half full. I considered the money in my pocket and the young woman who could become something so much more than a street rat scuttling in the ruins of a dying city.
Our boss stepped into the kitchen, and he raised a brow at us checking our tips. “I see you ladies had a good day.”
“I’ll give Lora my whole good day if it gets her a ticket headed to the East,” I announced, retrieving my money from my pocket. “The storms are only getting worse, and she’s…”
“I’m just a baby compared to the rest of you,” Lora said. “You don’t have to do that, Jade. I don’t have anywhere to go out in the East.”
“You don’t have anywhere left to go here,” our boss said, his tone gentle. “If you want to accept Jade’s offer, I’ll take you to the train station myself. There’s one that leaves out in the morning assuming the tracks aren’t damaged. She’s right. Compared to the rest of us, you are just a baby, and you deserve to have a future. I won’t hold it against you for getting out. Hell, I bet most of us would like to get out at this point. It won’t be long until those who don’t get a ticket into Asylum won’t have anywhere left to go.”
The other women exchanged looks, and they held out their tips, too. Frankie, the oldest of the waitresses and harsher than any storm Mother Nature could fling, said, “We’ll get more tips tomorrow, I’m sure. This’ll be enough to get you started.”
“At least keep some of it,” Lora begged. “Something. You earned that.”
“She’ll need four hundred for a good ticket and a hotel for a few days, and I can give her the name of a contact out in the East,” Brent said. “Five hundred will see her into the East long enough to get some work. She’ll have her paycheck, too, which I’ll cash out for her on the way to the train station.”
“I got three hundred in tips,” I said.
All together, we’d gathered over two thousand dollars. Upon silent agreement, we gave Lora a thousand and split the rest evenly. The hundred dollars would still change my month for the better, and I’d walk away happy one of us would get out of the East alive.
I could run like Lora, and I didn’t need the hundred dollars in my pocket to pull it off. I could shift and take off, popping up in the East at my leisure, assuming I could find safe places to hole up while waiting for the evening storms to roll through. I’d probably lose, but I’d lose on my terms.
I couldn’t bring myself to go, though. Outsmarting a bunch of bounty hunters would test me, but it beat giving up. I wouldn’t, not without a fight.
It took us longer than I liked to convince the girl to accept our boss’s offer and leave in the morning. I left the instant she agreed, hurrying towards my second job at the martial arts center skirting Inner Tulsa. Had Batbayar picked a place three blocks over from his current roost, he would’ve been one of the lucky ones. At a sane pace, it took me thirty minutes to reach the center, but as I’d lost precious minutes convincing Lora to head to the East to enjoy a better life, I jogged down the sidewalks as though Mother Nature intended to give me a beat down for defying her.
I made it with two minutes to spare and gasping for breath.
“It would not have killed me for you to be late, Jade,” Batbayar scolded. “Have I not told you time and time again I am an understanding soul?”
As he taught a bunch of kids the way of the sword—or their hands or feet—he needed to be understanding but firm, else his students would never respect him and learn. “You have, but I promised to be here at this time, so I am here at this time.”
“This time would be eight, and you are two minutes early and not late at all. I consider twenty minutes after eight to be late for future reference. After eight but being late is being fashionable and sane.”
“I’m neither fashionable nor sane, Batbayar.” I peeked into the main studio. Instead of the herd of younger children I expected, a pack of teens and some of the older kids did their stretches and waited for instruction. “Oh. It’s the older ones tonight? What about the little kids?”
“There