Those words shouldn’t have reassured me as much as they did, but I believed him. He wasn’t trying to charm me, even a little. I actually got the impression that if I refused, he would just take the sandwich back. No harm, no foul. My stomach was going to go on strike if that happened.
I didn’t get the time to thank him before the door across the hall creaked open.
“Iannelli. You’re up,” someone called.
My stranger shoved off the wall with the kind of grace only people who were completely confident in themselves had. I watched him disappear into that office, the door slamming in his wake. He didn’t glance back. He’d already forgotten I was there, as if talking to me and feeding me had been nothing more than ridding his shoe of a bothersome pebble.
I unwrapped the edge of my sandwich and took a bite. The flavors burst in my mouth, rich and creamy and just so fudging fantastic. Best distraction ever. At least it was, until raised voices came from the office that attractive, rich guy went into.
Minutes into their fight, the office door opened again, and Mr. God’s Gift to Mankind walked out as if nothing was wrong. He’d just been in a yelling fit with cops, and he looked as cool as a cucumber. Well, if cucumbers were dark and broody and fed random people. He didn’t look at me though, not once, not even a glance as he left. Not that he had before, but I couldn’t help feeling oddly disappointed not to receive his attention when he’d made a little bit of a difference in my day.
The voices in the office picked up once more, this time a little less muffled. The door hadn’t completely shut.
Now I was a smart girl, a straight-A student and all, but that meant very little when it came to my curiosity. People liked to say, “Curiosity killed the cat.” But my mother used to say, “Curiosity grows the brain.” I lived by those four words from the wisest woman I ever knew. They were all the justification needed for me to be as curious as I wished.
I didn’t understand what I overheard. Something about a crime scene and following the prick’s orders. I did get a name, though—Martinez—which didn’t match the nameplate reading Chief Jack Bowman.
That was all I got before a cop I’d spoken to earlier and a woman in everyday wear with an ID badge dangling from her neck and a file in her hands found me loitering.
“Ainsley Burch, dear. Why don’t you come with us?”
Six words had never before frozen me in place. It was the soft way the woman said them. The same soft way people spoke to me right after my parents’ death. The same way people said their condolences while petting my shoulder at their funeral, as their pity glared back at me.
This woman didn’t have to say it for me to know Noah was gone. I just knew.
I slid down the nearest wall, zoning out everything else she said. With my ears ringing and tears slowly flowing down my face, I unwrapped the rest of the sandwich and ate.
The whole world crumbled around me, except for that sandwich. It was my last moment of normalcy, my last moment from before. It represented all my best memories bundled into every delicious bite. Noah’s and my last camping trip to Yosemite. The way Noah loved to tickle me to wake me up in the mornings before school. Our trips to this same deli. When the last bite disappeared, a hollow emptiness grew in my chest, sucking up all the light. My after began.
I just didn’t know yet that it was all because ofhim.
Chapter 2
ThesecondtimeIsaw Renzo Iannelli, I realized who and what he actually was.
For days, the memory of my sandwich stranger stayed with me. Iannelli. His name was whispered around the precinct while I waited for the social worker to finish the paperwork—a mix of power, awe, and disgust all wrapped up in one word.
Almost two weeks later, I heard his name again.
If I’d known more about him, I wouldn’t have focused on that act of kindness for days. But it was better than thinking about my situation: curled up on a hard-as-stone bunk bed in an emergency placement home, shivering under a constant chill, and with roommates who snored and mumbled in their sleep. Anything else caused numbness.
Everything I knew was gone. My plush memory foam bed. Noah’s horrible cooking. His terrible impressions of other people that always made me laugh. How bad a loser he was at board games. The stories he told about our parents. My school. My friends. All of it. Gone.
For twelve days, kids came and went from that place. Most were gone after one to three days. Those were the young ones, under ten. The remaining few of us lingered—not really at homebut not really homeless either. Just in limbo, a constant reminder we were alone in the world.
The caretakers tried to involve us, take care of us, and bring us out of our shells. It didn’t take, not with everything I was feeling. Rage, because no one seemed to care that Noah was gone. Anger, that he was taken from me. Fear, for what was to come. Worry, I’d forget bits and pieces of him, just like I had my parents. I wasn’t violent or scared like some kids, but I needed space to deal with everything.
Maybe the quiet was why I got along so well with Little Bee.
Why they called her Little Bee? Beats me. The fifteen-year-old was a freaking asparagus with legs that went up to my belly button, but she’d been in the system since she was six. So maybe it was one of those nicknames that stuck and never got unglued. Or maybe it had to do with her uncanny ability to coil into herself as if she were two feet shorter. She didn’t look her age either—too skinny, with freckles over every inch of her round face, framed by an odd combination of straight and frizzy red hair. It made her look younger, less imposing, which for someone her size was surprising.
She rarely spoke with more than one-word answers, if that. Her voice was surprisingly deep, like a guy’s, with a rich brass texture, and she always flinched at the sound of it. It probably didn’t help that people stared when she spoke.
Whatever, I didn’t care how she sounded. She was good company. Didn’t hurt that the girl was a genius, like Einstein, but with tech. From what I overheard, she graduated from high school a month ago, just before Christmas. She could have graduated a year before, but her foster parents held her back on purpose because graduating early made her a burden. Brains were a bane as much as a gift. Her latest foster parents returned her, like a defective toy, because they didn’t have time to handle herat-home full-time needs, and the state wasn’t going to pay for college tuition.
I vented to my silent roommate about my brother, my parents, and everything in between. She listened. Sometimes she wrote questions or comments down. Other times, when we were in our bedroom, she typed whatever she wanted to say on a contraband phone that went against the home’s no-cell-phone policy. It felt good to talk and get it all out.
“Enough!” she barked at me on the twelfth morning.
