What I've Done (4 page)

When I follow the cooler breeze and the salty smell permeating from the water, it doesn’t take long before we discover our first beach. Rose squeals in delight and does a little dance when we come into full view of the ocean, but I only stand there and take it all in.

The water looks as if it stretches beyond the ends of the earth, sparkling like a million diamonds in the brilliant sunlight. There is a large pier in the distance that stretches high above the water and waves splash furiously against its many posts underneath. A handful of surfers wearing wetsuits are further out in the water, some riding the waves for a few seconds until they lose their momentum and others seeming to enjoy simply bobbing around on their stomachs while hanging out. Numerous joggers and speed-walkers, many with dogs on a leash, hurry along the edge of the water and cause loitering birds to squawk in protest as they take flight to the blue skies.

Everyone appears to appreciate the benefits the massive body of water brings with it. The ocean looks nothing like it had on television. To actually be standing in the sand and taking in the sounds of the waves splashing along with the crisp, salty smell in the air proves to be overwhelmingly awesome.

Rose gasps. “It’s so big! Can we go in, Lily?”

Her smile could light a million homes when she looks up at me. My heart swells and I beam brightly back at her, so pleased to see my sister that happy. There are only a small handful of times before now that have made her smile quite as bright.

“Right after you change into your new swimsuit,” I tell her, nodding.

Rose skips ahead of me until we find a somewhat new public bathroom that smells strongly of pine needles and has a slippery floor from all the water soaked people that have passed through. While she changes inside one of the stalls I discover a wall of bright blue, medium-sized lockers that are perfect for hiding the bag of money. The bulging bag fits nicely inside and I insert the change needed to receive the small key that will open it again later. I safely tuck it into my pocket, knowing full well that our lives could one day be dependent on that small piece of metal.

Rose makes a bee-line for the water when we return outside and screams happily as a cold wave meets her, splashing up onto her face. I remove my battered tennis shoes to let my toes sink into the somewhat cool, wet sand and wade into the water behind her. I squeal in surprise at the freezing temperature of the water against my legs.

I hadn’t expected the beach to be so busy during this time of year. My nerves become increasingly frazzled with the presence of so many people when we are refugees of sorts. I try my best to ignore the nagging sensation that everyone is watching us suspiciously.

Rose dances around happily in the water for most of the afternoon. It is nearing dark when she begins to play with a toddler splashing nearby with his mommy. The paranoia of being discovered wins over when the woman asks Rose her name. I pull my sister away from the woman and tell her it is time to go.

“Can’t we stay a little bit longer?” she begs.

Those darn eyes beg me once again but I fight the urge to give in. Rose drags her feet with exaggerated delay behind me through the sand when she knows I am not going to change my mind.

“We’re going to make you look like your Barbie doll,” I tell her.

“We are?” she asks, her eyes wide.

I nod and her pace seems to quicken with the promised enticement. We return to the bathrooms with our wet, sandy feet and lock the door behind us. I use the stolen scissors to carefully cut Rose’s curly, long locks so they barely brush her shoulders. She breaks into tears when she sees the long ends falling to the ground so I begin to cut my own hair to about the same length. Without another mirror I can only imagine what the back of my head looks like.

She beams brightly up at me. “We match!”

I lift up my bag of stolen goods. “Just wait, Rose. I have another surprise.”

As always I fake excitement to the best of my ability with her—this time in hopes that she will not be upset when I pull the bottle of dye from the box. Although I am used to cutting Rose’s hair, I have never once tried coloring it. But I follow the directions, applying the dye to each of our heads and waiting the allotted time for the color to set.

Rose makes me play guessing games while we wait. A few people bang on the door during this time but I either tell Rose not to make any noise or yell out “we’re busy in here” which makes my sister giggle and tell me I’m silly.

It has become first nature to pretend with Rose that nothing is wrong. She hasn’t known any people close to her that have died, so telling her our mother had gone to heaven probably didn’t mean a whole lot in her eyes. Hopefully she will come to understand that our mother is forever gone.

With a sinking heart, I carefully take Rose’s head to rinse it under the sink and discover the color is not going to be anything like I had imagined. Her once mousey brown takes on more of an artificial auburn hue as the solution washes away. Using the shirt I had worn on the bus I wrap her hair up to dry while rinsing out my own.

My hair wasn’t nearly as dark as Rose’s had been to start with but now it takes on more of a shiny shade of chestnut. I study myself in the mirror to find my catlike, green eyes appear more brilliant next to the color. The flattering features of my round face have also become more highlighted. I have never really considered myself to be pretty before, but I know this new color has done overall flattering things to my features.

“I don’t look like my Barbie,” Rose pouts, pushing out her bottom lip. She holds up the plastic doll as her proof.

“Tell you what,” I say, leaning over to place my hands on her shoulders. “How about you call me Tasha and I’ll call you Barbie?”

Taking on my best friend’s name seems fitting for my new identity. A lump begins to form in my throat when I allow myself to think of Tasha—does she even know I’m gone, or does she even care after all the lies I had told her? I swallow the lump without further thought, before it turns into something more.

“I get to be Barbie?” she gasps, her angelic eyes wide.

I nod in affirmation and giggle when she throws her arms around my neck for a bear hug.

It is so much easier to see her happy like this, no matter what lie I have to tell her—I wonder just how many I will have to tell to keep my promise not to disappoint her again.

* * *

“Now where are we going?” Rose groans in an adorably tiny, drama-filled tone.

She hurries along in nearly a skip beside me, seeming to absorb every little detail of the scenery around us with her big eyes. We left the beach in search of a place to sleep for the night. The further we get away from the downtown area the smaller and more run down the houses become. The sun has nearly disappeared from the sky and there is very little moonlight.

“House hunting,” I answer.

Nothing about the neighborhoods we walk through seems particularly dangerous, although night has set in and every little noise seems amplified in the darkness. The houses we walk past seem to be for lower-income families by the rundown and overall un-kept looks of them. There is less of a chance that these homes would have any kind of alarm system installed.

I swing Rose’s little hand in mine, hoping she won’t give too much thought to our destination. She always handles situations best when I feign happiness, no matter how scared or stressed out I may be. This whole day has certainly been no exception.

Aside from our short lived romp on the beach, I have been freaking out inside. We have very little money, no place to sleep, no food, no extra clothing and no way of getting around in the big city. Our future seems very dim.

“How much longer ‘til we get there?”

My forced mood apparently isn’t working on Rose this time, although she isn’t showing the slightest bit of worry or concern—just annoyance at all the walking I am forcing her into.

“That’s a good question,” I mumble.

I spot a few dark houses with “for sale” signs in the yard. Back in Minnesota there had been a few times Tommy and his buddy took me and Tasha to similar houses. Most likely they were looking to fool around with us, but this was before Tommy and I shared our kiss so we mostly just hung out. The houses without alarms often had an open window that one of us girls would shimmy through to unlock the back door for the others.

My eyes settle on a smaller, more tattered little yellow house on the end of a quiet block that potentially could be empty. There is an overweight man standing by the house next door, dressed in nothing other than a pair of boxer shorts and watching his little brown Chihuahua go to the bathroom. Otherwise the neighborhood seems quiet for the night.

There is an overall rundown feeling to this smaller neighborhood that I am not particularly fond of, but with my sister’s patience deteriorating at an increasing rate of speed, I think my choice will have to be good enough. Besides, we had lived in places that were probably even more perilous.

Once the man goes back into his house, Rose and I are able to slip in through an open window in the back of the one-story house next door. The yard is covered by a tall and battered wooden fence, making it easier for us to enter unseen. It is obvious no one has lived in the two-bedroom home for some time, but it is not yet to the point of deterioration. Random furniture is left behind and luckily a decent bed is among the things that remain.

I tell Rose we cannot turn on the lights, although I am guessing the electricity to the house was turned off long ago. Fortunately the moon gives us small slivers of light through the windows so we are able to find our way around.

As we crawl on top of the bare mattress together, the sound of the neighbor’s Chihuahua and the old cedar smell of the house are bothersome, but Rose doesn’t say anything about either one and she is soon snoring lightly beside me.

* * *

I wake just as the sun is beginning to rise. The small, rhinestone faced watch I got as a Christmas present from my friend Tasha reveals it is a little after six o’clock. I crawl out of the bed carefully so as not to wake Rose. I cover her little body with the old gray winter coat I had been wearing when we left Minnesota and she stirs slightly, her angelic face disappearing underneath it. Since I am able to see better with the emerging sunlight, I begin to search through the house for anything we can use, in case we are unable to get back into the same house again.

Our neighbor Adele had told me about residents who sometimes got locked out of their homes when they didn’t pay their mortgage—sometimes people didn’t know they could go to court and get all of their things back. I think something like that had maybe happened to the previous owners of this house. There are a few vanity supplies such as soap and shampoo still in the shower, but the few articles of clothing I find inside a little hallway closet had belonged to a very large man. The rest of the house is basically empty.

Once Rose is awake I stash what little belongings we have in a cupboard in back of the bedroom closet. I don’t know how long we will be able to continue returning to this house, but I don’t want to be seen carrying our things around.

We sneak back out of the neighborhood and walk for what must seem like forever to Rose before finding a public library. Rose happily runs to the children’s section where she begins browsing through picture books without delay.

If there has been one positive, constant thing in Rose’s life it would have to be our trips to the library. No matter where we lived, I had always been loyal about taking her and she simply adored our time there. I cherished it just as much—at the library we were able to escape into worlds the authors made for us. Rose made me read the entire
Harry Potter
series to her in the span of just under a year and would sometimes force me to pretend we were students at the fictional Hogwarts School of Magic. She knew we didn’t have to deal with our mother or her problems while there.

There are a row of computers nearby the children’s section and I settle behind one, intending to educate myself on the city and surrounding area. I pull up a variety of Google searches on the weather, public schools and a website on the state’s child protection laws. With my eighteenth birthday only months away, I hope I can discover how to take on the custody of Rose.

I am concentrating closely on the list of schools available when someone appears at my side, almost causing me to jump from my seat.

“New to California?” a deep but smooth male voice asks.

I take a deep breath to calm myself and turn to find a guy staring down at me with eyes so dark they almost appear to be black. His hair is also very dark and wild around his handsome, angular face. He flashes me a smile that appears brilliantly white in contrast to his deep California tan. His board shorts are in varying shades of blue and he wears a lighter blue t-shirt with worn flip-flops. His thick, muscular arms and legs are also deeply tanned from what I can guess to be hours spent on the ocean. He looks to be around my age or even a little older. There is an overall aura about him that is alluring and I am instantly charmed by his presence.

“It’s that obvious?” I answer, laughing with great care. I only hope the laugh doesn’t come off as being ditsy or overdone. But to my total embarrassment, my face becomes hot and I know I am blushing. My interaction with guys is fairly limited other than with Tommy Rogers, but he had started out as a friend. It doesn’t help that this stranger is so incredibly good looking he could be on the cover of a magazine.

He shakes his dark head and sits in the empty seat beside me with a sly grin playing on his lips. “I didn’t mean to pry but I kind of saw you researching some things that a local would already know.”

I glance back at the computer screen to see he is right—multiple internet tabs are still open, revealing everything I was researching. I scold myself silently for not being more careful.

“So where exactly are you from?” he asks, the slightest scent of peppermint drifting toward me when he speaks.