One Day Soon (4 page)

My throat felt uncomfortably tight and my hands trembled so badly it made holding the pen almost impossible.

Seventh Street Bridge…

Would time ever erase the impact of those memories?

It was all too easy to let my mind wander to the boy I had met under that bridge years ago. When the sky was red and tears dried on my cheeks.

The boy with black hair and wild, green eyes.

“I won’t leave you, Imi, not ever. You and me, we’re a definite. I don’t have anything if I don’t have you. You have to believe that.”

I had believed him with every piece of my trusting teenage heart.

But he had left me. And it had been for the best.

At least that’s what I had spent a long time trying to convince myself. Even if in my heart it felt like a lie.

I pressed my palms against my legs, forcing the tremors to stop. Deep breaths. Calm and cool. Remembering
him
elicited strong physical reactions.

Every single time.

“Let’s find out a little more about you,” I said under my breath, turning my attention back to the unidentified man in front of me.

I leaned in closer, trying to find any discernable feature that would help in identifying him. A birthmark. A scar.

A tattoo.

The color red caught my eye. On the side of his neck. Just below the hairline.

My heart tripped over itself in my chest. I felt sick. So sick.

Don’t be silly, Imogen. A thousand people must have red tattoos on the side of their neck. I’m sure it’s nothing unique. Nothing special.

So why was I close to freaking out?

I glanced behind me to make sure that I was still alone before I carefully pulled the hospital gown aside, exposing slightly jaundiced skin. When I saw the crude drawing on his neck I had to grip the side of the bed for support.

“It can’t be,” I whispered.

I touched the red tattoo on his neck and smiled.

Wild green eyes. He sucked me under and he held me there. He kissed me harder, branding me his. “You’re my happy life, Imi.”

I was cold. I was hungry. I hadn’t changed my clothes in months and I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept all the way through the night, but that didn’t matter.

“I love you, Yossarian Frazier.” He smiled.

Yossarian. My Yoss.

My happy life.

“Yoss.” His name was razorblades on my tongue. In my mouth.

He didn’t answer. His eyes remained closed.

I hadn’t recognized him underneath the bandages. Beneath the bruises.

Yet the red man on his neck gave him away.

“Yoss,” I sobbed.

My Yoss…

He had been my happy life. Even when things were ugly.

Later he became my broken heart.

Fifteen Years Ago

H
e found me when the sky was bleeding.

It was a warm, summer night in the middle of June. School had been out for a week.

And I was angry.

So, so angry.

I had run away for the third time that month. But I didn’t plan to go back. Not this time. I didn’t really think that my mother would even care. She was probably too busy with her new boyfriend to notice that I was gone.

My problems seemed huge. Insurmountable. The only way out was to escape.

In my immature mind, a life on the streets was better than a life perpetually ignored.

How stupid I was.

But at sixteen I was bull-headed. Stubborn. It was one of my more problematic personality traits.

There was no way I’d go home with my tail tucked between my legs only to be lectured for my impulsivity and then promptly forgotten again.

I’d make a new life for myself. One that didn’t involve my selfish mother and her latest boy toy.

The city of Lupton, Virginia transformed at this time of day. At the end. Shadows became longer and the atmosphere crackled with energy that put me on edge.

I was angry.

But I was also scared.

I had been underneath the bridge a few times with my much wilder friend Amanda. She knew a few of the fringe kids that hung out with the shadies, scoring drugs—and
other things
.

Amanda was the kind of wild that was tolerated by her lovingly indulgent and permissive parents. She liked to play the part of crazy and out of control that was easily palatable when you had a comfortable bed to go home to at night.

She rebelled…just enough. She was bad…only slightly. And I had always been happy to tag along on her more rough and tumble adventures.

A few months ago she had briefly hung out with an older guy named Dez. With a buzz cut and tattoos on his arms, he was perfect in the I’m-trying-so-hard-to-be-hardcore kind of way.

I had no idea how she met him, only that he sold drugs to the street kids who made the rusty iron and broken rocks their home.

“My father would
hate
him,” Amanda cooed one night as she dragged me with her to meet up with him.

And she was right. Dez—no last name— was in his mid-twenties with terrifyingly dead eyes and a smile that would make children run away. He treated Amanda forcefully and it was obvious no one really liked him.

“You’ll get eaten alive down here, sweet cheeks.” Dez had leered at me. I had straightened my shoulders and pretended that he was wrong. I then smoked the joint he offered, drank from the dirty glass bottle that was passed around the group of dejected, thrown away people, and made myself belong for the night.

But Dez had been right.

I didn’t have what it takes to make it out
here.

With the sky for a roof and grass for my bed. Watching my back with a paranoia that made me twitchy.

But being out
here
was better than going home. I was convinced of it. And there was no way I could back down now that my decision had been made. Admitting I had been wrong seemed the worst possible thing.

Pride was a dangerous thing.

And it just might kill me.

I wrapped my arms around me, wishing I had thought of a better outfit to wear on my great escape. A tight fitting tank top and cut off shorts didn’t seem like the wisest attire if I didn’t want to get noticed by the wrong kind of people.

“You did it? You’re such a bad ass!” Amanda squealed. I pressed myself inside the tiny phone booth. I had used my last handful of change to call the only friend I had who wouldn’t tell me I was a total idiot.

“It’s like I’m a fucking ghost in that house. She won’t know I’ve even left,” I said shortly. And it was true. My mother didn’t do maternal. I was expected to conform to her life or not at all. She was strict when it didn’t matter. Disinterested when it did.

It had just been the two of us after my dad died when I was three. My mother was my only family. No doting grandparents or affable uncles. No cousins.

She had always been more of an older sister than a mother. I remembered as a child she’d feed me gummy bears for dinner and let me watch horror movies on school nights. She didn’t care about things like homework and dental checkups.

But she was also the one who took me to get a sundae at the Dairy Queen the first time I had my heart broken.

She wasn’t all bad, but she only loved if it was convenient.

And I had become inconvenient.

She had Adam now. Gorgeous, struggling musician, way-too-young-for-Mom Adam. A sixteen-year-old daughter didn’t really fit into the raging rock and roll lifestyle she had recently adopted.

When I ran away for the first time, I could admit it was for attention. I had hoped Mom would be frantic. I had fantasies of her notifying the police, putting up missing posters, appealing to the local media.

None of that had happened.

I had stayed away for a full twenty-four hours, sleeping on a park bench, before I ventured back only to find the house empty. Mom had never even come home from wherever she had disappeared to.

I ran away the second time after Mom decided to play super bitch and refused to let me go to the movies with Amanda. With Adam looking on in approval, she proceeded to rip me a new one about my “lack of responsibility” and how I needed to “help out more” if I ever wanted to go out again.

I was gone two days that time. I slept on Amanda’s floor until her dad realized I hadn’t gone home after the first night and all but threw me out on my backside. His loving indulgence clearly only included his daughter.

This time though, magic number three, I left with no delusions of a concerned mother. I didn’t expect her to scour the streets looking for me. I wasn’t trying to get attention. I wasn’t having a tantrum.

I was just tired of being invisible. I’d rather be on my own than living with the constant reminder that I was a non-entity in my own house.

“Good for you, babe. You did the right thing,” Amanda assured me. I pressed the phone to my ear and peered out the smudged glass and shivered, even though it wasn’t cold.

“Are you sure? I mean, what am I supposed to do? Where should I go? Can I come to your house?” I asked, sounding so, so small.

“I wish you could, Imi, but my dad would never allow it. You know how he was last time.”

I had nowhere else to go.

Someone banged on the door and I startled. I could see the dark outline of a very large figure standing on the other side. “Hurry up! I need to use the phone!” the person shouted.

“I guess I could head to the warehouse on Summit,” I considered. I was starting to feel panicked.

“That’s a good idea. There are lots of kids down there. I remember some of them being pretty cool when I’d hang out with that asshole Dez. Plus you’re totally cute, someone will take pity on you.”

“That’s not very reassuring, Mandy,” I muttered, picking at the rusted metal phone cord.

“Don’t be such a worry wart. You’ll be fine. But I’ll try to get out to see you in a bit.”

The guy banged on the door again. “Get the fuck out of there or I’ll drag you out!” he yelled.

“I’ve gotta go,” I said hurriedly.

“Okay, I’ll find you, Imi. Just head to the warehouse.”

The door opened and the phone was yanked out of my hand. I was all but shoved out of the booth by a very large, very impatient man. He snarled at me with a mouth full of yellow teeth and I scrambled away.

I tripped and fell, landing hard on my knees. The sun was just setting and small fires were being lit in trashcans. A few guys were riding skateboards along the cracked pavement. A group of kids no older than I was, were smoking cigarettes and sharing French-fries from a bag.

My knees were bleeding and I pulled pieces of gravel from my skin with shaking fingers.

I had run away from home.

I had nowhere to go.

I was a teenage freaking runaway.

“You okay?”

I looked up, shielding my eyes from the late evening sun. A guy holding a plastic convenience store bag and a skateboard under his arm stood above me, his eyebrows arched questioningly.

My hands were wet with blood and my cheeks were stained with tears. I quickly wiped my hands on my shorts and stood up on unsteady feet. My stomach was twisted into knots and I shivered again, but didn’t respond.

“Do you have a thing against answering questions?” he chuckled and I scowled.

I straightened my shoulders and flipped my long, brown hair over my shoulder, lifting my chin in a show of strength I didn’t feel. “I’m fine,” I said firmly.

The guy dropped his skateboard onto the ground and rolled it back and forth underneath his foot. He cocked his head to the side and gave me a disbelieving smile. “That’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared indignantly. “You
don’t
know me.”

The boy couldn’t have been much older than I was. His too thin face was angular in a way that indicated he had only just lost the roundness of childhood. He was skinny, his arms long. His legs longer. But he was lovely to look at. He had a chiseled beauty that would have been perfect on a runway.