse of the empty fridge. Besides the mold, what I had sent was the only thing there.
>
She sat in front of her computer and ate, reading about a condition that had spread through some village in Nicaragua, clear back in eighty-four. I read it, too, sure she’d just checked the glands in her neck while self-diagnosing another disease.
For someone with such a delicate constitution of mind, she really didn’t consider how best to entertain herself. I knew it was a bad idea as soon as she sat on the sofa and turned on the television. She checked the locks on the door, and hunkered up to one end, her knees to her chest. I knew the movie well. A bunch of kids who planned a weekend lake trip, getting drunk and laid with the thought of making it back home. Inevitably, something much worse happened and it all came down to a dead guy floating in the cabin’s water source. A poison from his floating body made its way into the waterlines of the cabin where the kids were. Horrible movie for a valetudinarian to watch. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop it, but I did spend time taking over her laptop while she watched the horror film, blocking basically everything in her history and any WebMD sites I could find. Along with all the chatrooms, I also obstructed her from the harmful rays of depressing blogs she had visited on a regular basis. None of that would help a thing. Not one.
Just after seven, I fixed myself something to eat, one eye on Jaq hugging her knees to her chest. I still couldn’t get over it, how pretty she was and how much she tried to hide that. She didn’t want to be appealing, she hid from that and I wanted to know why. That’s about the time all hell broke loose. I have no idea what she would have done had I not been able to see what was going on.
A knock on the door and a loud voice calling out. “Hey, I know you’re in there. Pay your rent. Come on. Open the door.”
I dove for my phone and dialed her number, watching her run to the bathroom and close the door. Luckily, she turned back for her ringing phone.
“Hello,” she whispered.
I spoke, trying to play it cool, “You sure you’re not up for that pizza? I was just about to order myself one.”
“Ollie, I’m scared.”
God, when did I become so empathetic? My heart ripped clean out of my chest. I couldn’t help her. “Shhh, it’s okay. What’s going on?”
“Someone’s at the door. He sounds mad.”
“It’s okay. Do you know who it is?”
“He wants rent money.”
“Where is it? Did you pay your rent?”
“No, I only did it twice. I don’t have money.”
I took a deep breath, wondering who in the hell thought this girl was capable of living alone. Whoever it was needed their own head examined. Jaq Tarantino shouldn’t be there. That led me to wonder where she would have ended up had kismet not tossed her in my direction. “Do you get a check?”
“Yes, but I didn’t get my mail for a while. He’s going to throw me out. They’ll get me.”
“Who, Jaq? Who are you afraid of?”
“I think he left.”
“You’re okay. Walk out and see if he left a note.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. I repeated, totally forgetting I shouldn’t know she was locked in her bathroom.
Lucky for me, Jaq never even picked up on it. “No, I can’t. What if he’s still there?”
“What are you afraid of, Jaq?”
“Everything.”
It took ten minutes to coax her from the bathroom, ten minutes of asking trivial questions. Anything to take her mind off her fears while trying to be discrete. “You can call me. Anytime you’re afraid, you can call. Don’t worry about your rent. I’ll take care of it tomorrow. Why don’t you watch a movie? I’ll order you a pizza and have Wallace bring it up. It’ll take your mind off things.”
“I don’t want Wallace to come here, and I already watched a movie.”
I stopped myself just before my foot entered my mouth again, ready to chastise her for her movie choice. “Yeah? What movie?”
“Cabin fever. I’m never drinking water from a faucet again. Bottled, that’s it.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of Will Smith, Pursuit of Happiness.”
“I never watched that.”
“Go to your computer. You can watch it on Netflix.”
“I don’t get that.”
I smiled when I watched her cautiously open the door, looking around for anyone in her apartment. There were so many questions, yet I had to be careful in asking. Jaq wasn’t like most girls her age. Jaq was like a delicate rose petal, a flower unable to bloom, afraid to blossom.
“Don’t worry, I do. You can login under me.”
I watched her walk to the curtain, keeping an eye on both cameras as she glanced out, fear shining in her eyes. “I don’t really cook. Just so you know.”
She hadn’t said anything I hadn’t already figured out, but it still made me smile a little. “Let me order you a pizza. We’ll put each other on speaker phone and watch a movie together. How does that sound.”
Jaq shrugged, pursing her lips with a good-natured tilt of the head. “Only if Wallace can bring it.”
“Let me find out. I’ll call you right back.”
“Peperoni and cheese. That’s it.”
The little bastard agreed, but he also made me order three more to feed his own family.
“Agreed, but you better not be lying to me. If this is for your gang, I’ll find a new colleague.”
“I swear man. It’s not. I’ll meet him in front of her building.”
I barely responded, noticing Jaq rolling a newspaper on the table. She creased one sheet, folding it into a rectangle and then wrapped a restaurant style napkin around it. I didn’t need to look through the bathroom door to know she had just made a homemade pad. “Hey, Wallace, I need you to do something else, too.”
“What?”
“Do you have money?”
“I have what you gave me today. That enough?”
“Yes, can you buy a bag of pads for Jaq?”
“No way. Fuck that. Not doing it. Uh-uh, forget it.”
“Come on, I just bought you three pizzas’. I’ll throw you an extra ten. That’s twenty-five bucks for walking across the road and up a flight of stairs.”
“Man, come on. You’re killing me.”
“Great, this is what I need you to do. Buy a few things, get her some chips, the pads, maybe some pudding cups, whatever you want. When you take the pizza up, tell her you forgot a bag earlier.”
“Why I gotta do all that? Why can’t I just give her the pack of pads?”
“Because, you idiot. She’ll know about the cameras. How the hell would I know she needed pads?”
“Oh yeah. Fine, but you owe me.”
“I’ve got your back.”
My fingers ran through my hair, tightening at the scalp as I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into. Not that it mattered. I knew with everything in me, I wouldn’t quit. There was no way I could vacate now. Too late for that. Besides Jaq getting her pizza, Wallace got his, too, but I wasn’t really in the mood for dinner and a movie. Microsoft Word didn’t have a chance next to an old-school composition notebook. Nothing compared to that. An instant smile slid across my lips as I lined a row of blue ink pens next to the fresh paper. Excitement like this hadn’t been felt in a very long time, not since my college years.
I dialed Jaq, holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder, my eyes darting to her, anxiously wringing her hands. The sofa was slid away from the door and she paced, back and forth, back and forth, one eye looking out the peephole with every turn back. My head shook from side to side when she practically jumped out of her skin, startled from my call.
“Is he coming? Is it just Wallace? Do you swear?”
“Yes, calm down. I’m right here with you. It’s just Wallace. He’s not going to hurt you.”
“You said you would help me get my medicine. I need the anxiety ones.”
I watched her walk to the door again and look out, worried about something I didn’t quite understand, not yet anyway. “Jaq, they’re coming tomorrow.
You’re okay, and I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t make me better. Why won’t you just do it?”
“Why won’t you?”
The phone came away from her ear and she looked down, like I was right there. “What?”
My tone may have been a little too brash, but I wanted to know. “Why can’t you do it yourself? Take a bottle of pills and go to sleep. Why me?”
“You called me.”
“You called me first.”
“But I didn’t mean to.”
“Why, Jaq? If you want out so bad, why not do it yourself?”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” I questioned, writing subject and then Jaq just below it at the top of my page.
“What if it didn’t work?”
The light tap on the door caused her to jump, and my words to never start. I didn’t know what to say to that anyway. She was afraid of everything, even a failed suicide attempt.
“It’s just Wallace. Go open the door.”
“How did you know?”
“I heard the knock. Open the door, Jaq.”
“I don’t want to.”
“He’s not going to hurt you. I gave you my word, didn’t I?”
Jaq nodded her head like I was right there, unresponsive with words.
Luckily Wallace wasn’t as much of a thug as he liked to think he was. He was gentle and polite with her. “I have another bag of groceries. Sorry, I didn’t realize I had two. I’ll just put them over here. Your pizza smells good, there’s breadsticks and a warm brownie, too. You ever eat Chico’s brownies? They’re the best. Well, there’s the soda, too. I’ll see you later, Miss Jaq.”
Jaq never flinched. She stood frozen, watching his every move until he was in the hall and the door was closed behind him. That’s when she moved, running to the door to lock four locks, plus a chain, and then she shoved the sofa against the door for extra measure. She then sat down, stiff and wide eyed, her eyes jerking in quick spasms around the room.
“Did you get your pizza?”
She looked to the few things Wallace had brought her and blinked her eyes. “Yes, I have it.”