Page 3 of Ripple Effect: Ep. 1

Because of her, my heart is a tenderer piece of meat for the insects to tear apart.

At the opposite side of the room is another bed that belongs to my eight-year-old foster sister, Layla. Well, for now anyway. She won’t be here long. This place is a revolving door for foster girls, most only staying a couple months max. I don’t know where they go, and honestly, I don’t care. There’s no point getting to know them. In the time I’ve lived with the Westpricks, at least two-dozen girls have been in and out of here. In some ways, I resent them, getting out and moving on to something else. Maybe somewhere better.

I’m the only one who ever stays. The constant in this hellhole.

Since I was nine years old, I’ve been bounced around from house to house, wishing and hoping for things that just don’t happen to kids where I come from. For six of those years I’ve been lost. The forgotten. The unwanted. I’ve been hurt in ways that have forever changed my landscape and numbed me to future pain.

But now I have Charlie, who’s a reminder that good things can come from bad situations, and that even a beast can penetrate the hardest of hearts.

Charlie makes me think of my mother more than I care to. Perhaps because it was my mother who stole her for me, unwittingly gifting me my own personal guardian angel.

I miss her sometimes, though.

The memories of her are like bent photographs that I pull from my back pocket from time to time, wishing I could set them out on a shelf someday. But life’s too short, particularly in this part of the city, to dwell on what will never be again.

My mom wasted away before I even hit middle school. Police told me it was an overdose, but I think she got a hold of a tainted batch of heroin.

And I’ve been caught up in the system ever since.

A few places worked out okay. They let me keep my dog, which was cool, but people tend to give up on kids who don’t love as easily as others. I acted out. Punched my first foster mother in the face and broke her nose. Didn’t even have a good reason, really, except that she was the first person I had to deal with after my mom died.

Lucky for me, my caseworker managed to track down my mom’s sister, Chanel, and her long-time boyfriend, Randy. I’d never met her before, never even knew my mom had a sister. Aside from the fact that Chanel treats Layla and me like her favorite Barbie dolls, the two of them can’t stand us most of the time.

Doesn’t matter, though.

Two more months and I’ll be out on my own.

I close my eyes so tight they ache. Two more months. That’s when I graduate and can get the hell out of this shithole, and away from the shady foster system that threw me into the hands of Randy Westprick, as I like to call him, and my flighty aunt. In a few weeks I turn eighteen and no one will own me anymore. No one.

I could run away now, ditch school and hit the streets, but that would put me on the same path as my mother and I’d rather die in this hellish place than repeat her mistakes.

The neon sign across the alley blinks a mesmerizing repetition of lost hopes that reflects off the patches of water along the pavement.

A shadow slips along my periphery, and I lift my gaze as a dark figure stalks down the alley toward the old fashioned-looking diner that sits across the narrow cross section on the corner. A place that reminds me of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams painting I once saw at the mall.

It’s him.

Head to toe in black, the stranger’s tall frame remains concealed in the leather coat he always wears. I flip open the dull brass pocket watch, the only remnant left of my real dad, and check the time. Ten o’clock, as usual. Churning in my stomach has me hugging my mid-section.

Almost time.

Every Friday I watch the stranger enter the diner, choosing the corner booth beside the window, where he orders a burger and drink. It’s only Friday he orders a burger. Some nights he’ll come in, grab carry-out, and leave. But not on Fridays. On those nights, he stays and sits alone, never seems to make small talk with the waitress—the same lady who waits on him every time he ventures in. Their interactions are brief and as cold as I’d imagine from a man like him. In spite of that, the sight of him makes me dream things. I don’t know who he is, but I fantasize that he’s a deft killer by the way he carries himself with such lethal grace. If he is, then this is the side his victims never get to see—his vulnerability, choosing the same place, the same seat, the same time every Friday night. It’s a sadness that speaks to me, because without fail, I find myself settling in by my window at the very same time.

Occasionally, he goes at different times, on different days, some weeks not at all, which might seem erratic to some, but I’ve watched him long enough to know there’s a pattern. One that I’ve picked up on, because that one week he’s not there, is repeated precisely four weeks later. Perhaps it’s mindless on his part, maybe his visits correspond to events in his life that I’m not privy to, but I’m a creature of patterns, and I’ve memorized his.

From as high as my window, I can see he’s big. A man, not a boy, at least ten years my senior. His bulky frame fills the creases of the leather coat he wears, and he reminds me of something straight out of a comic book—not the hero, but the menacing antihero, the bad guy no one expects to be good.

No, in my fantasy, he’s bigger. Meaner. Stronger. A man who kills on instinct.

Beneath the cover of my blanket, I sneak my hand down inside my shirt, closing my eyes the moment my fingertip makes contact with my hardened nipple. I imagine his lips closing over it, the scratch of his day-old scruff against my skin and his strong hands holding me in place, the gruff in his voice as he says my name like a fervent prayer. I imagine he smells good, not like stale beer and the putrid mix of body odor and bacon grease, but something deliciously masculine.

I shouldn’t want for a grown man this way, but I do, and I don’t even know him.

For months, I’ve held this invisible rendezvous with him, staring down from my perch, imagining him stealing me from this cage. Turning me into whatever he is. Killer? Criminal? I don’t even care, so long as it’s tougher, more wicked than Randy Westprick.

I fault him for my lack of interest in the boys at school. Not that I’m allowed to date them anyway, but I’m certainly not touching myself to any of the guys my age.

Sometimes he stares out the window and I swear his gaze scans up to my balcony. However, if he sees me, he never makes it known. Perhaps to a man like that, I’m nothing but a young girl, hardly a threat for noticing him.