Chapter 3

Carlie’s turn:

Hello. I’m Carolina Angele Williams. My friends call me Carlie.

Two weeks ago I was at the end of my rope. I had four dollars and some change to my name, the rest of my ‘savings’ having gone to a bus ticket. Grandma told me that buses used to be a very common form of transportation between cities, that a lot of normal people used them.

I think that things have changed since she experienced inter-city bus travel.

The clientele was sketchy, right down to a runaway teen with a shoulder bag.

I guess I looked the part because when I got out at the city at the end of my financial range I pleasantly greeted the station manager, told him that I was looking into social services for the night.

Wasn’t ten minutes later that two black guys showed up, one of them flashing an impressive amount of gold – chains, watchband – and when he smiled, his teeth. They call it a ‘grille’ but no self-respecting person would drive a car with that stuff hung on the front of it.

Shortly after they arrived, a middle-aged white guy showed up. I overheard him negotiating about a box sent to him.

The two black guys, one of them named Marcus, were trying to talk me into leaving with them.

“You doan’ need no shelter, baby. I gots a fine crib ... You can stay wif us...”

I tried fending off their verbal assault. Put my dead cellphone to my ear, faking a call.

“Yeah, Mom, this is Carlie...” I said, loud enough for the white guy – the ONLY white guy in the place – to hear. I’d caught HIS name. I hoped he caught mine.

“No, please leave me alone...” I told my assailants.

“Gurl, you looks thuteen ... We’s offerin’ you sumthin...”

“Please ... As soon as my uncle gets finished...” I looked over at the white guy. I’m starting to get a bit desperate. I hope he sees that.

“Carlie,” the guy said, “Ready to go!”

“She din’t come here wit’ you,” one of the black guys said.

“No, she’s my niece. She just came in here. I’m pickin’ ‘er and ‘er stuff up. So if you don’t mind...”

I could tell that the black guy was weighing options, but his buddy called him off. My new benefactor hustled me out and put me in the cab of a big ol’ pickup truck.

“Lock the door. I’ll be right back.”

And that’s how I met Bob Newman.

You know how they say that if you save somebody’s life among the Chinese, then they owe you a life-debt? I don’t know if it’s true, and saying ‘Chinese’ sort of assumes that the one point something billion Chinese are a completely homogenous group, and I doubt that they are, any more than ‘European’ covers French and Italians and Germans and Bulgarians, but it’s a thought that tells me what happened in my head.

I’d been rescued. Of course, the guy’s six-two, maybe two hundred pounds, and he could have the same sort of plans for me that Marcus and company had in mind, but I bought myself a little time. At least that’s what I thought.

By the end of the day this guy knew my story, I’d met the neighbors, there was a plan to emancipate me, making me legally able to run my life, and Bob had given me a place to stay, a cellphone, an iPad and a laptop.

By the end of the week I was back in school.

I mean, you read the news, a teen girl in my shoes is supposed to find herself chained in a basement until Stockholm Syndrome makes her compliant to her new life as a sex slave, right?

I found myself in a home where there’s food available, the place is clean, the conversation is intelligent, and on Saturday morning I find myself sitting in the bow of a little aluminum boat with a fishing rod because ‘the red’s’ll be running in here when the tide goes out and starts pulling bait out of the marsh.’

First time I’ve ever been fishing. After we brought several, ‘a mess of reds’, into the boat, we headed back in.

“Now you’re gonna clean them?” I said.

“Yep. Kinda messy. If you’ve never done it, there’s scales and blood and guts ... You can go back in the house and let me do it.”

“Or you can show me how. Doesn’t seem right to have the fun of catching them and the fun of eating them and to skip this part.”

“This ain’t the fun part,” Bob said.

There’s a sink to clean fish right there on the dock where the boat comes in. The first scraps of fish hit the water and hundreds of little fish show up to gobble up the scraps.

“Circle of life,” Bob says. “Those little guys’re one of the main foods of the ones we caught, so they’re kinda getting even.”

At the end of the exercise, we had a bowl of fresh fish filets, enough for us and...

“You did pretty good for your first try at fishing, Carlie,” Mizz Bekka said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like it.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“So many young people are thinking it’s cruel and heartless...”

“I know some of those people, Mizz Bekka. They can feel all haughty about it while they’re eating hamburgers, and even the vegan ones, they haven’t a clue. Bob just gave me a little bit of exposure to how the food chain works.”

That evening we dined on fish I caught. Baked, with herbs, lemon, an interesting pilaf.

“I ate a lot of different cuisines over the years,” Bob said. “Tried to re-create some of them. I’m kind of successful.”

I’m the new girl at school. There are a lot of people to meet and learn about. I immediately note the insiders and the outsiders and the groups and the cliques and I’m not committing to any of that. I’ll just see how it shakes out.

Academically, the school takes the easy path. They get records from my old school, stick me in equivalent classes, offer help if I find myself in over my head.

Puh-leeze! This is a modern high school. They’ll graduate just about anybody short of a mass murderer, and he’d have a chance if he was an athlete.

There’s the ‘dance’. Put a few hundred hormonal teens in a confined space and it’s all about pairing up, probably 90% hetero. I’d be one of those.

I’m reasonably pretty. Blonde, okay, but I’m not one of those girls that has to have just the right look of make-up, and we’re ALL in uniform. At least Bob saw to it that I had funds to get good stuff. Mizz Bekka helpfully took me shopping on the second day I was here.

“Carlie,” she said, “I hope you’re serious about staying around.”

“No place to go, Mizz Bekka,” I said. I looked at her. In demeanor, she kind of reminds me of Grandma, except a little more refined, socially speaking. Attorney’s wife, you know. Her circles were much different than the ones Grandma ran in. She’s nice, though. A little more wary of me than Bob is, I think.

So I’m well-dressed within the guidelines of the school uniform policy. I’m clean. My concession to fashion is a pair of earrings – tiny little spheres, one in each pierced ear. I care for my hair by keeping it clean and brushed and letting a bit of natural curl frame my face.

Let’s run the inventory – reasonably good to look at. Female. Unknown quantity being a new girl. So I get hit on immediately. Female and having a pulse would’ve probably worked.

More than one noticed that I’d driven myself to school.

The subtlety and the prospects weren’t much improved over Marcus at the bus terminal.

I had talks with a lot of girls, too, and I learned that telling some of these girls something is a pipeline to having guys find out the same information.

Two high school students, a girl and a boy, live in the little waterside neighborhood near me. The boy has his own truck. The girl, well, she doesn’t want to ride to school with him.

“Some things are worth a bus ride to avoid,” she said. “Jerrod’s about six of ‘em.”

“Gee, Jess,” I said. “Is he THAT bad?”

“Yes. He’s free with his hands...”

“And you learned this how?”

“Accepting a ride to school in his truck instead of waiting on the bus.”

“So ride with me...”

“You’ve got a car?!?”

“My guardian says I can use his to get back and forth to school.”

“How do you have a guardian?”

“By not having known living relatives,” I said. “Except a mom who’s kind of out-of-pocket for five to eight years.”

“Ouch,” she said. “Didn’t mean to get nosey...”

“Not nosey. But it’d be better if that bit of news didn’t get spread. Guardian? Dude rescued me.”

“That’s Bob Newman, right?”

“You know ‘im?”

“A little bit. Dad’s fished with ‘im. He’s some kind of high-powered engineer, is what Dad says. I thought he was single.”

“He is.”

“So you’re, like, LIVING with ‘im?”

“I have my own room. I take care of the house with ‘im, we cook meals together. But that’s it...”

“Oh ... Kinda thought...”

“No. Jess, Mom burnt me out of tradin’ sex for anything.”

“I didn’t mean THAT, Carlie. Don’t be so edgy.”

“Sorry. I’m just not really sure of what I’m gonna do.”

“What’s Mister Bob say to do?”

“Go to school. Give things a chance to sort themselves out. Don’t rush into something ... Or out of something...”

“Sensible. So why’s he doing it?”

“I’d like to think he’s a good person.”

“Has he put any moves on you?”

“Not even the first one,” I said.

“D’ya think he’s GAY?”

“Oh, come on, Jessica. We’ve gone out to eat together. I asked about other women. He says he got out of the dating scene. That’s all.”

“Just tryin’ to figure out ... I mean, some guys at school asked me what I knew about you...”

“And you told them?”

“I said I didn’t know, and that they should ask you themselves.”