I tried to leave her there. God knows, I wanted to. No one had rescuedme. No one had savedmefrom the bastards who held us. There were no white knights in our world. I couldn’t go to the cops. Dreyven had lots of neighborhood cops on his payroll, and they all got lots of freebies. I’d tried telling the social worker on one of her rare visits what Ricky was doing, and she had turned a deaf ear to me…after telling Ricky what I’d told her.
As I looked at the little girl, with her bruised cheek and tear-stained face cuddled up next to that stupid stuffed animal, something…broke inside me. Or maybe it healed. She was still so young, so innocent, so trusting. If there was a way to save her from the life Ricky had in mind for her, I had to find it. I had to at least try.
I’d long ago learned how to pick the lock on my closet door, but I’d had nowhere to go. Nothing to run to. It had been…easier in some ways to stay. Safer. Ricky and Dreyven had made it clear very early on what the penalty for running would be. If they caught us, I knew what I was in for.
Ricky had fallen asleep in the living room, his belly full of beer. I’d been too cowed for too long. He wasn’t really afraid of me running anymore. I had no idea where Dreyven was. Sometimes he stayed at our place, but I knew he had an apartment of his own and could come back any time.
I couldn’t leave Zem there. Maybe there were no white knights,but I could pretend to be one for her, couldn’t I? I did a lot of pretending in my head, imagined stories and worlds far away from this one. I could pretend to be her white knight at least long enough to get her away from Ricky. I wrapped the ragged blanket I used around her shoulders and told her she had to be very quiet, that we were sneaking past the ogre. I held her hand as we tiptoed past the sleeping drunk who filled my nightmares and escaped outside.
The feeling that coursed through me when we hit the street in front of our apartment building was exhilarating. I stopped in the alleyway next to our apartment and fished inside the sewer grate for the plastic bag where I hid all my hoarded cash. As soon as it was in my pocket, I grabbed her hand and we ran, as fast and as far as we could.
We were out of breath and giddy with the joy of freedom when got on the bus at the nearest stop. I found the bus line that would take us to the main station.
At the station, I played dumb and innocent and asked the ticket agent if she could look up a phone number for me. She grumbled at me for a minute, but it was late and there was no one else around. Her eyes fell on Zem, and her frown softened.
“Is she yours?” She asked.
“No,” I whispered, leaning against the counter as my pulse pounded. “I’m trying to get her back to her grandma,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster. I was starting to get nervous – Ricky could have woken at any time, or Dreyven could have shown up and he had eyes all over the city.
It took her a minute to decide whether to help us, but a stray thought seemed to decide her.
“I got grandbabies her age,” she said nodding at Zem.
With some questions to Zem, we finally found the number for Zemtira Graham in Solon Springs. When she showed me the phone number, I begged a piece of paper and pen from her, then borrowed a stapler from the ticket agent. I wrote the name and address of her grandmother on one side, and I wrote another note and stapled it inside her shirt.
The ticket agent looked at me suspiciously when she heard me tell Zem it was a secret message for her grandma, but she promised me she would have the bus driver look out for Zem and make sure she got there okay.
I hugged Zem, and she wrapped her too-skinny arms around me for a moment.
“Thank you, Mason,” she whispered, her startling blue eyes looking up at me. “Mama always said I had a guard...guar” she stumbled over the unfamiliar word, then finished “Guardian Angel. You’re my Guardian Angel. Mine, and Wolfie’s.”
I hugged her tight, unexpected tears welling up. It had been years since I’d cried, aboutanything. I’d thought something might be wrong with my eyes, because I couldn’t seem to cry anymore, but this little girl, with her faith in me had somehow broken – or healed – something inside me and the tears rand down my face.
She got on the bus. I saw the bus driver get her settled in the seat right behind him and then they were gone.
I think the agent must have been the real angel, because she let me use her cell phone to call the number we had found. I mean, I could have just run off with it, since she was inside her little plastic office. Unsurprisingly, when I called, no one picked up, but I left a message telling her grandmother that Zem was arriving on the bus and that someone needed to pick her up.
I used the last of my money to buy a bus ticket that would take me as far away from Milwaukee as possible. It wasn’t far, but it was a random direction, and I had hoped that Ricky would have a hard time finding me.
Freedom was a heady thing, not being told what to do, who to fuck, or how to spend the money I made the only way I knew how, but only two days later Ricky caught up to me in a run-down motel outside of Milwaukee.
I’d just finished sucking some guy off for twenty bucks. The guy had just left, and I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth because I hated the taste of spunk in my mouth.
I heard a crash, and the door slammed open. Ricky and Dreyvencharged into the room. Ricky moved across the room and put his arm across my throat, slamming me up against the wall.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” Ricky growled. “Where’s the girl?”
Dreyven searched the room quickly and efficiently. It was just a bedroom and a bathroom – there was really nowhere she could be hiding.
“She ain’t here, Rick,” he yelled pointlessly, peeking his head out of the bathroom. His stringy black hair shining in the light.
“Where is she?” Ricky yelled, his arm crushing across my neck, making it hard to breathe.
“Gone,” I wheezed. “Gone somewhere you’ll never find her, never touch her again,” I jerked to the side, free from his grasp for the moment.
“We give you everything, Mason. A roof over your head, food to eat. And what do we ask in return? That you just be nice to some friends of mine.” I tried to duck past him, but his fingers wrapped around my wrist. I tried yanking on his arm, desperate to escape his grasp.
“But you made me look bad, Mason, so I’m going to have to make an example of you.” He spun me around, then shoved me toward the corner and Dreyven’s waiting arms. I managed to weave at the last second, so my stumble took me toward the bathroom instead of to Dreyven.
