The Christmas Throwaway (2 page)

The Christmas Throwaway

RJ Scott

steps away from him, heading for the gate would be easier.

"You can't sleep here. I'll find you a room for tonight, and we'll deal with the rest in the morning."

Zach's eyes widened. He wasn't going anywhere

with any stranger, not unless he was under arrest. This cop was going to
find
him a room? Probably some out of the way no-tell motel. Shit. No way this side of never was that happening. He had barely got away with his life two nights before from a proposal far more wrapped in the suggestion of hope than what the cop was giving him. Zach was so past being gullible.

Pulling himself to his full height, he thinned his lips in determination. He was not swapping one hell for another, not a chance.

"No. Thank you, but, no, I have to… go to the station for the train." He tried not to let hopelessness into his voice, attempted to sound self-assured around the chattering of his teeth. He sounded out the words in his head, and he knew
exactly
what he was saying. He clearly had some sort of purpose for being on the bench in the snow on Christmas Eve and the cop should respect that. It was a free country.

"Okay, Zach," the cop sighed, "we can do this one of two ways. It's late, and it is the night before Christmas. I 13

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really want to go home to be with my family and you are kind of making this all very difficult. Now you can come with me, get a decent meal, a shower and maybe some warmer clothes and then you can sleep for the night in a warm bed. This can be all your own choice, or I can make it official and arrest you, then force you to go."

Zach heard every word, looked around desperately, at the small church, the graveyard, the bench, at the snow, and back at the really young-looking cop in front of him.

He was so screwed. The ice beneath his feet had climbed his long limbs, bringing with it insistent pain. The strength in his legs was failing. He had run for so many days, managed to keep ahead of everything and everyone, and he only had two more days until he could stop running. Why was it that his body was choosing now to give up?

"So," the cop continued, "I haven't got all night. I really don't want to spend my Christmas Eve standing over your frozen body and explaining your death to the medical examiner. So your choice is?"

He didn't have a choice. This was a no-choice

situation. He knew it, and the cop knew it. He straightened as best he could, the pain in his lower back burning back to its usual level, despite the cold of the bench that had started to numb the tenderness slightly.

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"Okay," Zach said quietly. After all this was a cop.

How could it be wrong to want to be warm for just one night? "Not a cell?" he asked cautiously.

Officer Hamilton turned on his heel to start walking away from the bench.

"Nope, not a cell."

"You promise?" Damnit! Could he sound more like a kid? Way to come off as a responsible adult who had control of his life. Not.

The cop stopped and looked back at him, pushing

his hands into the pockets of his thick jacket. Zach found himself looking at it enviously.

"I promise." He turned, clearly expecting Zach to follow, which he did. He stumbled on the icy path, in the same thin sneakers he had been thrown out with only one week ago. He cursed under his breath that the cop's boots afforded him a grip on the snow and that he had to scrabble to keep up. It was humiliating to stumble-trip his way like a pathetic lost puppy behind the cop. At the same time, Zach admitted to himself that he couldn't outrun the cop if he decided to act on the impulse to just get the hell away from the man in uniform. So he followed as best he could.

They walked in silence for little more than ten

minutes on the cold empty streets, past a town square and a 15

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clock built into the wall of a small library. It told him the time was eleven-thirty. The cop stopped at the small convenience store with the
Closed
sign in the door, checking the door and peering into the emptiness inside.

Zach just watched, scuffing his sneaker against a ridge of ice on the sidewalk. Then the cop led Zach towards a house at the end of a row of similar houses. The drapes had been left open and Zach could see the tree standing in the window, its Christmas lights welcoming them as they tramped up the cleared pathway. Officer Hamilton let himself in, stamping snow off his boots by the front door and gestured for Zach to follow.

Zach hesitated. He could feel the warmth inside, see the soft lights, the homeliness of a Christmas-trimmed home. Still, this cop was asking him to enter a house. No one would know Zach had gone into the house. With the cop. With a stranger.

"Ben?" The voice was soft, and a woman appeared from somewhere inside the brightly lit hall, stopping at the cop's side. She was small and neat and wore a concerned looked on her face. She reminded him of his own mom, without the whipped, exhausted look she always seemed to carry. "What's wrong?" The cop stripped off his jacket and hung it on a peg, taking off gloves and pulling off heavy 16

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boots.

"We have a guest for Christmas, Mom," he replied softly, beckoning Zach through the front door and, as if in a dream, lulled in part by the woman's voice, Zach stepped over the threshold. The warmth against his frozen skin was prickle-hot and painful, and he blinked at the sudden change in his body as the door shut behind them. A momentary twist of fear made his stomach ache. He hadn't been shut inside by doors for a week and being there felt like a prison as quick as you could say
cozy interior
.

The cop,
Ben
, guided him into a side room where a fire hissed in the grate, the tree stood near the window, and presents lay in casual disarray at the foot of it. Zach got his first real look at the man who had pulled him in from the churchyard. He was a slight bit shorter than Zach, solid and muscled with dark hair and hazel eyes. His uniform looked good on him, fitted him close and neat. Zach hated uniforms. The cop didn't look official like the security in the city parks or the shadowed doorways he had been sleeping in. He didn't look harried or suspicious or hard. It unnerved Zach to be faced with this contradiction in his mind.

"This is Zach. He needs some clothes and

somewhere to sleep tonight." Ben's voice was deep and 17

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certain. He didn't make excuses for bringing a stranger to his momma's house, and in return, she didn't seem all that angry. What kind of Stepford soap-opera house was this?

"Hello, Zach." He winced at the soft words from the cop's mom. "Go and clean up and I'll warm up some soup."

She didn't wait for his yes or no, but at that point, the thought of a clean bathroom, an actual toilet, and maybe a shower was enough to make Zach weep. "Ben, show Zach to the bathroom, get him a razor and some towels, and maybe dig out some of your sweatpants, dear." She smiled at him then, but Zach was disorientated, exhausted, and in pain. It was all he could do just to stay on his feet, let alone form words or even return the smile.

The next hour was a daze of heat and water in the shower, the door locked against anyone who might attempt to push their way in. The razor scraped away the thin straggly stubble on his face. He hadn't used a toothbrush in a week, and the new toothpaste and brush cleaned up his teeth as he stared into the small fogged mirror over the sink. Zach finally felt sanitary for the first time in at least seven days.

The last time he had managed to clean himself up

was two days ago in the bus station waiting room, and the water in the basin had been suspiciously brown. He'd had a 18

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ticket out of the city in his pocket, as far as his eighteen dollars and twenty cents would take him. For his own safety, he had needed to get out of Harrisonburg. God knows where the road would take him, but as he had traced a finger along the I81 on the large map on the wall, he had hoped that he could maybe get as far as Winchester. That is where his second cousins lived, and maybe they would take him in until after New Year's.

The assistant behind the glass hadn't actually

laughed at him, but she made it clear he would be lucky to get halfway in that casual way only adults selling tickets could manage. He had taken what he could get. Ended up here in God-knows-where, Virginia, halfway to safety.

He stared at himself dispassionately in the full-

length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. His body always verged on too skinny, as he grew tall so quickly, but now his frame was just gaunt. His tired eyes and gray-tinged skin made the thinness even more noticeable. At least his hair was clean, the blond dark with water and combed back away from his face. His blue eyes seemed to be popping out of his face. They were bloodshot and smudged underneath with gray, and the purpling bruises along the edge of the sockets didn't help matters. He looked pathetic. He felt pathetic.

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The cop had left him sweats that were a little short for his long thin frame, but they were warm, dry, and felt wash-worn and soft on his clean skin. He pulled on a tshirt, then a sweatshirt over his towel-dried hair and finally looked back again at the mirror in the bathroom, tears unbidden in his eyes. For the first time in days, Zach was really seeing himself in something other than a shop window. He knew he had lost a lot of weight, could feel it in jeans that refused to sit right, but in the mirror he saw a shadow of himself, beaten, exhausted, and so damn skinny.

He looked like a stereotypical street kid, and it scared him that in such a short time he had gone from normal teenager struggling with studying to this broken image in front of him.

He knew he had to go and face the cop and the cop's mom because he sure as hell couldn't stay in the bathroom forever. Cautiously he opened the bathroom door, some small part of him expecting the cop to be standing outside waiting with cuffs. He wasn't there, but it didn't make Zach feel any less nervous. He picked his way down the hall, following the voices in the kitchen. Apparently they had been talking about him, because when he walked into the room, the silence was immediate and somewhat

uncomfortable. The cop was sitting at the table, a mug in 20

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his hands, looking impossibly young for a cop in the bright light of the kitchen. His —
Ben's
— mom stood at the stove stirring something in a pan. Her clear hazel eyes warmed as she looked over at him, her lips curving in a smile. He would have to be careful here, measure his words, not give too much of himself away.

"Chicken soup okay with you, honey?" she asked him gently, carefully.

"God yes," Zach said quickly, wincing at his loss of control and then realizing what he'd said. He may have turned away from God for leaving him to be beaten and rejected by his father, but it didn't mean that others didn't have belief. He should watch his mouth. "'M sorry, ma'am,"

he blurted quickly, "I mean, yes, I would like some soup."

The cop snorted his amusement, and his mom

smacked at her son's shoulder with her hand, admonishing him for his inappropriate sniggering. She poured what smelled like heaven into a bowl, telling Zach to sit and then proceeding to watch him like a hawk as he ate. He couldn't bring himself to care that she watched him or that the cop hadn't moved from his seat and still looked at him. In fact they were probably both sitting and judging him for how he looked and where the cop had found him.

"Ben, dear, are you off shift now?"

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"Until tomorrow."

"Go change out of your uniform. There are still some of your clothes upstairs from last weekend. Maybe you can give me and young Zach here time to talk." Zach lifted his head at this, bread halfway to his mouth.
The talk.

Shit.
He was so screwed.

"Back in ten," Ben said clear and firm, and Zach looked at him, at the warning in the cop's face —
Don't
mess with my momma.
He nodded slightly to let Ben know he got the message, watching as the broad-shouldered man left the kitchen.

"So, Zach, I'm guessing you aren't here by choice?"

She started innocently enough, pouring another helping of soup in his bowl and passing him more bread. She watched him intently. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him and he was ashamed. The old and new bruises on his face, half covered by still damp blond hair he had pulled down to hide them. He knew he looked younger than his near eighteen and could be easily mistaken for much younger. Zach was aware of every little sensation in his body, the warmth, the peace, the quiet, the acceptance, but it was all so wrong at the moment. He didn't deserve this, and he didn't know quite how to handle it.

"No, ma'am," he finally said, biting into bread so 22

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crusty that crumbs sprinkled his soup as he ate. If he had a mouthful of food, maybe he could get away with not saying anything at all. He had listened to enough lectures in his life to be able to tune them out.

"Ben tells me you're nearly eighteen, but that he knows nothing except your first name."

Damn. His surname, she wanted to know his

surname. He guessed it didn't matter much now, as there was no way he was going home. There were only two more days until he turned eighteen. It was too late for the cop's mom to track down his family. He swallowed the mouthful of bread and soup and wiped at his face with the back of his hand, caught up in the reassurance in the woman's eyes.

"Zachary Weston, ma'am," he finally offered. "I'm eighteen on the twenty-seventh of December." She nodded thoughtfully, and he quickly scooped up another spoonful of soup, the heat of it sliding down his throat velvety warm.