Black Feathers (2 page)

All she had to show for it was a couple of loonies, some silver, and a couple of dozen pennies.

It was the cold. Everyone was in a hurry to get where they were going, scurrying past her with their heads down. With gloves on, they weren’t too inclined to stop to fumble for change, even if they noticed her sitting on the cold concrete.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

There were three men standing in front of her. Old men, grey and grizzled.

She had been drifting, not really watching. The cold and her exhaustion had gotten the best of her.

She’d have to be more careful.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the man in the middle asked, swaying. His face had the sagging look of someone who had lost too many fights, too many teeth. He was holding a drugstore bag; Cassie could see the labels of two bottles of mouthwash through the thin plastic.

Cassie straightened her back up against the wall, gripped the strap of her backpack.

“This is
our
corner!” the man on the right shouted, stumbling. The air around the man was dirty and fetid, but overlaid with the sharp medicinal smell of alcohol-based mouthwash.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—” Cassie started to stand up.

“Is always our corner,” the man continued, pointing shakily at Cassie, at the spot where she had been sitting.

“I’ll just—”

With neither hesitation nor hurry, the man in the middle reached down and scooped the change out of Cassie’s hat.

Cassie started to speak, but the man shook his head and crammed the money into his pocket. “Our corner, our money,” he said, and with a measured slowness, he pulled a knife out of his pocket and flicked it open. The blade was dirty, sticky.

“You want money, you get your own fucking corner.”

He didn’t threaten her, or step toward her, or impose on her. There was no need.

Watching the knife, Cassie picked up her hat and backed away down the street.

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

Cassie started at the voice from the shadows along the dark of the path, leaned forward, struggling to make out who had spoken.

They were the first kind words she had heard all day.

After the men had stolen her money, Cassie had spent the rest of her change on another hot chocolate, huddling in the back corner of the upstairs of the McDonald’s on Douglas. She had put on her earphones, flipped through her small folder of CDs and plugged herself into a Nine Inch Nails album.

She had fought the desire to disappear into the music, to close her eyes and let herself go. She needed to stay alert.

She was able to sit there for almost an hour, until the employee cleaning the upstairs bathrooms had pointed at the sign on the wall that warned that occupancy was reserved for customers and limited to twenty minutes.

She had made sure to turn off the Discman to conserve its batteries before stuffing it and the CD case deep in her bag. If anything happened to it, she didn’t know what she would do.

After that, she had gone to the mall across the street. She was followed by clerks and shopkeepers in every store she went into. Even when she sat down on one of the benches in the middle of the mall, security guards appeared behind her, talking loudly almost into her ear, until she got up and left.

It was the same everywhere she went. The big bookstore next to the McDonald’s was the worst. She had no sooner sat down in one of the armchairs on the second floor than a bright, toothy bookseller was standing in front of her, a security guard a half-step behind, telling her, in no uncertain terms, that “the chairs are for the customers, not …”

It was the way she had let the sentence dangle, the way the young woman looked at her, that made Cassie’s face burn as she walked back out into the cold.

The cemetery, next to an old church a few blocks from downtown, was calm and quiet, deserted. In the spring and summer it would have been beautiful, but now it was December brown and grey, grass trampled and mud-racked from November storms.

With the black weathered stones and winding pathways, it was sad and peaceful, and she collapsed onto a bench next to a barren flower bed.

Alone.

But that didn’t last.

“It can’t be that bad, can it?”

It was a girl’s voice, which didn’t make her feel safe, exactly, but it kept Cassie from bolting right away.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said, coming closer. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” Cassie said so quietly no one else would have been able to hear her.

“You looked upset.”

Cassie’s breath had caught in her throat for a moment as the girl came down the path. She reminded Cassie of her sister, Heather, so much she couldn’t breathe, but the girl’s features resolved themselves, coming into focus. She couldn’t have been much older than Cassie, her features sharp and fine, her hair close-cropped.

“I’m Skylark,” she said, stopping in front of Cassie. She dropped the knapsack she had been carrying over one shoulder onto the path with a heavy thud.

“I’m Cassie.”

Skylark looked at her silently, then sat down next to her on the bench. “I guess it hasn’t been very long.”

“What?”

“When did you run away?”

The girl seemed so tiny, so fragile, Cassie wasn’t expecting such a direct question.

“I’m—” Cassie had no idea what the girl was talking about. “What?”

“Cassie. That’s your real name, right?”

Cassie nodded. “Cassandra Weathers.”

Skylark nodded. “That’s how I knew it couldn’t have been very long. You don’t have anywhere to go, right? You’ve been on the street, what, four, five days?”

“Four days,” she said. “Three nights.” The other girl was clearly out in the cold too; it didn’t occur to her to lie.

“That’s about what I figured.”

“I was at a shelter for a while, but …” Cassie shook her head. “Sorry, I still don’t get it.”

“Out here, nobody uses their real names,” Skylark explained. “So when you told me your name right away, I knew you were pretty new.”

“Why don’t people use their real names?”

“Power. You tell people your name, and they can find out where you came from, what you’ve done, what you’re running from. Names have power.”

The girl’s words sank heavily to the bottom of Cassie’s stomach, and an image of her picture on the side of a milk carton flashed through her mind. “Oh,” she said. “Right.”

“Yeah,” Skylark said. “That’s what I thought. So what do you want people to call you?”

Cassie’s mind was completely blank.

“Don’t rush it,” Skylark said. “It’s a pretty big deal. You get to
name
yourself. It’s kinda cool.”

“Why do you call yourself Skylark?” The second the words were out of her mouth, Cassie wanted to take them back. “I’m sorry,” she hurried. “That was rude.”

“No, it’s okay,” Skylark said.

Cassie glanced sidelong at Skylark, watched as she lit a cigarette with a plastic lighter. It took her a moment to figure out what was so strange about the other girl: she was clean. Her hair looked light and fluffy, brushed, her face fresh, not streaked with dirt or weathered the way most people’s were, out here.

The way hers was.

Looking at Skylark made Cassie uncomfortably aware of how dirty she was. Her scalp tingled and itched, and she shifted slightly away, worried that she might be smelly.

Skylark exhaled a lungful of smoke, looked toward the sky, then back at Cassie.

Cassie turned quickly away.

“What?” Skylark asked.

“Nothing.” Cassie shook her head and took a deep breath. “It’s been a few days since I had a shower, that’s all.”

Skylark smiled. “You haven’t been down to the Inner Harbour? Down at Ship’s Point?”

“No, why?”

“They have showers down there. Public showers.” A look must have flashed across Cassie’s face. “No, not like that. They’re separate showers, with locking doors. But anyone can use them.”

Cassie watched Skylark’s face as she described where the showers were, how people from the boats moored nearby
would leave soap and shampoo. Her eyes were bright, but there was a hardness in the corners of them.

They reminded her of Heather’s eyes, the way she had looked at her in the last few months, the way they had sparkled, and then closed up, cutting Cassie out.

It took Cassie a moment to realize that Skylark had fallen silent.

“It’s all right,” Skylark started, not looking at Cassie, her eyes directed toward the gathering dark. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

Cassie shifted on the bench, but she didn’t say anything.

“Everybody’s got a story. Some people put it all out there right away. And other people”—she looked at Cassie—“they hold it close. Maybe they tell a few people. Maybe not.”

Cassie nodded, still not really sure what Skylark was talking about.

“I’m not going to ask, okay? Your story’s your own, until you choose”—she came down heavily on the word—“to share it.”

Cassie felt like she had been holding her breath for days. “Thank you,” she said.

When their eyes met, both girls smiled, suddenly shy.

“So, listen,” Skylark said, her voice shifting. “You have plans for tonight? Where you’re going to sleep, shit like that?”

Somehow, Cassie had managed to put reality out of her mind. “Oh. No, I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Okay.” Skylark turned on the bench so she was facing Cassie full on. “I know these people.”

Cassie flinched as her mind filled with images of the girls in miniskirts up the length of Government Street after the stores closed each night, and the headline on that morning’s
New Sentinel
at the bookstore: “Prostitute Murdered.”

“I’m not—I mean, I’m not that desperate.” She took a deep breath. “I’m a … I’ve never …”

Skylark shook her head. “No, no. Oh, God, no.” She snorted out a laugh. “No, nothing like that. These are just friends. It’s where I live.”

“Is it like a group home?” Cassie suppressed a shudder at the thought.

“No, it’s a family.” It seemed as though the words cost Skylark. “But not—”

Cassie nodded. “Not like a real family.”

“Better than that.” Skylark looked at Cassie as if seeking something in her expression. “It’s like a real community, a real home. There’s people there from all over the country, and Brother Paul …” Her voice drifted off.

Cassie waited a long moment. “Brother Paul?”

“Oh, you have to meet him. He’s the leader of the group and”—she shook her head—“he saved me.” Skylark looked down at the ground. “That’s all.”

That’s all.

“Okay …”

“Do you want to come?” she asked, looking toward the darkening horizon. “Are you hungry?”

Cassie’s stomach growled at the thought of food, loudly enough that Skylark smiled. “A little.”

Skylark stood up and hefted her knapsack. “Come on,” she said. “We’re probably still in time for dinner.”

Cassie rose slowly, keeping her grip tight on the strap of her backpack.

As they walked out of the park, a single crow watched them from a telephone wire. It followed them down the path with its eyes, hopped in the air and turned around as they passed under
it, then watched as they walked onto the sidewalk, waiting until they had disappeared from view before it took flight.

Constable Chris Harrison was tempted to put his winter coat back on. He had been inside for more than an hour, but he was still no closer to being warm.

He resisted the urge, though, and left his coat hanging on the hook on the outside edge of the cubicle he was using. He knew the cold would pass.

Harrison had grown up in Victoria: he knew the way winters went. Three or four months of rain, broken occasionally by days so steel grey they hurt the eyes, and only a few days when the thermometer dipped into the negative. The cold never lasted more than a week or so. Maybe, in a rare year, the city would get more than a few scattered flakes of snow, but it would be wiped out by rain almost before it got a chance to settle. The blizzard the previous year had been a once-a-century anomaly.

That was winter in Victoria. That was why people stayed, despite the way the cost of everything kept going up. That was why people came from across the country.