Don't Breathe a Word (7 page)

Chapter 14

Creed walked fast, taking strides with his long legs. He was six foot three, maybe, plus the boots. Next to him, I felt the safest I had since leaving home, like none of the last few days were real. Only he was real.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You'll see. But pay attention. You'll need to be able to find your way back, if everyone decides you can stay.”

“Everyone?” There were the two I'd seen him with, but were there others? What would I have to do to be able to stay?

We turned down streets no longer familiar, into the valley where Elna Mead High School straddled a continuum of richer and poorer neighborhoods east of downtown. Pretty soon we came to a dilapidated street. I never would have come here without Creed. Chain-link fences surrounded sagging houses with sheets across the windows. Huge dogs barked in yards.

“Stay away from those,” Creed warned. “They'll give you away faster than anything else.”

“It's not a bad idea, though—getting a dog,” I said nervously. If I'd had one, it could have taken a big bite out of Stench, even if it would mean scrounging food for two.

Creed stopped in his tracks and stared down at all five foot four of me. “Oh, no. Not you, too.” He started walking again and I scrambled to keep step.

“What?” I laughed. “What?”

He grunted. “One pet is enough.”

“Someone has a pet? Who? A dog?”

Creed scowled and walked faster, past a dark park with a low chain fence. “
No
, not a dog. A
ferret
.” He said it with total disgust, in exactly the same voice my dad used when Jesse wanted to get a pet boa:
There is no way I'm buying rodent dinner for anyone living in this house
.

“A dog would be useful, at least,” he mumbled. “Instead, we're tracking down cat food for an overgrown rat which smells like . . .”

I giggled, and he gave me an exasperated look. The idea of it astounded me, that this boy who could see right through people would spend his time finding food for someone . . . something else. I couldn't see Asher doing that for anyone, ever.

“Yeah,” I interrupted, “but it gets pretty cold at night, and it could be nice to have a warm, furry little guy to curl up with . . .”

He rolled his eyes. “You sound exactly like Santos.”

“Santos? Is he the short guy?”

He gave me a look, and my throat stopped working. Too many times with Asher, I'd said the wrong thing. Here was my chance to start over.

“Don't ever say that to him.” When he smiled, I relaxed.

We turned another corner and Creed stopped, the most serious of looks on his face. “I don't know all of what brought you here, Triste, but you need to understand: You have to be tough on the street. You can't be weak. If you are, you'll never survive. You might want to think about that when you're weighing what's behind you with what's in front of you.”

I wondered what had brought
him
to the streets, what frightening thing could bring someone so strong to his knees. Whatever it was, I couldn't imagine.

“Where is your guitar?” I asked.

Once again, he stopped, forcing me to bump into him. The smell of him, gritty and sweaty but still sexy as hell, filled me up and made me a little bit tipsy. He brought my hand up to his face to inspect it in the faint streetlight. My grey polish hadn't chipped off yet.

This was it, the moment I dreaded. He wouldn't understand why I had to disappear, why I couldn't just dump Asher and start over.

He would look into my soul, and he would hate what he saw.

“You know about my music,” he said quietly. His gaze softened. I saw recognition there—not of my face, but of something deeper. Warmth spread from my hand to my heart. “How did you know?”

A smile played on my lips. Two could be mysterious. “Let's just say, I've been watching you. And there are a few things I've noticed about you, too.”

Creed led me down a short alley and held his finger to his lips. We crept up to a house, boarded up and marked with graffiti, staircase broken through and rotting. It looked like a haunted house, the way it loomed over us. I saw a rustling inside, so quick I wasn't sure if I'd seen it at all.

Creed crouched under the staircase and yanked a panel to reveal a hole barely big enough for one person. The house, probably a hundred years old, would have a basement. All of the old houses in Seattle did.

“Careful,” he whispered. “I'll go in first and then catch you.”

My adrenaline picked up as he sat on the ground and slid through the hole. “Come on!” I could only see the tips of his fingers, reaching up for me. “Don't worry, I've got you.”

I sat on the edge, careful not to hit my head on the fallen stair boards. One good gash would land me in the hospital, and then they would find me for sure. His hands touched my thighs, and I slid . . . down into his arms. The light from the hole lit his face enough for me to see his eyes on my lips. My arms were around his neck, heart pounding so much I thought he could feel it, too.

He let me get my feet under me before releasing me onto the concrete floor. “You okay?” I nodded, not at all sure if I could speak coherently when his hands were on my hips.

A rickety staircase led to another floor. “It's safe, but better to walk on the left.” The boards creaked under our feet until we reached a door, barely ajar and glowing with an eerie, flickering light.

“It's me,” Creed called, and I heard someone's sigh of relief.

“Shit, man. You scared us.” The short boy—Santos, apparently—was holding up a board with thick, twisted nails through it. He relaxed and let the board drop to the ground as I came in behind Creed. “You should have—wait a second. Who the hell is she?” He looked mad. “You picked up 'Burbs? What the hell are you thinking?”

'Burbs?
I looked up at Creed, whose face was a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance. “Shut the hell up,” he said. “She's with us, at least until she figures out what to do next.”

We were in the middle of a tiny kitchen with peeling wallpaper—or at least it probably used to be a kitchen, before somebody ripped out most of the cabinets and appliances and left only a few wires. A chunky candle flickered on the counter. Santos stood in a doorway leading into what must have once been a dining room. But the thing that hit me was the smell—musty, moldy, ancient, and like somewhere in the house, a sewage line had burst.

“Pick up another stray, Creed?” a birdy female voice called from another room. “Fuck. Just when I was getting to like being the only girl around here. Where the hell is she going to sleep?”

Santos was looking more and more agitated. “Hey!” he yelled into the other room. “Shhh! Do you want us to get busted over
her
?”

Languid footsteps shuffled in. It was the girl with dark choppy hair, looking as gaunt as ever. Close up, I could see faint purple scars on her face and the tightness of skin around her enormous eyes. She looked like a walking skeleton.

She gave me the once-over, too. “Oh, it's you.” She gave Creed a withering look. “I knew sooner or later, you'd break down. You just have to protect everybody, don't you? Well, as long as there's enough room for the rest of us, you can keep her.”

“Keep me? What does
that
mean?”

Creed once again was wearing a mask of annoyance. Apparently it was hard to keep his posse under control.

Santos shook his head and rolled his eyes at the moldy ceiling. “Ignore her. Hear that, May? I told her to ignore you.”

“Whatever,” she replied.

I wasn't quite sure, but I thought I saw Santos smile. Something moved inside the chest of his hoodie and a tiny striped face popped out—the infamous ferret. It crawled up onto his shoulder in one fluid movement and wrinkled its nose at me, as if I were the stinky one. Santos pushed it back down.

“Hey,” he said to me, “you need the grand tour.” Santos' eyes flickered toward Creed. “Then I gotta go.”

“Wait a second,” the girl, May, called from the next room. “What's her name?”

Santos looked at me expectantly.

“Triste,” I said slowly.

“Triste,” Santos shouted over his shoulder.

“Shhh, keep it down,” hissed Creed.

“Yeah, right,” May drawled in her high, thin voice. “Well, I like 'Burbs better.”

Santos laughed. Creed closed his eyes, like he couldn't believe this was happening. “Go,” he said to Santos. “Just go.”

“I could give her the tour,” May called.

“No!” Creed all but slammed his hand on the cracked counter. “I'm going to give her the tour.”

“Okay, but you know how much I'd love to show her the shit room,” May said. Santos snorted.

Creed held open the door to the basement for Santos. “Be careful,” he said, and Santos gave me a two-finger salute before darting down the stairs. “Don't wait up for me,” he called, and then disappeared into the darkness. Creed closed the door behind him, took a candle from a drawer, and lit it.

Another doorway led toward the front of the house. The entry glass had long ago been broken out, with only a few pieces still wedged in the doorframe. Everything was boarded up, with just a scatter of light from the outside.

Around the corner a wooden staircase led to the second floor. Trash and wood and plaster exploded everywhere, as if whoever used to live here sledgehammered the place up before leaving it for good. I realized the horrible smell was coming from a closed door under the stairs.

“That would be the . . . ?” I trailed off, pointing toward the door.

Creed looked embarrassed. “Uh, yeah. My advice: take a candle and hold your breath. This house is ancient—no running water for a while now, but at least it's a roof. You'll be glad when it's winter, if we don't get kicked out before then.”

When it's winter
. So he had already factored me that far into the future. The thought of it tore me in two between scared and pleased. With Asher, I never knew what the future held, or when his patience with me would finally run out.

“Watch out,” Creed said as he led me up the wide staircase—sturdy enough to hold both of us, but not enough to keep the smell below from seeping up. Again, Creed looked embarrassed. “It's not as bad up there.”

Upstairs, the smells of mildew and dust pressed into my airways. I would have to find more meds soon. My inhaler wouldn't last long in this environment.

There were three bedrooms—a big one with a mattress and two smaller rooms, with heaps of blankets and the same kind of trash littered downstairs. He led me to the larger room, where the battered guitar case was laid across the mattress. Most of the windows were boarded up. “We have to be careful about the light,” Creed explained.

The glow from the candle softened his face. “Hey, I'm sorry about those two. They're a little jaded, but you can trust them.”

He took me back down the stairs and showed me the long room on the main floor, ending with a stained, broken-down couch and May—doing the last thing I expected from her.

“What?” she demanded. “I like
Little Women
. Like you've never seen a person reading a book in your life, 'Burbs.”

“May!”

She huffed. “Fine.
Triste
. What kind of pretentious fake name is that?”

“No worse than
May
,” I shot back, a little surprised at my own boldness.

“Hmmph.” And she went back to reading by candlelight. A library sticker wrapped around the spine of the book.

“What kind of person steals from the library?” I asked.

“
FYI
: I am a card-carrying member of the Seattle Public Library,” she replied.

Creed sighed. “If you two think you can get along, we could go get some food.” My stomach growled in response. It had been a few days since Stench stole my backpack. All I had left was six dollars—and the cell phone, waiting for me to turn it on and call home.

“Now there's something I can agree with,” May said, sliding a flyer—one of those
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MISSING PERSON
? ones—between the thick pages.

She caught me looking at it. “Don't even bother,” she drawled, snapping the book closed. “We've all looked for ourselves on the missing persons flyers—the truth is, nobody gives a shit.”

The three of us headed out into the darkness, quiet as mice until we'd scurried five or six blocks away. Creed walked with May on one side and me on the other.

“What should we have tonight?” Creed was asking. “Pizza?”

“God, Creed, you
always
want pizza. Don't you ever eat anything that doesn't involve bread?” Creed grinned, and I felt a pang. I wanted to know him well enough to know what he ate. I wanted to know all of them, even May, if she would let me.

We headed down the hill toward Madison. “How about Café Flora?”

Café Flora, I knew, was an upscale vegetarian place. “You have money?”

They both looked at me like I'd sprouted a fish head.

“Oh. My.” May gave Creed the eye. “Where did you say you came from?” She looked at him in amazement. “You know, if you'd left her for a few more days, she might have starved to death and saved your hero instincts some trouble.”

“May, shut up. Don't give her any crap.”

“
Crap
? Oh, I see. New girl shows up and suddenly you have the squeaky-clean vocabulary.”

“Hey. We didn't give you any when you showed up.”

“That's because I didn't come from fucking
Bellevue
,” she muttered. But then she left it alone. “So where
did
you come from?”

Fucking Issaquah,
I thought . . . maybe even worse. “I—”

Creed cut me off. “I said leave it alone, May. She'll tell us when she's ready.”