A pair of cobalt blue eyes flick around the darkened room, grazing over the faces of her companions. "There’s some things..." Her eyes rise. "Yah oughta know."
"'Bout Harlem," her chestnut-haired companion adds.
The green-eyed boy laces his hands on the table top, staring into the flickering candle flame. "It ain't what ‘chu think."
A darkened shadow in the background hisses and slowly aqua eyes slip into view. "An' it’s more ‘dan yah wanna know."
The sound of a match scraping against the table top — and then a screaming burst of flame lights up the girl’s face. She stares into the air above the match before carefully guiding the glowing twig to a pair of beeswax candles on the table before her. Next to her, another girl dips the wick of another unlit candle into the newly lit flames.
“Sorry ‘bout ‘da storm,” the first girl says, shaking the match out. Thin gray tendrils crawl into the black air above her head. The golden flames dance in her blue eyes.
“Quite a shame, isn’t it?” a voice hisses from behind the table. The candlelight illuminates a tall, stocky body, crossed arms, and folded hands, but the face remains in shadow.
The thin boy with olive-colored eyes looks into the shadows forlornly, lips poised to speak.
The brown-haired girl silences him with a glance. She sits next to the dark-haired girl with the blue eyes and turns to her.
Blue eyes meet her companion’s. “I’ll start,” she says, and slowly rotates her face forward, looking straight ahead. She pauses and sheets of rain can be heard pelting against the brick building. A clap of thunder suddenly rings out, and the entire room shudders, candles flickering violently. She doesn’t flinch.
“Yah gotta remember,” the gold flames shiver under her words, “’dat ‘dis was b’fore we had a girls’ house. We lived wit’ ‘da boys, no special treatment. Same beds, same washroom. An’ we wasn’t always all ‘dat welcome.”
The air in the room was chilly, both from having been still all night and the fact that the window, try though all of them might, simply would not close all the way. The sun peeked through the warped glass.
"Hey girls, time to get up!"
"Aw," Angel whimpered, pulling the thin cotton blanket over her head and burying her face in the warmth of her sheets. "Not yet it ain't," she added to herself in a sleepy voice.
"Rise and shine!" Cassandra responded, tugging gently on a strand of Angel's cornsilk-pale hair. "The sun's even shining, girls!"
"No kiddin'," muttered an annoyed Blue Skies from her bunk as she squinted into the offending yellow light.
"'Ey, lay-dies!" Ruse Murphy called, knocking on the door to the washroom. "What're yah doin' in there? Almost finished?"
"Even if yah spend twenty more minutes on yah mop, McAllen, ain't nothin' gonna make yah look bettah!"
"Shut up, McCoy," Flash hollered back through the wooden door as she shook the water from her long brown hair. "Jus' do the world a favor an' leave. T'rough the window, please. The one wit'out a fire escape."
"Ooooh, McCoy, she's got'cha there…" Imp teased. She wiggled the doorknob and laughed quietly. "I ain't nevah gonna open this door!" she announced to the boys on the other side. "An' you'se jus' gonna hafta— Oh!"
The door swung open and she barely managed to get out of the way before it smashed her into the rough wood-paneled wall. "Well, I guess yah didn't hafta open the door, eh Harris?" grinned Ruse. At sixteen, he was among the oldest of the boys in the lodging house, albeit coming off as one of the least mature.
Flash whirled around, rubbing a worn, pale green towel over her hair. "Hey! Get outtah heah!"
"Make me," responded Sham with a smirk. Between the assembled boys, they managed to hustle both Imp and Flash out of the room, and to then slam the door shut behind them.
"Well, that was pleasant," Flash muttered, kicking at the bedpost of the bunk she and Blue Skies shared.
"Shush," Skies mumbled in response. "Some a' us're still tryin' tah get some-"
"Well it ain't sleepin' time, Costello!" Flash exclaimed in response, engaging in a wrestling match with her best friend over the blankets. "It's gettin' up an' leavin' an' buyin' papes time!"
"Thank you, Flash," Cassandra grinned at the younger girl.
"Get outta there!" Imp hollered, pounding on the door to the washroom with her fist. "I left my comb in there an' I want it back!"
The boys paid no attention to her, and Cassandra crossed the room and placed a hand on Imp's shoulder. "They're just being boys," she said to the freckle-faced twelve-year-old.
Imp narrowed her bright green eyes slightly. "Can't we get rid of 'em? They don't need tah be in the stupid washroom in the mornin's anyway. They can jus' get dressed an' leave."
"They don't have hair to comb, I know." Cassandra turned Imp by the shoulders to face the room. "Go make your bed and then we'll see if they're done yet. I'll talk to Ruse."
Grudgingly, the brown-haired girl obeyed, smoothing sheets with a vigor that could only be attributed to frustration.
"Chance," Cassandra exclaimed, "would you get your crazy sister out of bed?"
The black-haired boy chuckled. "Sure thing," he said, and began to walk toward Skies with slow, menacing steps and a slightly amused grin on his face.
"I'se up, I'se up…geez, keep yah shoit on, would yah?" muttered his sister, tucking the strands of thick black hair behind her ears and sitting up. "See? I'se up."
"Good for you," Cassandra responded. "Now do something productive. Flash, stop tormenting Angel and get that bed made."
"Slave-drivah," complained the brown-eyed girl under her breath as she climbed up the frame of her bed and began an all-out attack on her pillow.
"What's goin' on up there, anyway?" Blue Skies stated, pushing tentatively on the bottom of Flash's bunk with one hand. "Havin' a pillow fight wit' yahself, McAllen?"
"No," Flash responded off-handedly before whipping the pillow down over the edge of the bunk. She caught her friend square in the face and Skies shrieked.
"Damnit!" she exclaimed. "What the hell was—"
"Language, Costello…" came the call from behind the door of the washroom.
"Shut up, Murphy!" the Italian girl hollered back.
"All right, lay-dies, the magic hair room is all yours," announced Sham.
"It ain't!" Chance exclaimed, followed by other boys denouncing this fact.
"They take forevah," Red mumbled. "Tell Cass to make 'em wait."
"Cass ain't gonna make 'er girls wait fah nothin'," responded Chance.
"This is true," Sticks agreed. "She's awful big on pushin' for 'em tah get what they want."
"Well they are kinda young, an'—"
"They're girls," Red interrupted with a bit of scarcely-masked scorn. "That's enough reason for anythin'. They need someone standin' up for 'em."
"Cass's a girl too," Chance reasoned.
"No kiddin'," Red answered. "Which is why she ain't s'posed tah be in charge a' everythin' 'round heah."
"She ain't."
“Damn,” Ruse muttered, his eyes scanning the front page of the New York Journal.
“Language, Murphy,” Blue Skies mocked under her breath, flashing him a grin.
“Aw, you be quiet.” He rolled his eyes and swiftly picked the younger girl up by the waist, dangling her over the edge of the platform he was standing on. “Hey, McCoy,” he called down at the younger boy. “Catch!”
Skies let out an indignant squeal, insisting, “McCoy ain’t gonna catch meee!” before being dropped several inches into the bewildered arms of a brown-haired newsboy.
Ruse let out a loud laugh from the platform as Blue struggled out of Tommy’s arms and brushed herself off. “It’s a brilliant headline taday!” he called out. “ Double murder! Now get back in line—we all be eatin’ good tanight.” He grinned at the girl, as if to say No hard feelings, and she finally returned him with a lopsided smile before finding a place back in the line up at the Journal distribution center.
“Don’t ya mind when dey treat us like dat?” Imp grumbled, turning around to face Skies in the line.
The dark hair girl shrugged a little. “’Course I mind. But what can ya do? It’s kinda like havin’ ten big brothers, ‘stead a just one.”
Imp grinned and nodded. “You know what Cass was tellin’ me da otha day?” The furrowed eyebrows of her companion were as good as any verbal affirmative. “She said they got a lodgin’ house in da Bronx wid jist girls. They don’t gotta share wid the boys. Whaddya think ‘a that?”
Skies blinked thoughtfully. Just girls? She supposed that would be nice, particularly in the mornings… “Yeah…” She nodded. But she liked boys. “But…I think I’d miss my brother…” Not exactly true, she reasoned, but it certainly sounded less shallow.
Imp cocked her head thoughtfully. “Yeah, I kin see how ya would. But, jist imagine it.” She smiled.
“Cassandra,” the brown-haired girl interjects, “was kinda like our leadah at ‘da time.” Her brown eyes, rimmed with dark lashes, flick across the tabletop to the boy. “She was oldah ‘den most a’ us girls at sixteen. We looked up tah her a lot...” Her voice takes on a strange tone of detachment.
“She was beautiful,” the shadows hiss.
The others look away in discomfort.
“She was.” Blue eyes look across the table, drilling into green.
“Red was our leadah,” the other boy begins. “A runaway from Connecticut. He was kinda arrogant—crass, really. But smart an’ a good fightah. We respected him, followed him. He always seemed tah know what he was doin’ ‘til his parents sent ‘da bulls aftah him, tryin’ tah bring him home. But we didn’t know ‘bout ‘dat at ‘da time. He an’ Cass didn’t get along too well. It was always a power struggle with them.”
Stay tuned! More to come!
