the girl you were a year ago. Hell, you’re not the girl you were yesterday, Ali.”
She sighs, and glimpses up at the sky as if it holds all the answers. “It’s not that easy.”
“Nothing worth having ever is.”
“That’s the thing… I’m not worth it.” Her words come out soft and full of pain.
Sorrow wracks through me for this girl, because that’s all she is, she couldn’t be older than sixteen, maybe seventeen. But this time, I don’t care that what I’m about to do is probably wrong for a million different reasons.
I move my hand to the side and cover hers with mine. We don’t acknowledge it. She doesn’t stop it.
“Everyone means something to someone,” I murmur.
“Yeah, and that’s not always a good thing…” she trails off, and anger rises inside. My eyes harden at her after listening to everything she’s said, my curiosity about her peaks further. My cop instincts are yelling abuse in my head. An abusive family member? A boyfriend maybe? My mind swims with possible answers to the cryptic information she’s sharing and none of them are good. I shift my other hand and reach into my pocket, feeling for my cell. I should call this in right now. I should take her to the precinct, the hospital, at least get her checked out. But I let go of the phone and leave it where it is because taking her in from head to toe, I recognize the one thing she hasn’t mentioned—she’s a drug addict. She’s back to shaking, looks like she hasn’t slept in a week, and if the track marks on her arms are anything to go by, in about an hour she’ll be on her knees begging and ready to do anything for a fix.
She’s a junkie.
If I mention now I’m a cop, she’ll run or jump. Either one is not an option I’m willing to risk. I’ll call it in. But I can’t right now.
I lift my chin at the track marks marring her skinny arms. Maybe if I pry, dig just a little, I can find out more. Then take action. “Why do you do it?”
Her gaze flicks to where I’m looking and she covers her arm with the hand that was underneath mine. “It helps me forget. Takes me to a place where I’m safe. No one can hurt me there. I can hide away…” she pauses. “I do it because up until now I thought if I could just find a way to forget, I’d be okay. I’d make it out and I could run away and never come back here.”
“So what changed?”
She stares down at her feet, letting out a long sigh. “I can’t take it anymore…” her voice cracks, “…they broke me.”
Her words held a pain no girl should feel. I’d seen the worst with my job and dealt with the horrible. But this, now. Her. She shared pieces of herself with me. Fuck. If that wasn’t me as a kid. The situations might have been different, but the feelings were the same. Those were carved so deep into my skin I’d never be rid of them.
She was wrong about one thing, though. They didn’t break her, whoever they were. She walks away with her shoulders back and her head a little higher. There’s no smile lingering, no massive breakthrough. The first thing she’ll probably do is get a fix. But she’s still walking away, instead of drowning her worries into the Hudson River. With every step she walks in the other direction, I don’t breathe. It’s not until she’s out of sight and my lungs are begging for air, I exhale an exhausted breath.
I stand still, watching where she stood a moment ago, where she said three words with more sincerity than I’d felt from anyone in a long time.
Thank you, Roamyn.
Her small silhouette is all but a shadow in front of me, a fragment of my mind playing on my emotions. Her figure blows with the wind, sweeping her up into pieces in the sky. She’s floating through the air, slipping away, and becoming a memory rather than reality when her voice echoes in my ears. Her earlier words ricochet around me.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, to not be sinking. It’s all I’ve ever felt and every day I fall further. When all I really want to do is fly.”
Hope swells in my chest, overriding the worry, subverting the dread for a moment.