Locke 2 (Blackwater Boys #4)

Three

Kali

T he small grade one class was a group of lively 6-year-olds. Ten girls and only seven boys. Their teacher, Patsy Butte (don’t get me started on the fun the kids had with that one even though it wasn’t technically pronounced butt), was ancient. I’m talking…old. Not young-old, or middle-old, and not even old-old, but old-old-old. She had parked her ass in her permanent position for like fifty years, and all the staff at the school were positive she was going to milk it to the grave.

Anyway, because she was so old- old - old and didn’t want to retire and walked around with a cane, she had insisted on a couple TA’s to help her out. Lucky for me, and perhaps unlucky for her, I got the job because literally no one else applied. I’d started on the education assistance certificate the minute I’d happened upon Georgewel twelve months ago. I wasn’t even halfway through it when I applied for the opening at the school and got the job.

They must have been really desperate.

My paychecks were really sad, and that was probably why nobody applied for the position, but the town was cheap, and I got to foster dying dogs and look after children that were Aurora’s age when she died. I also didn’t have to work for a dude that wore spandex-like Halloween suits. Patsy may have been old, but she remained sharp, and so I was on my toes all the time, keeping up with her demands.

I didn’t allow the news article to get to me when I entered that colourful classroom. I left all my worries behind, determined to give the kids a positive experience. Even Patsy was impressed by my charisma. I wasn’t the sad and lonely woman that kept to herself. Well, I was probably those things outside the classroom, but I never brought it in. Kids were always going through something, and I wanted them to feel safe and comfortable.

For example, there was a boy that troubled me. Lenny McClane was a slight little boy, smaller than his peers, and too quiet. He’d come to school in the same outfits, and I could tell by the stains still on his shirt from the previous day, that they had not been washed. His dark hair was long, almost to his shoulders, and his skin was ghostly white. There was something very off about the way he carried himself.

“You can’t report him for that,” Patsy had said when I brought up his torn up looking backpack and scrawny frame. “We need a little more to go off before we upturn a family’s world.”

Lenny’s mother, Tammy, was clearly a drunkard, and sometimes she dumped him off and left before the morning bell rang, despite clear instruction not to do so. To boot, he was hungry. Always hungry. Even though I didn’t have much in my pocket, I’d still buy a bag of fruit and place something on every round table in the classroom. He never failed to smash the grapes or the peeled mandarins or the sliced apples that were in front of him.

I felt like no one was listening to me. Not the other teachers who told me that there weren’t enough red flags to report him. Not even Hal who said that some kids just grow up poor. As if that somehow was okay.

Lenny was more than just a poor boy. He was hurting on the inside. I could see it when he was alone. The way he stared off at nothing, detached from the present. The only solace about this was that he had friends. Two other little boys from older grades who played with him every recess and spent time with him outside school. It wasn’t necessarily enough to quiet the thoughts I had of him on a daily basis, but when he smiled at them during recess, it was just enough.

◆◆◆

I placed the newspaper on my nightstand and didn’t touch it, but I had to know it was nearby. Just in case.

A scary thought hit me when I did it. I’d stared at it and thought, “What if I poked the bear? What if I told him where I was? Would he chase me again?”

The temptation was hard to ignore when I allowed such a dangerous thought in. As crazy as it was, I missed him. I missed him so much; it made me stay up at night. It made me think of my tragic past. Then it made me want to bury my past until it was haunting me, quite literally.

It also made me feel despair because if he was focused on his career, he was no longer focused on our agreement.

“There is nowhere you can go that I won’t know…”

What if he did know and no longer cared? What then? Had I put such purpose to our game that I’d find little purpose in life if we stopped playing it?

Was I even playing it?

“No,” her familiar voice whispered from nearby. “You weren’t running or hiding in the way he thought you might. You cheated.”

I didn’t respond to her little voice, though Aurora was right. The consequences would be dire if he found me now, knowing what I’d done to escape him. His game was never meant to run this long. He had never wanted to give me a good enough head start. In his mind, he thought he’d find me within hours. Sometimes I wondered what my life would have been like if I played his game right and allowed him to catch me.

I’d be in his bed right now.

Or he’d have let me go.

Yes, he would have let me go because I’m just me and he was so much more.

“You don’t know that,” Aurora whispered softly again, moving in my peripheral vision.

“I do,” I returned, stubbornly. “You can’t convince me otherwise.”

When I looked up, she was gone.

◆◆◆

The days bled by. It took a whole month before I built the courage to pick up the newspaper and read the first paragraph again. The font of his name looked darker than the rest, which wasn’t possible, but my mind was playing tricks on me. It was highlighting him , reminding me that he was out there, existing, and he’d poured his time into letting his buddy out. I wondered, bitterly, if the “evidence” was planted by him as a way to spring the guy out. I’d heard about Dominic when I’d been helped out of Blackwater while Locke had hunted me down.

“...He wouldn’t have hurt a fly…” They had said. “He wasn’t like that. He was the most precious boy.” Curiosity had me looking up the murder of Jimmy Kites behind their backs, and it was grizzlier than I expected. Totally stomach churning and disturbing. The evidence was so damning, I couldn’t accept words like “precious” to describe Dominic.

Then again, as I read the article, forcing my eyes to run along the page, I felt my breath thin. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I had to pause to squeeze them shut. Disbelief coursed through me, making my heart beat harder. I wasn’t thinking of Locke when I placed the newspaper back down on the nightstand, trembling and disturbed.

I was thinking of Dominic surviving year after year in a notorious prison among murderers and predators, walking amongst them as an innocent man.