Crow - The Awakening (34 page)

Steven slumped in the chair, disappointed yet again. He had not even considered being under aged. Most of his childhood was spent as an entrepreneur under the auspices of his godparents who took care of all the taxes and paperwork. He didn't even know what a minor was until he got his drivers license and even then didn't pay much attention to the concept. After all, at the time he had everything planned out and no need to fret over those trivial details. Now those details were turning out to be not so trivial after all. "My drivers license was stolen last night anyway," he mumbled.

Sighing, he stood up and walked outside and sat on the bench beside the door under the awning and watched the traffic drive by in the rain. He desperately needed a place that he could call a base of operations, and that was proving more difficult than he expected in the city. So many people, and yet no place for him to lay his head. A pigeon landed on the bench beside him and pecked around on it. Steven looked at it and scratched it on the head. "Even you have a home." He sighed, looking out at the traffic whizzing by.

"What am I supposed to do now?" Steven was beginning to realize he had acted without thinking by leaving home. There was so much that he simply did not know. The pigeon didn't answer him, just kept pecking. "I can't go back and face Sally and Jonah now. Not after I put them through so much, and for what? To run away to Seattle to get beat up and robbed?" He put his head in his hands. "But what else can I do?"

The bird fluffed its feathers and pecked Steven's pants pocket several times. "Ow!" Steven flinched and the bird flew off. He checked his pocket for a stray berry or something and pulled out a wadded piece of paper. "Sarah!"

In all the hubbub he had forgotten about their offer of a place to sleep. Steven sat there staring at the number on the paper, hesitating. He had another option. But did he want to burden them? Do they really want him disrupting their lives? He had turned them down because he wanted to do things on his own, and now he had failed utterly and was on the verge of a long trek home to see if Sally and Jonah would take him back. Sarah and Charley were such nice people and he really didn't want to become a lead weight to them.

"Is that your parent's number?" a voice asked behind him. Brian had come outside to see if Steven was okay.

Steven jumped and looked up. He was so engrossed in his dilemma that he didn't even sense Brian walk up. He gave him a wistful smile then looked at the number again and shook his head. "Just a couple of people I met on the way here." Steven sighed, thinking of them. How could they be so kind to him when he was a nobody? He was overwhelmed by their selfless generosity and hesitated, not wanting to do anything that might ruin that.

"Hmm. Do you think they gave you that number because they didn't want you to call?" Brian grinned, holding out a cellphone. Steven stared at the phone, ever surprised by the intuitiveness of his friend. But this wasn't something he wanted to just jump into feet first. He tried to reason things out, to figure out his disinclination to call. What if they said no? What if the number was just a token gesture and they didn't mean for him to actually take them up on their offer?

"What if things keep going wrong for me and they end up hating me?" Steven looked up, really struggling for reasons to not call them but knowing that calling was probably the smartest thing to do. And yet, alienating them was the last thing he wanted and he had no idea what his future had in store for him.

"I don't know your friends, son. But if I gave you my number, it would be because I wanted to help you." He waggled the phone. "If you didn't call me, I might just take it personally." He held the phone out to Steven and waited patiently.

Steven grinned. "Well, I guess we can't have that, can we?" He took the phone, thinking he might want to get his own eventually.

He glanced back at Brian then dialed the number on the paper. His mouth went dry as he waited for the phone to connect, and it started ringing.

"Uhm, is this Sarah?" he asked. "Yeah, this is Steven..." That was about as far as he got before Sarah grilled him on his location, told him to stay right where he was and she hung up. Steven stared at the phone for a moment.

"Well?" Brian asked, leaning against the back of the bench.

"Well, I think she's coming to pick me up." Steven looked at Brian then back at the phone, a little shocked at how sudden that was. He handed it back to Brian. "Thanks!"

"Any time, Steven. Just keep pushing forward and never give up." Brian pocketed the phone then looked back. "I think they're missing me now so I need to get back to work." He held out his hand and Steven shook it enthusiastically, smiling.

"Oh, I think you could use a snack for the road too." Brian handed him a sack then walked back to the serving line without another word.

Steven held the sack and looked at all those others who were in line to get their own sack lunches. For some reason, he felt less worthy than them to have been blessed with this meal, but then he remembered Brian's little speech about phone numbers. He opened it and looked in and was shocked at what he saw. Mushrooms and dried figs. He looked up at Brian, dumbfounded. His friend winked at him then resumed handing out sack lunches.

"Oh dear, you look terrible!" Sarah fussed over Steven while driving back to their apartment. He was still wet from the rain, and covered with bruises and scrapes and he had rips in his clothing where the threads of the pipe had caught on them. He didn't even notice the rips until Sarah insisted on a cursory inspection for broken bones or bad cuts. That really bothered Steven. Most of his clothing was intended for comfort and climbing. Usually very robust. But these were purchases specifically for special occasions like church or parties. He knew Sally would be angry to see them torn like that.

"It looks worse than it is." Steven tried to mollify her, though he was still very sore, rather black and blue with lots of knots all over his head and arms, and it hurt to breathe. Okay, maybe it did look as bad as it was. Steven was so ready to curl up somewhere and just sleep it off. "Watch out!" He flinched as she swerved back in her lane, narrowly missing an oncoming truck that honked at her as they drove by.

"What happened?" She looked horrified. Sarah had trouble keeping her attention on the road as concerned as she was over Steven's predicament.

Steven hesitated. He knew the answer wouldn't help any but didn't know of any other way to put it. "I was robbed."

"Oh, dear. Did you call the police?" She was almost frantic.

Police? It didn't even occur to him. But what would they have been able to do? Steven shook his head and looked at her, wishing she would stop asking questions that would just make her more upset.

"What did he take?" Sarah looked at him and put a hand on his arm, then pulled back fast when Steven winced.

"He took my money and drivers license. And did this." Steven pointed to his bruises. He hated reliving the event again and talking about it wasn't making him feel better. The man got away with several thousand dollars of money he'd saved up for years, and effectively scuttled his search for his parents until he found some sort of income, which in turn would take up even more of his search time. Steven started feeling sick thinking about it.

"I should have made you come home with us. I so should have," she said more to herself than anyone as she hit the steering wheel with her palm and fumed.

"It wasn't your fault," Steven assured her. Why did she remind him of Sally so much? "Please, don't be upset."

She looked aside at him, wiping a tear from her cheek. Steven looked away. Why was it that women crying made him want to cry too? He rubbed his nose and watched the traffic drive by.

"Well, that's not going to happen again. Do you understand me?" Sarah said firmly. Steven looked back at her and nodded. What else could he say?

They pulled into a basement garage and got out, she went around behind the car and plugged a cable into it to charge it. Steven struggled to get up out of the car and she helped him. His legs took a very bad beating and it was getting harder to make them work. Slowly, they walked over to the elevator as she put her arm around him to steady him. It occurred to Steven that he didn't even notice the outside of the building since she drove by so fast and really didn't know where he was. But he figured he'd address that later.

Once they got to her floor, she fumbled with her keys and opened the door to their apartment and ushered Steven in. He looked around, amazed. There were paintings everywhere, stacks leaning against every wall in the apartment, paintings hanging on the walls, huge canvases with drop cloths under them on various easels and paint everywhere.

"You weren't kidding about painting," Steven said as he scooted past one of her stacks.

"I'm getting ready for a show, so it's a bit of a mess right now." Sarah said apologetically as she followed him with his backpack.

He noticed Charley typing on a laptop in a corner where he had a small desk. He looked around and waved.

"Whoa, what happened to you?" Charley got up quickly and came over to help Steven through the paintings.

"He got robbed. Some imbecile took all his money!" Sarah exclaimed, crying and blaming herself.

"Over here." Charley guided him to a bedroom at the back of the apartment.

Steven stumbled a little on some art supplies but caught himself. Once he was up for a while his legs didn't hurt so bad. But he knew he'd be sore later on. He felt a little shell-shocked from the abrupt change of scenery. Sarah came up behind him and put his backpack on a nightstand beside the bed. The bedroom looked like it had been recently cleaned and organized. The bed was freshly made. It was a stark contrast to the rest of the apartment, and Steven was surprised it also wasn't full of paintings. But he could smell the paint in there and guessed that they had recently moved paintings out. He looked at Sarah and Charley.

"I cleared it out for you last night. I just knew that you would call and wanted to be ready for you," Sarah said as she looked around. That would explain the piles of paintings in the living room.

"I'm so sorry. I don't want to be a bother." Steven felt bad that they had to do so much work just for him.

"Don't be silly!" Sarah said. She looked around. "This was my younger brother's room. He's gone now. So now it's yours." Sarah stood there looking into the room, crying.

"Gone?" Steven looked at her, discerning the deeper meaning of that word.

She nodded and wiped her cheeks. "Here, you have your own bathroom and our kitchen is your kitchen." She pointed back at the kitchen. "And here is your key." She dangled a key for him. He hesitated, a little overwhelmed then reached up and took the key. He wondered if she was clairvoyant or something. Because when he called her, it only took her a few minutes to get to the homeless shelter.

"Why are you doing this for me?" Steven had to ask but was having trouble putting words together. He wasn't anyone special to go through this effort for, and they'd only known him for a couple of days.

Charley came up behind Sarah and put his arms around her waist. She put her hand on his arms and smiled. "That's just who we are. Who he was." She reached out and squeezed his hand lightly. "And I have a good feeling about you, Steven."

"Trust her. She has a way of seeing things in people others miss," Charley said, giving her a lopsided smile.

Steven nodded, looking at the room, feeling welcome for the first time in what seemed like a very long while. "I can't tell you what this means to me. It's been a really, really bad few days." Sarah smiled and hurried off to busy herself so she didn't cry more. Steven wondered for whom she was crying. Her lost brother, or him. He looked at the bed and hoped he wasn't going to be causing a deeper problem than just an inconvenience.

Charley looked at her then at him. "Hungry?

"You know, you kinda look like a Crow." Laurence smiled at the disheveled man that was strapped down on the kitchen table. He looked at the drivers license and turned it sideways. "I wouldn't call you Steven, though. See?" He leaned over the table and showed the license to the man. "Those black curls give it all away." He stood up, looking at the license. Finally, a solid lead. Except, where was the owner? He looked back down at the man. "Maybe I'll call you Fred."

He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. It was a cheap chair that matched the decor of the apartment. It smelled of ether in there and Laurence looked in the kitchen, where there was collection of glass jars and pans. "Cooking meth, huh? Dangerous." Laurence leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially, "It's a fire hazard." He smiled, letting that sink in as he sat back up. The rest of the apartment was a mess from the struggle but the thief never really had a chance. Laurence did like a good scrap, however. Too bad this one ended so fast, he thought to himself. But crackheads rarely put up a decent fight and he felt a little cheated.

"So... Fred." He looked at Steven's drivers license. "You want to tell me about this?" The instant the man tried to apply for a Visa with Steven's drivers license his number was up. They traced him to the mailbox office he was using for his address then back to the apartment.

"I found it, man. It was in the dumpster!" The thief wiggled on the table.

"Do I look like a cop?" Laurence leaned over, picking up a lighter and flicking it. The man looked at the cookware on his counter and shook his head, hoping it was the right answer. Laurence grinned.

One of the collection team members came into the kitchen and handed Laurence a bag that was full of money.

"That's mine! You can't take that, it's mine!" The man Laurence named Fred struggled against the straps. Laurence looked at him and the man suddenly stopped struggling.

"There must be..." Laurence fingered through the money, "...twenty thousand dollars in here. Maybe more." He smirked at Fred. "I'm sure you worked really hard for it." Laurence sniffed the bag, smelling the familiar scent of the forest. "Ah, now that smells right." He smiled at the bag, then looked at the thief psychotically. Fred gulped, pulling back.