Wildcat Fireflies (13 page)

“I’m not surprised about the lack of a website. It doesn’t even look like they have electricity.” I crawled forward a little. “Are you sure it’s not abandoned completely?”

“Psst.”

We jumped. So startled to hear a third voice, we froze for a moment.

“Up here.” A child’s voice directed our gazes upward.

Custos wagged her tail, then pawed at the tree trunk as she gazed up among the boughs.

“You’re big, doggie.” A delighted giggle rustled down to us.

I peered into the branches above us. “Hello?” I asked, my voice scared and shaky. A little boy with fiery, burnished curls and dressed in a Colts sweatshirt three sizes too big and jeans too small clung like a monkey to spindly branches. His tongue slid through where his bottom teeth used to be and his grin was mischievous.

“I’m Bodie. Who are you?”

Tens leaned against the tree, pushing his sunglasses onto his forehead. “What are you doing up there?”

“Hiding. Mistress wants to switch me again. Did you
know there are starving children in China who’ll get my breakfast if I don’t clean my plate? Ick. It’s glue when she cooks. I like when Juliet cooks, but that’s it. I don’t want the food; the starving kids can have it and not starve no more. I wish she’d give it to them without hitting me. That’s not fair.” He was so matter-of-fact that I felt at a loss, not sure what to say in response.

“I don’t think she meant—” Tens glanced at me for help.

“Oh, she meant it. She always means it. Mean. Mean. Mean.” The little boy shimmied down the tree and giggled while Custos cleaned his face, inside his nostrils, and behind his ears.

There’s nothing in this world that sounds like the twinkly joy of a young child’s laughter. My heart seized. He reminded me of Sammy, which made me ache for my little brother.
Where is he? Is he safe?

“Why are you spying on us?” Bodie asked, with the directness of a child forced to grow up too fast.

“Oh, we’re not.” I tugged on Tens. We sat low on the bank of the lawn. No one could see us from the house.

“Yes, you are.” Bodie shook his head sadly before mumbling, “No one tells me anything. Juliet won’t tell me, you won’t tell me. I’m not a baby.” His pouting lower lip screamed a refute.

Tens patted the ground next to us in invitation. “Can you keep a secret?”

Custos bumped Bodie over toward us with her nose. He patted her head with absentminded affection. He
picked a seat across from us and she leaned against him. “Uh-huh.” His head bobbed like a fishing lure in rough water. “I keep the bestest secrets.”

“We are spying. You’re right. We’re looking for a girl like us,” Tens whispered.

“What’s she look like? There’s lots of girls in there. What do you want to do? Are you here to rescue us? Or are you mad at her?” Interest, fear, curiosity, and resolve flitted consecutively across his features.

I answered. “No. We want to be her friend. And maybe, I guess, rescue her, but—” It didn’t seem to matter to him that I stumbled over the words.

“Will you be my friend? I don’t have many friends.” Bodie scooted over to me and plopped himself into my lap. Just like Sammy used to.

“Sure. We can be friends.” I meant it. My stomach clenched at the memory of my brother. Would he talk to strangers this way? Be so trusting?

“Will you adopt me?” Bodie ping-ponged his gaze between Tens and me. “You’re old enough, aren’t you? I’ll call you Mommy, or Daddy, or whatever you want.” His expression was utterly sober. I felt his seriousness in the tension of his small frame.

“Uh—” Tens straightened, his expression a bit wild and frantic.

“Won’t your parents miss you?” I asked into Bodie’s curls.

“No, they left me here. I’m foster.” His shoulders dipped and his eyes focused on the ground.

“Oh.” I floundered. “I’m sure they had a good reason.” Even as the words floated past my lips, I wanted to clamp them together and take them back.
There isn’t a good enough reason for abandonment. Ever
. Anger for Bodie, for me, at my parents, battered my insides and I felt my heart pick up its tempo. I battled to temper my reaction and remain focused on Bodie and the now.

Tens caught my upset and took over the conversation. “How long have you been here?”

I blinked, trying to compose myself.

Bodie squirmed, picking grass blades and tearing them to pieces. “Not long. We get moved lots. Place is nasty. Mistress is a demon.”

“Is she in charge? She’s mean to you?” Tens questioned.

“Yeah, bad mean, but Juliet tries to make it better, and so does Nico.”

“That’s good, right? And maybe you won’t be here long, right?” I interjected.

“Bodie! Bodie, where are you?” A girl’s solemn voice called from the house.

“That’s Nico. I have to go. Will you come back and see me? I hide in the trees a lot.”

Tens answered, “Sure, we’ll come back. But you gotta promise not to tell anyone you saw us.”

“Not even Juliet or Nico?” He seemed sad to be reminded of the secrecy.

“Not even them.” Tens shook his head with the utmost sincerity. Even to me it seemed like he was laying it on a
little thick. I didn’t underestimate kids—Sammy was smarter than most adults.

Bodie agreed carefully. “Okay, but you’d like ’em. They’re like you.” He trotted off, shimmying through the fence to face us one last time. “Watch for the mean ivy—it’ll get you if you let it.”

We peeked our heads up above the berm, and saw an umber-haired teen wearing a long-sleeved denim dress embrace Bodie. She wasn’t much taller than he was. As she shuffled Bodie back toward the house, she seemed to touch him with care and love. To Bodie’s credit, he didn’t glance back over his shoulder or give any indication we were there.

“Interesting,” Tens muttered.

“What did he mean about the ivy?” I asked, shivering. It had sounded like an ominous warning.

“No clue.” This was a lightless place. Stagnant and airless. I wanted to scrub away the filth and despair that seemed to clog every pore. I couldn’t imagine living in that building—a hundred feet outside was too close. It made me desperate to get away. “Foster kids live there? I thought it was old people? Gross. Auuhh—”

“That’s why we’re here. We’ll figure it out.” Tens glanced up at the sky as the pink fingers of dawn gave way to bright sun. “I think our new friend might be a help.”

I turned back to stare at the monstrosity of a structure. “Do you think she’s in there?”

“Something or someone is.” Tens let me grab on to his hand, and squeezed back.

I concentrated. “Yeah, I feel that. Shouldn’t we go knock on the door? See if she needs us? Now?” I wanted to sweep in—with an army and a plan.

“He said the headmistress is a demon. What if she’s Nocti?” Tens rubbed his palms along his jeans.

“You can’t think he meant it literally.”
Can’t be that easy
.

He shrugged. “Kids pick up on things. I’d hate to not believe him, then regret it later.”

“True. A Nocti living in there, though? With a Fenestra?”

“What if she’s no longer a—”

“Don’t say that. I won’t believe that we’re too late.”

D
eep into the wee hours of the night Bodie called out. “Juliet?” Soon he was crawling under the cleaning supplies to get to my bed at the back of the stairs. “Can I sleep with you?” His voice trembled.

“What time is it?” I blinked as his flashlight blinded me. Mini stretched and moved out of my arms to make room for him.

“I dunno. Please?” His expression punched me in the gut. He expected rejection.
We all did
.

“Course,” I quickly reassured him. I’d fallen onto the mattress hours after the kids were tucked in and accompanied by stories intended to nourish sweet dreams. I picked up my little travel alarm, once belonging to Edith German, and saw that only thirty minutes had passed since I’d crashed. I hadn’t even had the energy left to brush my teeth or wash my face. I wore my nasty clothes from yesterday.

Bodie was oblivious. He squirmed, pushed, and kicked until he was comfortable, touching as much of me as possible.

“Did you have a bad dream?” I asked. Among the inmates, nightmares were as common as bed-wetting and dirty dishes. I’d yet to meet a kid who came here who didn’t cower in the wee hours for some reason.

Bodie kept his flashlight tucked in his arms like I held Mini, so I angled my face exactly right to keep the light from searing my retinas. “Juliet?” he asked.

“Umm-hmm.” I barely managed a few syllables around my irrepressible need for sleep.

Mini made her way across us to curve around my head like a furry crown. She purred, kneaded my scalp, and groomed my eyebrows with her sandpapery tongue.

I was almost asleep again when Bodie asked, “Why did your mommy not want you?”

Not a question I had anticipated. In my startle, I glanced right into the lightbulb. Tears washed my eyes as I blinked and replied, “What?”

“Why didn’t your mommy keep you?” He stared up at the ceiling, but his legs squirmed, fidgeting.

Ah, the eternal abandoned-child question
. I wanted to say that he was wrong, that my mother desperately wanted to keep me. Because the question really had nothing to do with me or my mother—it had everything to do with his.

“I don’t know, Bodie.”
Oh yes, you do know. You just don’t want to believe it
.

“Didn’t she love you?”

“I hope so. I think so.” I had no idea. Only what I’d heard. What I hoped.
How could she have possibly loved me if she left me, let me end up here?

“So why?”

“If I see her, I’ll ask her.” I tried to evade. “But I know something.”

“What?”

“That I love you. And I’m blessed to have you in my life.” I said the things to kids I most needed to hear when I was their age. I meant them, but it’s not about me. Not anymore. It’s about trying to mitigate the damage I knew happened daily.

“But why?”

“Because you’re smart and kind and funny.”

“Brave?”

“And brave,” I added with a smile.

“Then why did she leave?”

“She had to. She didn’t have a choice.” This was my standby: telling a lie because it got them through the days and weeks until they were adults.
Until they’re old enough to know that I lied to them and they hate me instead of themselves
.

We all hated someone, somewhere. It was better to hate
than to hurt. To wonder why my mother left me, why I didn’t get adopted by a nice family, what in the world I’d done to deserve this hell? Those wonderings hurt. I preferred the hate.

“Mistress said they gave her money because she was a crack ho. What’s a crack ho? Was she?”

I loathed Mistress. “No. Mistress is mean and ugly and hateful.”

“Then why’d she say that?”

“Because saying mean things makes her feel better.”

“Really?”

“Really.” This I knew without doubt. Inside of our headmistress, horrid, wizened, blackened, smoking remains of what used to be a soul curled and writhed. If there was a hell, she had a prime table by the band.

“I made new friends today.” Bodie’s head relaxed onto the crook of my arm and his breathing evened out. “You’d like ’em.”

“Really?”

“Wolf, too.”

I had no idea what or who he mumbled about, but I didn’t care. I let my own eyes close and dreamed of Kirian.

Nicole found me in the morning doing yet another set of sheets. They had to be washed, dried, creased, and pressed to perfection. It was a job I tried to delegate as much as possible, because letting the other kids do the simple, if time-consuming, tasks like this kept them away from the dying guests.

Kids at DG were “homeschooled.” But when we turned sixteen we were sent to boarding schools or to job training. I supposedly studied for my GED in the five hours a day I devoted instead to beauty sleep. I couldn’t think past the next meal or load of laundry or death. I couldn’t picture a future for me. I got to my sixteenth birthday and then the world blackened and I couldn’t see past it. I had to start thinking
about it soon, because February tenth was coming at me with its arms open and teeth bared.

I used to daydream of a time beyond this place. Kirian and I talked about backpacking across Europe or going to Mexico to live on the beach and eat seafood and coconuts. I used to imagine a wedding and a baby, a home of our own. Those rainbows evaporated and turned to ash when Kirian turned sixteen and left me here.

I have kids to think about. And the old to comfort
.

“Bodie sleep with you last night? He left the attic while I cleaned up Sema’s vomit,” Nicole said, grabbing a set of sheets from the dryer and wrestling them into folds.