Unwritten Rules

by G. L. Snodgrass

  “That’s not covered under our employment contract,” Austin said as he took a sip of coffee, giving me a look that let me know this was one subject I would never be able to pry out of him. An uncomfortable silence fell over us.

  “Why do you live here?” I asked before I thought about what I was saying. The words sort of popped out. I immediately wanted to swallow my tongue and pull them back. He stopped drinking and looked at me as if trying to figure something out. I felt my face grow warm and knew I was turning as red as Jeanie’s hair.

  “My parents were killed about four years ago in a car accident. I got put into the system. Didn’t like it so I left. Simple really.”

  My heart broke into twelve pieces. I couldn’t imagine. My parents were my rock. Don’t tell them I told you that. But it’s true. Even my little brother Jimmy. I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without them. And what did he mean, The System. Did he mean foster care? He said it with such dry unemotional feeling, as if he was reciting a list off a Chinese menu. ‘I’ll have four of number seven and two of number three with an egg role.’ How could he do that?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I mean, how weak can you be. He shrugged his shoulders and took another sip of his coffee. A deep quiet settled over us. It seemed we were always having these awkward moments. We each twiddled with our cups, not looking at the other. “So, where do you live? Where to you go to school?”

  Austin chuckled. “I’ve got a place over on Weaver, the rent can’t be beat. Who needs school? I’ve got the library and all the time in the world to read. Life is pretty great.”

  I could see the hidden pain deep in his delicious brown eyes. Somehow I knew that life for him was not great. More likely a daily battle to survive. It made my problems of what friend to trust and who got to sit next to whom on the bus sort of ridiculous. “Sounds sort of nice, no rules, no responsibilities.” I was blowing smoke but I wanted to make him feel better about it.

  Austin smiled. “Oh, there are a ton of rules, they’re just all unwritten. Figuring them out can be a bit of a challenge let’s say.”

  “Like what,” I asked. I was dying to know more. To know what rules this boy lived by.

  He studied me for a minute over the top of his coffee cup. Boring into my eyes trying to read whether I was worth sharing with. Trying to figure out if I could handle the truth. “There is only one rule really.” He began. “Everything falls out from that one. That rule is to…” He paused for a moment as if to gather his thoughts. “To do whatever it takes to stay out of the system.” The bitterness in his voice was edgy and scratched my soul. What had happened to him? “To stay out of the system means you have to avoid the cops and social workers and do gooder types. Don’t do anything that brings attention to yourself. The best way to avoid the cops is to stay out of the gangs. You get mixed up with them and you’ll end up inside the system eventually. To avoid the gangs, stay away from drugs.” He stopped for a moment and I could see that he realized he was sounding like a public service announcement. Laughing he shook his head. “I’m not talking about using; I’m talking the sale and distribution side of things. That’s where the money is. It’s also where the cops focus. Anyway, the rule is, keep your head down and stay invisible. If you’re going to break the law, make sure you’re not caught and make sure you don’t piss off the wrong people.” Simple really.

  “Doesn’t sound like a great way to live,” I said as my stomach was turned over

  “Oh, believe there are worse ways to live.”

  Chapter Five

  Austin

  My insides were as tense as a rubber band. Maggie was staring daggers into my back and Casey was expecting me to find her friend, soon. The thought of two hundred dollars was hovering in the back ground. The weather was turning bad; Billy was sleeping in an alley. I’m helping somebody’s daughter find a young runaway. Everything about this situation was screaming attention grabbing headlines. The kind of thing that could bring a person to the awareness of the system.

  My heart jumped into my throat when Casey’s phone, sitting on the table between us, started playing Katy Perry’s TEENAGE DREAM. Before she could react I grabbed the phone and said, “Joe’s Pizza.” The look of consternation and surprise on her face made me smile.

  “Huh, … Who is this” a young pretty voice said on the other end of the phone.

  “Give it,” Casey demanded holding out her hand.

  “This is Casey’s personal assistant Austin, who is this?”

  “Austin!” Casey said again, her eyes had narrowed. She was no longer enjoying this. Shrugging my shoulders I handed over the phone.

  “Steph. It’s me. What’ wrong,” Casey said into the phone while shooting me a look of pure indignation. I could hear the voice on the other end, not enough to understand the words but enough to tell they were pretty upset.

  “Uh hu,” Casey said her forehead creasing into a frown. “Are you sure, … okay, okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes … Yeah, yeah, hold her off …” She was adorable when she got worried. I knew what was coming; this was the call pulling her back into her world. Sighing to myself I stared out the window but couldn’t help hearing the rest.

  “No not yet, but some people have seen her around here …. Who? Oh no one, don’t worry about it …. Okay I said … Bye”

  Casey looked up as she ended the call. Her eyes had grown very big and fear threatened to seep in. “We’ve got to go,” she said as she stood up. “Mrs. Tompas is threatening to call my parents if I don’t show up.”

  “What about your friend Jeanie,”

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know. If my parents find out I skipped out on the field trip they’ll kill me. I’ll never get a chance to find Jeanie.” She chugged the last of her coffee and turned for the door. Damn there goes two hundred down the drain. Just like that. She’d head back to her high school art class and I’d go make sure Billy got into the shelter for the night. And Jeanie? What about her friend? She was on the edge of some pretty bad times. I wondered if Casey had any idea how close her friend was to falling all the way out of her old world and into mine.

  “Come on, I know a short cut,” I said as I ducked down an alley. We wove our way between dumpster and wooden pallets. Casey had a permanent frown on her face. She must really be worried about her parents finding out about her ditching. I guess when you have things to lose stuff matters more. My gut clenched up when I thought about passing that twenty to Mr. Miller in the bar. I could have used that.

  Sighing to myself I decided to put it behind me. To chalk up the day to another missed opportunity. No money, and maybe a little worse, she would be walking out of my life again. I’d always known she would, but still. This sucked on so many levels. And to top it off, I knew that I would spend the next few weeks keeping an eye out for flaming red hair and would probably stick my nose in where it didn’t belong. Breaking one of my major unwritten rules.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Casey said as she began to run. I jogged after her and turned her at the corner when she started the wrong way. A minute later the Museum came into sight and Casey slowed down. She stopped and turned towards me. Her face white with worry and her eyes dancing frantically. “I can’t leave. What about Jeanie.” Her eyes shot all over the place while she tried to come up with a solution.

  Taking a deep breath I stepped forward and placed my hands on her shoulders. “You’ve got to go back,” I said. “It won’t do any good to get your parents involved, not yet. Maybe you can talk to them when you get home.”

  She shook her head. “No, they’d never understand.” A strong determination came over her. “Stay here, Okay? Only for a few minutes. I’ll be right back. I promise.”

  A rush of adrenalin flushed through my body. Maybe this wasn’t the end. I nodded and smiled. Sure, maybe that money wasn’t totally gone.

  Casey smiled weakly before entering the museum without looking back. It hurt a little thinking that she’d already forgotten about me as she
returned to her world. Once again a shot of anger began to build. I didn’t know who I was angry with, me? Casey? The system? Or life in general but my gut was beginning to burn.

  Me, definitely me, I decided. A sense of disappointment and building anger began to rise. I was pissed off at myself for still living down here.

  I made my way to the corner of the building. Picking a spot where I could watch for her coming out without anyone getting curious about the street kid hanging around the front of a city landmark.

  The wind had begun to pick up and the temperature must have dropped five degrees in the last hour. I could smell snow in the air, seeping through the normal city smells of garbage and exhaust. Pulling my hood up I scrunched my shoulders and shoved my hands into my pockets while I stomped my feet. She was taking a long time. What if she didn’t come back? What then? Maybe I should take off, see to Billy before the shelters filled up. “Five more minutes,” I mumbled to myself. Knowing that I’d probably give her ten.

  The hiss of air brakes made me twist around. My heart dropped and my palms began to sweat. Their big yellow school bus had pulled in to a spot in front of the museum and the driver skipped down the buses steps and into the building. Well that’s that then. A life’s course could turn on such a little thing. Without Casey I didn’t have a chance at that two hundred.

  I’d learned that no one would give you a regular job unless you had a Social Security card. Sad smiles and shaking heads greeted me every time I tried to get something permanent. No card, no job. I was stuck scrambling for onetime opportunities like sweeping out, or unloading a truck. What made it worse, the only way to get an official social security card was to get into the system. To walk into a government building, the deep center of the system and show some officious bureaucrat your birth certificate, which I totally didn’t have. It’s not the kind of thing a thirteen year old kid thinks about when he’s crawling out of a second story bedroom window.

  So the money, Casey’s money, would get me a fake card. Good enough to get a job. Once I had a job, I was on my way out of here. The big yellow bus had just run over those dreams.

  I should leave before anyone said anything to her teacher. I could see it now, Hey Ms. Tompas, there’s some weird kid hanging out at the front of the building. Yeah Ms. Tompas, I think I saw him with Casey. My shoulders ached thinking about it. I did not need the cops pulling up and questioning me. Every part of me screamed that I should take off, get lost in my world and forget about all of this. Every part except my feet, they refused to move as I watched the front door. I needed to see her one last time. I needed to watch her get on that bus and leave my world.

  Casey flew out of the front door and the breath returned to my chest. She frantically turned one way and then the other until she located me on the corner. I could see her shoulders relax and a smile light up her face. She’d been worried that I wouldn’t still be there.

  I stayed in my spot and watched as she rushed up to me.

  “You stayed?” She said

  “Sure,” I said shrugging my shoulders. “How did it go with your teacher?”

  She smiled. “No problem. I told her I’d spent most of the day in the bathroom and she must have missed me when she checked. I don’t know if she buys it but there’s not much she can do about it. Not now that I’m here.”

  I smiled back, one minor crisis avoided. My smile turned into a frown. “Listen, I’ll keep an eye out for your friend, but I’m not sure I could get her out of the situation she’s in. Not by myself. She probably wouldn’t listen.”

  Now her smile turned to a frown, “What situation, what are you talking about.”

  She didn’t have any idea. Jesus, how naive can a person be. To think, knowing so little and she jumped into this world to try and find her friend. “Uh, I thought you knew. Remember in the bar, when that guy said he saw her with a chicken hawk.”

  “Yeah so, what does that mean?”

  “A chicken hawk is a guy, a pimp, who preys on young runaway’s before making them turn tricks.”

  The color drained from her face as she violently shook her head. “Jeanie’s not like that.”

  “You’d be surprised what a person will do if they get hungry enough. Or if they think the only person in the world that cares about them might leave them.”

  She stared up into my eyes, obviously trying to determine if I was telling her the truth or not. “We have to find her,”

  “Like I said, I’ll keep looking but she’s going to need a friend to pull her out of there.”

  She frowned and stared off into the distance. My chest squeezed when I saw the hurt in her eyes. I know I’d been a little tough but she needed to know the truth.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll find her tomorrow.”

  “How,” I asked.

  “The park, I’ll meet you in the park tomorrow. I’ll take a bus, tell my parents that I’m spending the time at Steph’s.”

  “Will they believe you?”

  “Sure,” she said looking at me as if asking why they wouldn’t. That was what parents did, they believed. “Here, give me your number and I’ll put you into my phone and call you when I’m on my way.” She said taking her phone out of her jacket pocket.

  Now it was my turn to fumble. I felt my face grow red. “Uh, I don’t have a phone,” I said.

  “You don’t?” she said her brow scrunching up in confusion. “Why not?” In her world everyone had phones. The shocked disbelief on her face was like a spear to my heart.

  “Because I don’t need one. Who the hell am I going to call and believe me, no one is going to call me. Besides, who needs the hassle?”

  She continued to look at me with that bewildered surprise as if she was staring at some long lost sea creature, something that didn’t belong in her world. A creature that had no right to even be able to survive in this world. Finally she accepted the situation and nodded to herself. “Okay, I’ll try and be there about ten. I can’t know for sure so you may have to wait. You will be there won’t you?” she asked, looking at me from under her brow.

  I stared into her eyes and knew that I would be there all day if necessary. My hand instinctively went to her shoulder. She placed a hand on my chest over my heart. We continued to look at each other. Her eyes had specks of yellow gold in the sapphire blue. The kind of eyes that could make a man forget about anything except making them smile.

  Before I could answer someone yelled “Casey!” from behind us. The moment was burst like a summer water balloon. A teenage girl stood at the museum door, looking at us as if we were about to get engulfed in a tsunami.

  “Stephanie,” Casey said under her breath. I swear I heard a little regret in that single word.

  The girl’s eyes narrowed on me. Leaving the door she walked towards us.

  “Let me handle this,” Casey said, taking her hand away from where it had rested on my sweatshirt.

  “Casey, we’re getting ready to go,” she said shooting me an appraising look. “Mrs. Tompas is totally losing it trying to get everyone rounded up. … Austin, I assume?” I knew she had a thousand questions. Most of them revolving around weird street boy standing too close to her friend.

  “Hello Stephanie. Nice to finally meet you. Casey and I appreciate everything you’ve done for us today. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Stephanie relaxed as a small smile threatened to appear. Casey looked at me with a cocked eyebrow and questioning query as if trying to figure out what I was up to. I wondered if she was worried about me flirting. Could someone from her world ever really be jealous of someone from mine?

  Her friend came back to reality and seemed to remember where we were and what we were doing. “Come on Casey, we have to hurry.”

  “Okay, Okay, Just a minute,” Casey said in frustration as she turned to me. “You promise?” she asked me.

  I smiled and nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  “Where?” Stephanie asked.

  Casey ignored her and looked into my
eyes to make sure I meant it. I could tell she was wondering whether she could trust me. Coming to a decision she smiled and relaxed then stood on her tip toes and reached to kiss me on the cheek. I turned at the wrong moment and our lips met. Okay, maybe it was the right moment.

  Electric shocks jumped through my body and I swear I could hear fireworks going off in the far distance. She was totally surprised, but not for long. Our lips fit together perfectly. We melted together and become one. I could smell the honey coconut from her shampoo and her lips reminded me of strawberry wine. It was only for a moment, but it was enough to tell us what we wanted to know. There was something between us. Something we both wanted to explore.

  “Tomorrow,” she whispered as she backed away and ran to the front door. This time she looked over her shoulder with a killer smile.

  .o0o.

  I sat on the Park table with my feet on the bench and watched the bus stop as another green city monster pulled in across the street. My heart raced as it drove away. I scanned each of the new people on the sidewalk that had been dropped off.

  No Casey.

  She wasn’t here, not yet. Well it was still early. She’d said ten and it was only about eight thirty. I’d come early in case she showed up. No way did I want her wondering around down here alone.

  My stomach bitched about being empty again. It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. I’d used the last of my money at the laundry mat. I still remembered the sound of those quarters dropping into the machine. That twenty I’d slid across the bar to Mr. Miller danced before my eyes. Let it go I told myself, focus on the now. An angry grumble answered me; my stomach had its own ideas of right and wrong.

  Stuffing my hands back into my hoody’s pockets I hunched my shoulders against the wind pushing at my back and waited.

  Chapter Six

  Casey

  He was there. He’d come. My shoulders slumped and a smile leapt to my face. We were going to find Jeanie, I just knew it. The middle aged woman across the aisle shot me a bewildered look. Probably trying to figure out why I couldn’t stop smiling. To heck with her, she’d never understand. I’d worn a jean jacket and a cream t-shirt. I wanted to fit in.