Page 1 of Blade

Out in the faint light of dusk, the little girl was back in my trashcan again. “What the fuck?” I muttered to myself before I walked out of the kitchen where I’d seen her through the window.

Curious, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. She was practically hanging over the edge of the can and I worried that she was going to topple in head first. I opened the door as quietly as I could so I could catch her.

As I took a drag, I moved closer. She didn’t appear to hear me. That was dumb on her part.

“Hey!” I called out once I was behind her.

She jumped and squealed as she spun around with one of my mom’s old magazines clutched to her chest. It had been used as a coaster and God only knew what else until Mom tossed it out. It looked like there was a squished spider on the back, but I didn’t point that out to the girl.

“What are you doing?” I asked her as I narrowed my gaze on her. I sucked on the cigarette, then I blew it out over my head. “You need food?”

Her big eyes blinked as her mouth opened and shut like a fish, but no words came out.

“Can you talk?”

She remained mute.

“You a mute? No tongue?”

“I can talk!” The little thing indignantly spat back as she stuck out said tongue, I’m assuming to show me she indeed had one.

“What’s your name?”

At first, I didn’t think she was going to answer. But I waited her out. Finally, she muttered, “Sage.”

“Well, Sage, I’m Finley. If you’re hungry, I can make you something to eat.”

She glanced over her shoulder toward several trailers down the road.

“You live down there?” I asked with a lift of my chin toward the houses.

She nodded and pointed a dirty finger at the one with all the lights on.

“Your mom know you’re out here diggin’ in the trash?” I asked, trying to sound like a grownup, though I couldn’t have been more than three years older than her.

She adamantly shook her head. I knew the look that flashed in her eyes—fear. It made me mad because a kid shouldn’t be afraid of their mom. I’d only ever seen a scrawny woman going in and out, but lots of different guys. I’d never seen this girl.

An uneasy feeling churned in my stomach.

“Doesn’t your mom let you outside?” At my question, I thought she was going to cry. Instead, she simply dropped her head and wouldn’t look at me.

After a lot of prodding, I found out that her mom wasn’t letting her go to school, and she was going through people’s trash to find things to read. Like, what the fuck? My mom may have rarely been home because she worked two jobs, but she made sure I went to school.

It was getting really dark by then. “You wanna come in?”

“I—” she started before she snapped her lips closed and started to back away.

I probably should have ratted her mom out, but around our neighborhood, you kept your fuckin’ mouth shut. There were a lot of things that happened around us that people ignored.

“I’ll tell you what. Let me grab some stuff and I’ll go to your house. I can sneak out if your mom comes home.”

She twisted her lips to the side as she considered my offer. Then she nodded. “Okay.”

There were a few hot dogs left in the package in my fridge, so I grabbed those and the box of mac and cheese. It was the kind that just had the gooey cheese packet I had splurged on. I had no idea if they had milk at Sage’s, and I didn’t want to ask and make her feel bad.

We traipsed over to her place, and I started cooking. Once it was done, we ate. She kept casting worried glances my way.

“You shouldn’t smoke. It’s disgusting,” she finally muttered.

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