Reorder

When I first met Spencer, he was stealing a car.
The sun was only a whisper in the distance, making way for the thin strips of moonlight on the horizon. The world was quiet and resetting into another long, somber night. I was met with a scarce sight of a desolate street, not pulsating with bodies, shoving against one another in a futile effort to move ahead of the masses. I relished in the silence, enjoying the purity that often accompanied emptiness. However, a sudden spurt of obscenity erupted from the opposite side of the street, halting the smooth transition of night—even the fading sunlight paused to look over curiously. Over to my right, a lanky, freckled boy stood pressed flat against an old silver car, flaked with rust and grime. The vehicle itself was not special, having been abandoned there for nearly a week. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. Dark, sweaty bangs stuck in clumps to the side of his twisted face as he struggled with a small screwdriver stuck in the lock of the door handle, wedging it back and forth violently. He probably hadn’t thought there had been anyone around to hear or see him; simply believing that an empty sky watched over his failed attempts. A sudden smile crept onto my face as I watched the stranger, curiosity nudging me forward bit by bit before I finally decided to intervene.

The place of Spencer’s interest was a loaded garage underneath an aged townhouse, vibrating with bass-dominated music and filled to the brim with substance-fueled teenagers who blundered around the front porch and in the entranceways.

The shattered glass on the ground and overturned furniture made it obvious that no one lived there anymore, and there was nobody to clean up the mess or protect the ancient building. The fact that a torn-up couch and wooden chair, with three of its four legs, were still in the house was surprising, due to the scavengers living in nearly every alleyway along the street. A few deserted shingles lay nearby on the concrete, shattered and forgotten. The cracked street sign on the corner, near the road, was carelessly decorated with sloppy, rushed graffiti and rusting bullet holes. But I was sure, and tried to convince my sister countless times, that there were worse places to be and worse people to be surrounded by, despite her clever skill of attracting the most toxic men in the area to her bedroom.
A large poster stood out in the abandoned shambles, waving serenely in the wind at an angle, as though it was haphazardly stapled to the side of the house. I remember when it was posted there, a late night a few weeks ago. It appeared when I arrived home after my walk from school. A girl had gone missing. On the sign, it read that her name was Melissa Browns. She had immense, mossy eyes and a cropped, straightened mass of blonde piled on her head, a small blue beret sported to hold her bangs out of her face. Her jawline was soft and her eyes sunken beautifully into her fair skin, which was unusual for a neighborhood full of foreigners and low income citizens. She had been smiling, unaware that she had been ripped from her family and home in an unknown fashion.
But the poster stayed there for weeks, ignored and neglected on the side of the abandoned house. Melissa’s eyes sunk deep, disappearing into her skull. The rain and wind seemed to tousle, toss, and tangle her silky hair. Her button nose and small ears turned ruby red in an effort to withstand the cold, and the rest of her face quickly was stained a sickly pale and, sometimes, fully frosted over. Her lips turned a dark maroon and cracked, a light sprinkling of snow causing them to glisten. The corners of her mouth turned down with the heaviness of lost faith, though she still made the tiniest effort to smile. Her gleaming eyes no longer shined and twinkled in the moonlight. They were now as dark as the furthest corner of an alley; as dull as a forgotten home, once filled with life, now full of only regret and fear.

When someone meets a person with a life so heavy that they physically can no longer stand, their face scrunches and their souls shrink, like all of the pity was squeezed out of them. They stutter and stammer, looking for the right words. The problem, I’ve come to discover, is that there never are any right words.

Soot and Chaco returned that night. Under the dim light, they were smiling, teeth yellow and predatory. Spencer had gone looking for them fifteen minutes beforehand, leaving me behind in case they returned. But as the two boys stalked into the alley, reflecting narrow shadows with bloody knuckles as red as the ruddy brick, I wished I had left too. Before then, I didn’t realize that I hadn’t been afraid of the homeless teens, especially with Spencer around. However, curled as small as my body would allow, I cowered away from the wolves who were certainly still starving for destruction. Soot passed me by without so much of a glance, stretching out on his blankets, his wide frame taking up more than half of the makeshift bed. Chaco caught my eye as he passed, but swiftly turned away. He subconsciously rubbed a forming scab on his knuckles and ducked down beside Soot. By the time Spencer returned, the two boys were snoring soundly. He crawled up onto the mattress and laid facing me, the stars turning their backs so that the distance in his gaze could hardly be seen. We were centimeters apart, but the closeness had grown comforting, and I shifted closer as I waited for an explanation.
“They’re not dangerous,” he whispered. A few seconds passed in silence as I made a face at his words. He shrugged and hugged his torso closer. “They’re survivors.”
“Survivors can be dangerous,” I responded. The truth in my voice rang all too clear. Spencer cleared his throat, pursed his lips, and searched my face.
“Yeah, they can be,” he agreed, slower than before, as though he was just realizing. “But they won’t hurt you. I won’t let them.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” I shot back, suddenly embarrassed about my prior fear of the boney, penniless boys.
“Of course not,” he began. Spencer’s mouth remained open, as though he was going to continue, but then decided otherwise. His eyes closed before he turned over, like he was afraid to face the alleyway.