Forbidden Fruit. Erica Spindler

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СКАЧАТЬ area they called homeroom. Because the school was so large, they had selected four rooms to be their regular meeting places and had given each a name—drama club, arts and crafts, sex ed. and homeroom.

      Homeroom was located on the second floor at the end of the main hall. Santos made his way there, picking around rubble and weak spots in the flooring. As he expected, he found the group gathered around the bag of crawfish, laughing and talking as they shucked, sucked and generally made pigs of themselves on the stolen mud-bugs.

      Razor, the oldest of the group, saw Santos first and motioned him in. Nicknamed Razor for obvious reasons, he had been on the street the longest of anyone in the group. He was a good guy, but he didn’t take any crap from anybody. Living on the street did that to a kid. Toughened him. Santos figured Razor wouldn’t be hanging out with them much longer. At sixteen, he was ready to move on.

      “Nice score, Tish, Lenny.” Santos exchanged high-fives with the two teenagers, then took a seat on the floor.

      Conversation flowed around him. Social Services had picked up Ben again and sent him back to his foster family; a pimp had cornered Claire and had tried to scare her into tricking for him; Doreen had caught Sam and Leah making out; and Tiger and Rick had left New Orleans, planning to hitch their way to the good life in southern California.

      After a time, Santos noticed that there was a new girl with them tonight. She sat just outside their circle, joining in neither the talk nor the crawfish, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. Santos nudged Scout, who had joined the group and taken the place on the floor next to him. He motioned the new girl. “Who’s that?”

      The other boy followed his gaze. “Tina,” he said. “Claire brought her. She hasn’t said more than two words since she got here.”

      “She new to the street? A runaway?”

      “Yeah, I think so.”

      No “think” about it, Santos decided, cocking his head slightly as he studied her. She had lost, alone, and scared to death written all over her. She kept her eyes downcast and repeatedly bit down on her lower lip, as if to keep it from trembling. Whatever she was running from, he would bet his meager summer earnings that it was pretty bad.

      He felt for her, the way he did for all his friends. Over the years, they had told him stories that made his daddy’s beatings seem tame. Santos peeled a crawfish and popped the tail into his mouth. He tossed the head and shell onto a pile of others, and reached for another. Every time he heard a new kid’s story, he appreciated his life—and his mother—more.

      He thought of the discussion he’d had with his mother earlier that day, remembered her shame at his knowing that she sometimes hooked. She just didn’t get it. She might not be Mrs. C from “Happy Days,” but she loved him. They might not have much, but they had each other. And his friends made him realize that in this mostly rotten world, having someone, having love, was something special, something worth holding on to.

      The crawfish gone, the group began to shift, some splitting into smaller groups, some of the kids heading out to the streets, some crashing. Tina didn’t move; she sat as if frozen to the spot. Frozen by fear, no doubt. By uncertainty.

      Santos stood and made his way across the room to her.

      “Hi,” he murmured, shooting her an easy smile. “I’m San tos.”

      She lifted her gaze to his, then dropped it once more. “Hi.”

      Her voice was soft and sweet and scared. Too soft, too sweet for a girl on the streets. It would harden up fast, just as she would. If she was going to survive. He sat down next to her, though careful to leave plenty of distance between them. “Your name’s Tina. Right?”

      She nodded but offered nothing more.

      “Scout says Claire brought you in.” She nodded again. “First thing you’ll learn about us,” he said, smiling, “is Scout knows everything. The second thing is, we’re a good group. We watch out for each other.”

      When she still didn’t look up, he figured she would rather be alone. He started to his feet. “If you get in a jam, let me know. I’ll do what I can to help you.”

      She lifted her face, and he saw that her eyes and cheeks were wet. He saw, too, that she was pretty, with light brown hair and big blue eyes. He guessed her to be his age, maybe a little older.

      “Th…thank you,” she whispered.

      “No problem.” He smiled again. “I’ll see you around.”

      “Wait!”

      Santos stopped and met her gaze.

      “I—” Her throat closed over the words, and he saw her struggle to clear it. “I don’t know where to…go. I don’t know…what I should do now. Can you…help me?”

      “I’ll try,” Santos said, though he doubted he could give her what she really wanted—a safe place to sleep, freedom from fear. He sat back down. “Where do you want to go, Tina?”

      “Home,” she whispered, her eyes filling. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, fighting the tears. “But I can’t.”

      He understood. He pursed his lips in thought. “Where are you from?”

      “Algiers. My mother and—”

      The scream of a police siren ripped through the night, stealing her words, punctuating the quiet like an obscenity.

      “Oh, my God!” Tina leaped to her feet. She looked wildly around her, the way a trapped animal would, as if seeing her surroundings for the first time.

      Santos followed her to her feet. “Hey, Tina…chill. It’s okay. It’s just—”

      A second siren followed the first, then another after that. The squad cars passed close to the building, flashes of redand-white light penetrated the darkness, squeezing through cracks and crannies, creating a weird, frightening kaleidoscope. It was as if a dozen cop cars had descended directly on top of them.

      “No!” Tina screamed, covering her ears. “No!”

      “It’s okay…Tina—” Santos put his hand on her arm, and she whirled to face him, her face a mask of horror. In the next instant, she tore free of his grasp and ran for the door. Santos ran after her, catching her a moment before she reached it. He put his arms around her and held her tightly.

      Hysterical, she fought him, kicking and crying, pummeling him with her fists. “Don’t! You have to let me go! You have to!”

      “You’ll hurt yourself.” Santos dodged her blows as best he could, wincing as her fist caught him in the side of the neck. “Dammit, Tina, the stairs are—”

      “They’re coming…he sent them! He—”

      “He who?” Santos got a hold of her upper arms and shook her. “Tina, nobody’s coming. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Listen, they’re gone, the sirens are gone.”

      She crumpled against him, sobbing, shaking so badly he thought she was having convulsions. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand.” She curled her fingers into his T-shirt. “He’ll СКАЧАТЬ