[crow]

He was still playing, but at that moment, the busker looked up, and his eyes met Charlie's. She stood there, frozen for a moment, unsure what to make of it. Then he grinned, slow and warm like honey, his lips still moving as he sang. The smile warmed his eyes, and even in the washed-out light of a cloudy afternoon, he looked...

Charlie looked away, stalking off with her hands stuffed in her pockets. She didn't have time for this. She didn't have money, and she didn't have time--- she had her baby brother waiting for her in that big empty house, probably listening to their parents screaming at each other through the walls.

[crow]

Still, she cursed herself as she walked away. She had lost that one, and what was worse, she couldn't justify it to herself. All those years staring down grown-ass men, and now she caves to some scruffy asshole playing songs next to the defunct fountain in the park.

Well, no matter. She'd put that behind her. She was never going to see him again, and nobody else needed to know about their little encounter. It was just going to be one of those things that she took with her to the grave.

[crow]

“Elly, I'm home,” she said, walking into her brother's room. Elliot looked up from the notebook he'd been scribbling in, lying on his stomach on his bed. Usually he preferred to do that on the desk, but the house was too cold now. He crawled under the covers whenever he had the chance, and Charlie didn't blame him. With the house unheated, all it offered was shelter from the wind, and sometimes in winter even the covers weren't enough. They had separate rooms, but once it got cold, they always slept in the same bed for warmth.

The bed sagged beneath her weight as she sat on one end, peering at the contents of the page in front of Elliot. “What've you got there?”

[crow]

“Schematics,” he said. He didn't move to show her, but he didn't try to hide it either, which was all the encouragement she needed to pick up the notebook and take a closer look. It was an incredibly detailed map, color-coded and carefully labelled, its lines ruler-straight.

“Is this your school?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. It's got all the best places to hide. Look,” he said, handing her a small scrap of paper. On it, the various colors were represented, each with a designated purpose. “The legend didn't fit on the page, but it's probably for the best. If someone else gets ahold of this, I might be in trouble.”

[crow]

“Wow, champ, this is some fantastic stuff!” Charlie said. She didn't have to fake it; she was genuinely impressed. Elliot was still only eight. When she was that age, the extent of her accomplishments were an extensive knowledge of hair-pulling tactics and the ability to sneak small, disgusting animals into the teacher's desk. There was no question as to who had gotten the brains of the two of them, though as to where Elliot got his brains from to begin with... That she couldn't say. If either of her parents had half a wit, they probably wouldn't have married each other. “Have you thought about labelling it in code too? That way nobody would be able to read it."

[crow]

“Well, it is the school,” Elliot said. “They could probably tell by just the shape, so there's no point. But all the markers are hidden, see? If you check this spot, there's no entrance, even though it's marked as one of my hiding places. That's a decoy. In order to find the real ones, you'd have to crack the pattern.” Elliot then launched into an explanation of his system. To be honest, Charlie was lost half-way through, but she still listened with attentiveness, if only to watch him light up as he talked. Elliot didn't smile enough as it was. He'd said the same thing about her two years back, and she'd made a real effort to fix that, in both herself and in him. It wasn't easy, but it had to be harder for him.

[crow]

Elliot wrapped up his explanation of the map, folding it and putting it away neatly inside his backpack. He had always been organized and tidy, even when he had been a toddler. Sometimes she had wondered as to whether they were really related. When he was finished, he turned to Charlie and asked, “So what happened to you today, sis? What'd you get in trouble for this time?”

Charlie grinned. “Well, there was this guy...” It was much more fun to tell the story to Elliot than it had been to recount it to the principal. Sometimes she worried about being a bad influence on Elliot, but she refused to lie to her brother--- he had enough of that from the adults in his life, and there had to be someone he could trust.

[crow]

Elliot also had a more level head on his shoulders than she did. She didn't know if he was going to grow up to be a troublemaker, but she knew him well enough to know that if he did, he'd cover his tracks. And maybe he'd be smart enough to realize that it wasn't worth it before it was too late, but then she wasn't exactly in a position to be giving lectures.

When she was done, Elliot wrinkled his nose. “Your school sounds stupid.”

“Oh, it is,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Idiots as far as the eye can see. You're probably smarter than my entire gym class combined. Did you know? Just last week, I caught Travis Ericson sniffing an old gym sock because Ben Wong told him it belonged to Valerie Belford. But I saw him filch it from The Toad."

[crow]

At this, Elliot looked almost affronted. He crossed his arms and said, “Of course I am! I'm the smartest, and gym class is for dummies anyway. That's why they always pick me last and throw all the dodgeballs at me.”

Charlie struggled to keep her expression the way it was. It was no use to get emotional about it now, but the fact that her brother was bullied at school was no secret to their family or his teachers. And yet, not a single thing had been done about it. Another nail in the coffin for her opinion of them, as far as that went, but that wasn't what was important. If she could have done something about it, she would have.

[crow]

He was too skinny and too small to fight, and he didn't have the instinct for it. She'd tried to teach him some self-defence, but it had only upset him, so after a while she'd stopped trying.

Without meaning to, she found her thoughts drifting to the busker she'd seen on the way home. Was that what Elliot was going to look like when he grew up? She hoped not. That guy didn't look like he could defend himself either, and frankly she wondered how he was going to keep anything he earned if he couldn't at least fend off the other homeless folk in the park.

[crow]

“What're you thinking about?” Elliot said, breaking her reverie by waving a small hand in her face. She came back to herself with a start.

“Oh, nothing.” He frowned at her, already too old to buy a lame excuse like that. “Okay, fine. I saw a street musician on the way home,” she said, pitching it as another fun story about an adventure that she'd had. She hoped he couldn't hear the reluctance in her voice. Something about that busker still bothered her, and the most aggravating part of it was that she couldn't figure out what it was.

Elliot's eyes lit up. “Ooh, was he good? What'd he look like? What'd he play?”

[crow]

Charlie nearly breathed a sigh of relief. She was only stopped by the fact that that would make her too obvious, and she didn't want to give herself away now. She paused, looking deliberately thoughtful. What could she say? It hadn't actually been too extraordinary an encounter, truth be told. She decided to just tell him things as they were, excepting the part where he had noticed her. “He played some old rock, I think. It was pretty weird, since he looked about my age, maybe a little older. Those songs had to be from twenty, thirty years ago though.”

[crow]

She hadn't dwelt on this part too much, but now that she mentioned it, it had been pretty strange. Some musicians really loved the old stuff, but it wasn't the stuff you played to make money at the park. It had mostly been after-schoolers hanging out at the park around that hour, and anyone who had any idea of how to play to a crowd would've chosen one of those awful saccharine pop hits that were so popular these days. She was glad he hadn't--- that stuff got on her nerves like crazy--- but it would have made more sense. And now that she was on that mental track, his clothes had looked pretty dated too. She had thought it might have been a vintage style, or just clothing drive cast-offs, but what if he was just that kind of performer?

[crow]

“Maybe he's the son of an old rock band man,” Elliot said. Charlie grinned and ruffled his hair.

“You know what, that might just be it. Sticking to his dad's hits out of loyalty, eh?” She sincerely doubted that was the case though. He had looked too much like a drifter, and too scrawny by half. There was a fine line between metabolism-induced teen scrawniness and someone who genuinely didn't have access to regular meals, but he'd crossed that line. Charlie would know. There were times when she didn't have regular meals either.

[crow]

She was mulling over what else to say about the busker, but Elliot saved her the trouble by getting up abruptly to rummage around his pack. “Look!” he said, holding up a small flower-pot. It was empty, no dirt or plants or anything. “They gave these out at school. We're supposed to grow something and then write about it in our plant journal.” He tried to look cool about the whole thing, but it was obvious that he was pretty excited about it. When Charlie raised her brows and gave him her best look of surprise, he finally caved, and broke into a huge grin. “What do you think I should grow?”