1

“Not that it matters who tripped the alarm, but we will be talking about this later,” Trinity grumbled, wincing at the onslaught of blaring cries from the front of the store. She puffed a coiled strand of hair from her face and slung her backpack over her shoulders, calling to the others, “Hurry up!”

A crash from the back of the building made her head spin. She darted around an aisle endcap to see Sailor waving everyone else out the side door he’d broken open, his own pack stuffed with canned goods, fire starters, and hopefully, a package or two of underwear and socks. 

Trinity took one final (albeit panicked) look around the dim gas station, trying her best to ignore the screeching alarm and flashing red emergency lights. The circular stand, there by the front doors - it would only take a second. 

“Trin! Let’s go!” Marley said. She clutched the hand of the boy next to her, Alexander. Trinity blinked. Sorting out her feelings about that particular development would simply have to wait.

“Go ahead, I’ll meet you at the billboard!” Trinity shooed them out, crossing the floor in a handful of strides. 

“Trinity, be careful, I see cop lights-” The soft voice faded as the group made their escape but Trinity knew it belonged to James. And he told the truth - red and blue flickered faintly in Trinity’s periphery. 

Her heart pounding, she swiped her hand over the shadowed shelf, snatched her target, and bolted for the side exit.

Sailor stood vigil against her orders, leaving her escape path clear and looking beyond her to the brightening red and blue lights. He only let go of the door when Trinity’s feet hit the gravel and he’d looked in behind her, presumably to make sure they left no one behind.

“Come on, you,” she said, flashing him an exhilarated smile as she broke into a run. He followed suit, pounding pavement and sticking to the darkened alleyway walls, pulling her out of the spotty pools of light that dotted their path from the convenience store to the edge of town - their escape. 

Faded neon signs on grimy walls, broken streetlights reflecting in puddles of rain water, litter shoved into corners and culverts, and boarded-up windows flew by her as Trinity ran for freedom. She couldn’t see the rest of them - James, Alexander, Marley - but she could hear them running just up ahead. 

Sailor’s hand shot out, and she glanced at him, huffing. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her into a bricked-in alcove. A moment later, she saw why.

A black SUV crept down the street toward them, headlights low and engine quiet. The human silouhette in the driver’s seat slowly moved it’s head back and forth, as if scanning the darkened block. 

Trinity put all her energy into slowing her breath and stilling her body. She could feel Sailor’s hand pressing on the front of her shoulder as his arm crossed her neck, the other holding her body tightly to his heaving chest. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

He waited until the vehicle passed them before making a fist and lightly tapping the edge of her collarbone twice - Yes.

The car moved further down the street, taking the damning light with it. “Can we go?” she asked. Her heart raced in her chest and she desperately wanted to keep pace with it.

In response, he released her, his dark eyes giving Trinity a once over before beckoning her further into the dark. A second before she heard them, he’d caught the sound of police sirens, and was already clearing a route for the two of them to venture back into the shadows, and safety.

They arrived at the decrepit billboard panting and sweaty. Trinity counted everyone while Sailor leaned against the wooden poles, his dark arms flexed and shining under the faint billboard spotlights, soft rain smattering his skin. She tried not to notice and turned her attention instead to everyone else. “We’re all here, everyone’s good?” 

Marley nodded, gulping down water. James and Alexander each gave her a confirming look as they unpacked and repacked backpacks to better fit the spoils of the night. Sailor, after catching his breath, placed his palm on her back, tapping her twice with a single finger - yes. “Okay. Let’s go ahead and get back home then-”

“-And make sure it’s not flooded. I hate this fucking rain,” Alexander grumbled, yanking a zipper closed and shaking his curly hair free of water droplets. 

“It shouldn’t be if you closed up the tents like you were supposed to,” Trinity quipped back, bristling against her better judgement. Fourteen-year-old boys tried her patience like nothing else, and Alexander fell squarely into that unfortunate stage of life. 

Marley piped up from behind her. “He did, I watched him.”

Trinity opened her mouth to respond when another boy interrupted her for the second time tonight. James, putting a hand on Alexander’s chest, said, “Let’s just go back and check, okay?” 

“Works for me,” Alexander said as he shouldered his bag, handing a much smaller one to Marley. Their hands met and his thumb ghosted her knuckles. Trinity blinked again. Marley was mighty lucky her sister currently had bigger things to worry about.

“If only someone had said that before,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes skyward. Sailor gave her a reproachful look, but silently nudged the kids homeward as Trinity reached for the remaining bag, hoping the weight would help ground her during the trek back.

“I can get it.” She looked up to see James, hand outstretched, soft auburn eyes dark in the pitch-shadowed night.

“Don’t need the help, thanks.”

“You sure? I can-”

“James,” she said, voice soft and teeth clenched, “Leave it.”

His eyebrows lowered. “Okay.” 

Her eyes didn’t leave him until he turned away. Trinity slung the backpack over her shoulders with a decided thump. She’d had just about enough of men for the evening.

Sailor watched the exchange in silence. He waited until Trinity passed him to take up the rear, giving one final look to the dark city behind them, wondering idly if he should have also stolen a counseling book. 

Marley’s birth happened during the first rainstorm Trinity ever saw. Fat droplets of water making terrifying music on the tin roof, thunder crackling through the roaring sky, wind howling in harmony with her mother as the aging woman bore a breach baby into the world. When Trinity saw a small, bloody foot, she knew something wasn’t right. When her mother stopped pushing, she knew something had gone horribly wrong.

Marley would later joke that she was much less “born” and, more accurately “yanked” into being. Trinity would laugh, even if it wasn’t funny. She chose not to remember the time spent wrestling a baby from a body - not the sight, the smell, the sound - none of it. All she wanted to hold onto from that night woke up next to her with messy blonde hair, and that was all that mattered.

Marley’s birth did bring rain, though - of that, Trinity was wholly convinced. In the days following her baby sister’s arrival, the skies poured like they’d been commanded, and when the clouds finally broke, grass dared to peek up from the once-cracked earth, leaves could be seen at the base of barren trees, and she swore a flower bloomed under the porch stairs. Marley brought good fortune. No one could convince her otherwise. 

The weather station had no clue what to make of it, but that didn’t bother Trinity very much. Of the two of them, her mother cared more about the news, and now that Mother was gone, there was no reason to keep the TV on, or even in the house. It had been promptly traded for three months’ worth of baby formula, and that was that. Besides, everyone knew the official stations weren’t all that reliable for information, and Marley deserved to be raised better than that. Trinity traded off anything of value they could afford to lose, and as it turned out, that totaled out to quite a bit. Alcohol, smokes, womanly clothes, all of her mother’s belongings went straight into the trade pile, along with the other ‘Un-Necessaries’ - a few baggies of what looked like grass clumps, sugar, and a weird clear liquid that looked like water but most definitely did not smell like water - Trinity remembered the look in the older folk’s eyes when she brought those out to trade. 

No, there would be none of that for her baby sister. The two of them lived a healthy if not stressful life for the first few years. Marley grew into a rambunctious child, and Trinity made it through the start of puberty relatively sane, which by all accounts was a roaring success. Then came the orphanage.

Of all the stories Marley gleefully extrapolated into wild, adventurous tales, the story of that night never made it into rotation. Another stormy night, another howling wind, and pounding at the door. Trinity, bleary-eyed from sleep, shuffled to the window and pulled the blinds away. The sight before her sharpened her mind into terrifying clarity. “Marley!” she yelled, bolting from the glass pane, “Marley, get the bags, we’re leaving!” 

They got about as far as the back fence before being caught, of course, but their mere attempt at escape marked the rest of their stay at the Institution. 

Trinity never found out who tipped off the authorities about their situation. They claimed it was a concerned citizen, but she more suspected the older boy who’d tried to kiss her the week prior and received a swift kick to the testicles. Her second-hand human development textbook mentioned that the male equivalent of ovaries would react similarly to her own when struck, and it seemed that was indeed the case. 

Regardless, Trinity and Marley found themselves in a large, barrack-style building for the next four years. Previously used as housing for psychiatric patients, then inmates, and finally soldiers, there was no sense of joy or homeliness baked into these walls. But there was also no shortage of pranks pulled, stories swapped, and ghosts “summoned” during this phase of the girls’ life. Though Trinity was loathe to admit this, the social structure was a benefit to Marley, and had the oppressive weight of child labor not hung over them all, she would have flourished beautifully. However, greed is much like a cockroach, in the way that both could survive an apocalypse, and in this case, both certainly had. Every child worked to “earn their keep”, though had anyone asked Trinity’s opinion, she felt it was further from transactional labor and closer to slavery. No one asked her opinion, and she learned that giving it unprompted caused more issues than it solved.

The worst offense, in Trinity’s mind, happened four days before the entire building lit up like a tinderbox. Marley and a few of her friends snuck out late one night to write their names and draw on the concrete wall surrounding the Institute. They’d taken sticks and burned the ends to make something akin to charcoal, and their mission would have been successful if not for a poorly-timed giggle that echoed through the courtyard. Once caught, each girl passed blame to Marley, who, to her credit, took it well. She had a harder time handling the third-degree burns that were then applied to her knuckles. Denied a cold cream and then forced to work in the front garden the following day made the decision to leave quite easy - the fire was simply welcome assistance. Once Marley’s hands had healed enough to grip a rope, Trinity wrapped the scars and they’d escaped out the window, shrouded by the smoke pouring from the building. 

“I’m so sorry,” Trinity said, holding her sister to her chest, watching the Institute burn from the safety of the shadows. “No one will ever hurt you, ever again.”

As their camp finally came into sight, Alexander breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed the rain barely reached their part of the woods, much less caused the nearby creek to flood, and the tents looked to be warm and dry. 

“We can put up all the food and stuff if you want to go to bed,” he said, tilting his head toward Marley. She looked back at him with eyes clear and blue, squinting with a smile. 

“Thanks! Here, take this, will you?” The bag from her shoulder slipped into his outstretched hand - When had that happened? - and she ducked into the tent she shared with Trinity. “Do you want your blanket back?”

Alexander blinked, remembering a night prior when he’d helped her fight the evening chill. “No, um…you can keep it.”

At that moment, James passed behind him, hauling a sack of perishables, and nudged his back. “Come on, we gotta get this into the coolers.”

Alexander ignored him entirely. “Marley.”

She poked her head back out, light blonde hair wisping over her cheek. “What’s up?”

“Can I come say goodnight to you later?”

Marley grinned. “If I’m not asleep, yeah.”

“Marley!” Trinity said. “Bedtime.”

“Alexander!” James called. “Coolers! Let’s go!”

Marley flashed him another smile and with a toss of her blonde hair, she disappeared into the girls’ tent.

He huffed a laugh, turning and making his way across the grassy clearing. I’m lucky to have a friend like her.

“What took you so long?” James asked, though Alexander later wondered if the older boy already knew. 

James kneeled on the ground with a lit flashlight and an overstuffed duffel bag next to him, transferring various fruits and vegetables into the coolers. Bearing scratches and dents from years of prior use, the once-mighty containers now sat in tarp-lined holes in the earth, reinforced from the elements with stones, branches, and torn-up towels. 

Alexander crossed his legs and let his body drop to the dirt with a thump. “I was talking to Marley.”

James gave him a strange look, one Alexander could not interpret, but said nothing more on the subject. “Just help.”

“I am,” Alexander muttered, palming an orange. 

“What?”

“Nothing.”

They worked in silence for a while, settling back into each other’s company. Irritations aside, they really did benefit from the other’s presence. Alexander let his mind go blank as his body took over, working in rhythm with the older boy towards a common goal. James stayed vigilant, and so Alexander did not need to. The forest around them grew loud with the safety of the night. Stars glimmered overhead, a canopy of infinity, never to be touched by man again. Leaves rustled in the cool breeze. Water trickled over roots and rock a few yards away, every sound the same and yet entirely unique.

Every so often, a thought or a memory would appear in Alaxander’s brain. A hand motion made him think of the pencils he used to write with. A turn of his body reminded him of the ballgames he’d played with friends, all those years ago. He worked very hard to ignore them - thinking about one’s past never did anyone much good. At least that’s what his father used to tell him.

Alexander looked over to the shaggy-haired boy next to him, taking in his light skin and dark eyes, desperate now for a distraction. “What was it like?”

James sighed, avoiding his gaze. “What was what like.”

“Before.”

Silence.

Alexander pushed. “You had…Before, didn’t you?”

James readjusted his sitting position and cleared his throat. “Not…exactly. Why do you ask?”

“I had a different life.”

“Well, we all had a different life.” James threw his hands out to indicate not only the location, but the predicament they found themselves in. 

“Sure but…I don’t know, I liked how it was,” Alexander said quietly, not sure that the words he spoke conveyed what he thought. “Seems like you guys prefer living like this.”

“We don’t,” James scoffed, turning back to the duffel. “It’s just better than the fucking alternative. You’re welcome to leave at any time.”

“No, that’s not…no. I don’t want to leave, I just—I guess I just want to talk, that’s all.”

James’ face softened a bit, visible even in the dim flashlight beam. “Okay. Sorry.” He put a hand, steady and warm, on Alexander’s shoulder.

Now that he was here, Alexander hadn’t the faintest idea what to say. Private school never covered this topic, and if it had, he’d skipped that day. 

“I wish we didn’t have to sleep in tents. Or steal food. I don’t like being a…being…”

“Homeless,” James supplied, his voice even and measured. 

“...homeless. I think, for you and Marley, and even for Trinity a bit, this all feels like…I don’t know, like rebellion, or an adventure, or something better than what you left behind. And Sailor…”

James nodded. “Yeah.”

“I wish…” Alexander struggled to find the words, his brain suddenly feeling slower than molasses. “I wish, I guess, that I could have you guys and my old life.”

James snorted, mirthless. “Not how the cards fell, kid.”

“Chips.”

“Huh?”

“‘How the chips fall’. That’s the expression.”

“Whatever. Point is,” James huffed, “You can’t go back. For better or worse, none of us can go back. We’ll make a life out here.” He fixed the younger boy with a dark brown gaze. “We have each other. We’ll make it out here.”

The grass rustled behind them and Alexander turned to see Sailor, leaned against a tree. He offered a smile to their silent oberver, and felt his anxiety uncoil in his chest when he received one in return. Sailor held out his note pad, folded over itself to a yellowed page. On it, the scribbled words read,

It’ll be okay. Marley needs a break too. We’re going out for a ‘fun day’ tomorrow.

“Thanks.”

Sailor nodded, ruffling the younger boy’s hair, and Alexander grinned with all of his teeth, swatting at the offending appendage. Sailor held his dark hand in the flashlight beam and signed, Bedtime.

“Come on, kid,” James said, getting to his feet and holding out a hand. “Shit’s gonna look better tomorrow.”

Alexander nodded, reassured, and grabbed the flashlight, clicking it off.