flame turned her face into a Halloween mask of deep shadows.
The unfolded cardboard boxes on the floor offered very little padding and no warmth, but Lola still chose to sit down on them anyway. She turned her lighter off and plunged the room into darkness again. “I’d say we still have a few hours left.”
Michael sighed. “All I want to do is get out of here. I’m scared.”
“I know you are. Don’t worry; it won’t be long now.”
“It’s a good thing that we moved to a different shop. It was stupid of me to suggest a video game store as a good place to hide.”
The dry rasp of the cardboard rubbed together as Lola shifted around on top of it. “The thought made sense; there was nothing worth stealing there. Although it’s not technically stealing now, is it?”
Michael stared into the darkness in Lola’s direction. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if there’s no punishment, is there any crime?”
“Huh?”
“If a loaf of bread disappears from a shop and nobody sees it taken, is it stolen?”
“What are you talking about?”
Lola laughed. “Don’t worry.”
The girl made no sense.
In the silence that followed, visions of the warehouse returned to Michael’s thoughts, tormenting him as they always did. It felt like he’d never get to a point where he could shut them out.
Lola’s voice pulled him out of the dark pool inside of him. “Michael.”
“Yeah.”
“You talked earlier of getting somewhere where the men can’t find you.”
He heard the screams of the other boys. “Y…yeah.”
“What men are you talking about?”
Michael rocked where he sat and shook his head. The surrounding darkness fed the grim memories. The boys who returned from a visit to Julius came back different. Something had changed. They weren’t boys anymore. Michael pulled his knees to his chest and continued to rock. “Can you please light your lighter, Lola?”
“But it’ll waste the fluid.”
“Please, Lola?”
She did as he asked and stared at Michael for a moment. She then moved over next to him and put an arm around his hunched shoulders. Pulling him close, she rocked with him. “There, there. You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Michael leaned into her, and they rocked together.
Hanging Out
The flashing light woke Michael, and a surge of adrenalin pulled his stomach tight. The light, no more than a blur, cleared quickly and his pulse settled when he saw Lola. The damp smell of the storeroom filled his sinuses as he watched her light her lighter again before she got to her feet and headed for the door.
Tiredness sat like lead in his body, and his tremble returned.
When Lola opened the door this time, no daylight flooded in. Now that the moment to leave had come, anxiety fluttered through Michael’s chest. He’d spent the day willing it, but now it was dark; did he really want to leave the storeroom? What if he ran into the men?
After pushing the door closed, Lola walked over and flicked her lighter on again. She held her hand out to Michael. “Come on, let’s go.”
It took Michael a few seconds to sit upright. Once he’d managed it, he took Lola’s outstretched hand and let the older girl pull him up. When she let go, he rubbed his hands together and blew into them. “You’re freezing.”
“Duh! It’s cold.”
When they got to the storeroom door, Lola let her lighter go out and said, “You ready?”
Michael swallowed hard and nodded.
Silence.
Of course she was silent; she couldn’t see him nodding in the darkness. “Yes, I’m ready,” he said.
When Lola opened the door, the hinges creaked.
The massive shop seemed even larger in the dark. The moonlight from outside beamed down on the row of huge windows that made up the shop front. It used to be a clothing store but now it stood empty. Many of the railings remained in the building, but most of them were bent, buckled, and wrecked in one way or another.
Michael remembered his dad saying that looting and wanton destruction seemed to go hand in hand. He didn’t know what wanton meant, but they’d chosen this place because of the mess left behind by the looters. With nothing worth taking, it seemed like the ideal place to rest. But then again, so had the video game store.
Although he hugged himself tightly to conserve his body heat, the icy cold cut straight to Michael’s bones when he followed Lola outside. The narrow street had been turned into a wind tunnel. He held back his complaint and followed Lola; nothing could