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Pale yellow light shines through the cracks in the kitchen window, patterning the chipped tiles of the orphanage in strips that Chip races over. Each beam he passes shifts from light to wood, rippling the room into a ship deck, planks laid out neatly before him. He holds his arms out to balance on these imaginary planks, gripping an apple juice pouch- a sword- between his teeth as the dents in the ceiling become wings dancing, calling back and forth while riding the wind. If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear Arlin’s laughter.
After making his way over the last beam, the scene implodes, folding in on itself until it’s crammed back into his memories. He collapses into the chair sat by the corner table, which shudders against the tiles. The lady who runs the orphanage always says they need to fix the chair to where it’s not as shaky, but it’s been a year and it still hasn’t been fixed, so he doesn’t have much hope on that front.
All the stories in this place are so incredibly boring. Chip misses pirating. He misses the comfort and freedom of riding waves with a crew banding together to keep a ship afloat. Broken chairs hold nothing against the Black Rose Pirates rushing to fix a broken sail before a big storm. He misses Arlin and Lizzie; he misses the pranks he helped pull; he misses everything about the ship.
Chip sighs into the half-empty pouch that sits on the scratched table in front of him, the air allowing it to puff up attentively, looking at him.
“We’ll be back there soon,” Chip promises. The juice pouch doesn’t respond.
A bang shatters the silence, and Chip jumps off the chair he was sitting on, ducking below the table’s lip. From around the kitchen corner- in the main entrance of the orphanage- arguing snaps back and forth.
“You… not safe… for now…” pleads snippets that he has to strain to pick out as the orphanage director.
“I can take care of myself! I don’t need your hospitality or whatever the fuck you’re trying to do here!” fires back a younger voice that he doesn’t recognize. Based on what they said, they’re almost definitely a new kid.
If he’s right- which he probably is- Chip needs to clean his room before sleeping arrangements get made. After the past couple of weeks of having his room to himself, it was only a matter of time until he got paired up with a new kid, and he’s not gonna leave things out until he knows it’s safe to do so. In no way is he judging- he steals stuff too- but from personal experience, it’s much less fun to be on the “getting items stolen” end.
Chip slips his juice pouch off the table- hiding the fact he’s been there- and crosses from his current position to the wall the table rests against. Shuffling against the wall, he makes his way over to the doorframe that leads to the front room. All he has to do is get past that frame, and then right across from there is the entrance to the bedroom hall.
In most circumstances, this would be easy. Chip has snuck around this building more times than he can count and knows each room and pathway by heart. This time, however, there’s a slight obstacle he didn’t account for. While avoiding people is easy enough, he’s met eye to eye with a spider hanging right between him and his destination- which is totally fine and not a problem for him in the slightest.
Slowly, he makes a semicircle around the beast, around the doorframe. Any movement too quick and his motion and sound will catch the pair’s attention.
As he passes, a glimpse of the argument sends Chip leaning forward without thought. The director stands, arms crossed, with a scrawny kid around his age fit with broken glasses and messy, black hair falling over their shoulders. The silent glares and barely audible whispers fire back and forth between the two, filling the air with static between them.
And that’s when the spider decides to fall on Chip’s head.
He freezes, slowly registering what’s just happened. Carefully, Chip reaches his hand up to his head and flicks at the light pressure. The tickle of legs shifts onto his hand and that breaks his last bit of composure.
He yelps, rattling dishes as he slams back into the kitchen counter from the force of him flailing his hand back and forth in front of him, sending the spider flying across the room.
Catching his breath, Chip glances up only to be met with the new kid’s eyes burning in his direction, pinning Chip like a bug under their scrutiny. He gulps. Well, shit.
“Uh…” he says as the kid’s glare somehow becomes more intense. “Spider?”
The director’s face falls into her hands, and the kid turns their glare from Chip up to her, waving out their hand as if to make a point. Sheepishly, Chip shuffles past the door frame, then sprints down the hall to his room.
Kids are usually pissed when they get thrown in here, but rarely are they like that. Either way, he can’t keep standing here reflecting on how terribly that went; he has to get to work.
Chip snatches the stack of papers from under his pillow and leans down into the small crevice between his bed and the wall. Scratching his fingernails against the floorboards, he feels a catch and begins to pry up in a practiced motion. The floorboard pops up as easily as expected, and Chip snags the box that was previously hidden underneath it.
With a rustle, he successfully fishes a bobby pin from his hair and gets to work removing the rusty lock, revealing his treasure.
A pile of golden coins glistens against the dark background of the box as a promise of his future escape, and a pile of messy sketches on loose paper scraps acts as a reminder of where he is currently. He dumps the paper he’s currently holding in with the rest- the older kids aren’t the biggest supporters of his art- and he shuts his treasure chest, clicking the lock.
He slides the floorboard back over his box right as the door clicks open behind him.
Chip’s heart jumps as he flips back onto his bed, posing in an extremely casual and inconspicuous way. The director squints at him from the doorway. Chip smiles in return. She rolls her eyes, huffing a laugh, and she opens the door the rest of the way.
“I know you have a bed free in your room after Bobby got adopted, so…” the director trails off, stepping to the side to reveal the scary kid from earlier. “You’re gonna be having a new roommate! I hope that’s okay with you? I know you’ll be able to help him feel right at home as you’ve already, well, introduced yourself.”
Chip’s face burns as he opens his mouth to tell her he actually enjoyed having fewer people in his room, but it turns out she wasn’t really asking, because she pushes into the room anyways, straightening the sheets on Bobby’s old bed.
“So this is where you’ll be sleeping,” the director begins to explain as she sets down the kid’s bag, but Chip tunes her out as his eyes are glued to the kid by her side.
Everything about the kid screams discomfort, from his crossed arms to his stiff posture, all the way to the heat of his glare.
The kid’s eyes flicker over to Chip, who quickly looks away, heat rising to his face. Maybe he looked away fast enough to where the new kid didn’t catch Chip looking at him… Yeah, okay, he probably didn’t get away with it, but now that he’s been caught, he can’t just ignore the kid.
Chip chances a glance back at the kid and lets out a silent sigh of relief at his attention being solely on the director, who’s finishing her speech.
“I’m gonna let you go now, but you make yourself right at home, okay?” she says, not asking. The new kid stiffens under her words, and the director grimaces. She pauses- the cogs turning behind her eyes- and she whips towards Chip, her face lighting up. “Chip, why don’t you come over here and introduce yourself. Properly this time.”
Chip stiffens, but with a look from the director, he cautiously slides off his bed and walks a couple of steps towards the other side of the room.
“Um,” Chip mumbles, rocking back and forth on his feet. He glances up at the director who nods at him. Well, that’s helpful. “…Hi?”
The new kid glares at Chip. Chip continues rocking back and forth.
“Well,” the director interrupts, clapping her hands together. “You two seem to be getting along great, and I’m sure you’ll get to know each other a lot better over these coming days.”
Chip doesn’t know what the director considers “getting along great” territory, but this sure as hell isn’t it.
“I need to go take care of some matters up front, but you guys can keep getting to know each other.” She leans down to the new kid’s height. “If you need anything, just call me and I’ll be there, alright?”
“Sure,” the kid mumbles, rolling his eyes. The director sighs but doesn’t stay caught up on it for long, because she immediately stands up to make her way out of the room.
“Be good,” she calls, shutting the door behind her as she leaves.
The thud and click of the door shutting are the last sounds before the room sinks into silence.
Chip looks over towards the new kid, who’s already leaning over his bed, rustling through the bag the director placed there earlier.
“So-“
“Fuck off.”
Chip gulps.
“Yeah, no, sure, of course, I’ll just…” Chip points to his side of the room- even if it’s not like the kid would see- and shuffles back to his bed.
He sits down and the bed creaks under his weight. Chip purses his lips and pats out a rhythm on his knees. Any second now, he’s gonna start creaking under the weight of this room.
For now, he’ll resign himself to just watching. A new kid can be intriguing, right? Maybe he’s got hundreds of gold pieces in his bag and that’s what he’s searching for. Does this kid do drugs? Is he getting weed or something? Maybe it’s crack cocaine and this kid is gonna be the one that all of Arlin’s speeches warned him about.
“Chip, right?”
Chip shakes his head, knocking his train of thought off its rails, and looks up to see the kid staring at him.
“That’s me,” he confirms, with a sharp nod. The kid squints at him.
“How long have you been here?”
“A year or so. Why?”
“So you know the layout of this place pretty well, right?” the new kid says, peering out the window of their newly shared room.
“I guess? But you’re not answering my question.”
The kid huffs a sigh and turns back to him. “How much would you like to get out of this place?”
Chip freezes.
Does he even want to leave? He’s been sitting here for a year now, stewing in the loss of his whole life. Chip thought he’d be able to celebrate turning double-digits with the crew, but instead, he spent the day sitting on an unfixable creaky chair with a fruit punch he stole from the general store.
Arlin once told him that sitting and staying in the same place- as long as it's safe- is the best thing to do if he gets lost. He said the crew would eventually find him, no matter where he ended up. Later that night, Drey pulled Chip aside and said that Chip should backtrack the path he went to get lost if he ever needed to get- in Drey’s words- “un-lost.”
It’s been a year. Chip has been sitting here for a year of his life, waiting for Arlin to come to find him. As much as he’d like to listen to Arlin, that approach hasn’t been working. Maybe it’s time to try Drey’s approach.
“I’d be down.”
The kid grins and holds out his hand to Chip.
“I’m Reuben.”
“Chip,” he responds, grabbing Reuben’s hand. “But, uh, you already knew that.”
Reuben rolls his eyes and pulls Chip from the bed.
“So, right now I’m seeing the window as our best bet. I doubt it’d be easy, though.”
“Oh, no, yeah,” Chip confirms, nodding his head. He walks over to the window and slides his finger across the bottom. “This thing has been sealed tight. Just enough to give us a view of freedom, not enough to sneak out. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
A quick hum solidifies Reuben’s acknowledgment.
“But,” Chip continues. “I do know a way we can sneak onto the roof. I usually do it just for the view of the ocean, which is really nice if-“
“Yeah, yeah. I don’t need your life story. How do we get up there?”
Chip takes a deep breath- a reminder that this is for his benefit too- and lets it out. “I can take you up there tonight. It just takes some sneaking around once lights are out and stealing a key to the roof. I can take care of that.”
“If you can steal a key for the roof, why the hell don’t you just take the one out the front door?”
“That one is only kept by the director when she opens and closes the place for the night. She’s a lot iffier about this kind of stuff and would notice if I tried to take it. With what you’re trying to do, I wouldn’t take those chances.”
“Well, maybe tonight you could take that chance and steal the damn key.”
“Dude, no! It either barely works ‘cause us leaving and the way we left would immediately be found out tomorrow, or we’d get caught right then and there and wouldn’t be allowed outside our room at all for the next week.”
Reuben pauses. “They lock you up in here?”
Chip shrugs. “Eh, if they do, it’s ‘cause we did something to deserve it.”
“That’s… okay, whatever. It’s not gonna matter once we leave. So we’re taking the roof?”
“We’re taking the roof. Be ready by tonight.”
“Hey, I’m all packed. You should be the one getting your shit together.”
Getting the key was easy for Chip. After months of sneaking out at night to look at the sea, slipping the ring from the director was about as easy as the snap of a finger.
Chip peeks out into the hall from their room, lights already off to mimic sleep, and watches as the director shuts the final door for the kid at the front of the hall and walks out to the main office.
“Coast is clear. She won’t be back until midnight, so we have to be out and gone by then.” Chip looks back towards Reuben, who’s leaning against the desk propped under the window, a small smile playing across his face. Chip’s face scrunches in response. “What?”
“Nah, it’s nothing bad,” Reuben says, lifting himself from his lean against the desk. “I’m just impressed that this is all coming from the same guy who slammed his way through the kitchen earlier.”
“Okay, there was a spider! It was a different situation!”
“Sure it was.”
Chip groans as he pulls his bag off his bed, slinging it over his shoulder.
“Just try to keep up.”
“Whatever you say, spider boy.”
With the slightest amount of pressure necessary to open the door handle, Chip leads them into the hall. While earlier it was bathed in artificial light, now it’s almost pitch black with only the window at the very end providing any light to go off of.
Chip looks back towards Reuben and quickly motions out the plan: sneak to the end of the hall, lift the table until it’s under the hatch, unlock the hatch and drop the ladder, lift the table back to its original position, and climb up to the attic. Reuben stares with furrowed brows at Chip, who rolls his eyes. He waves for Reuben to follow him instead.
He quickly makes his way through the process of clearing the path to the attic, with no help from Reuben, who just stands there looking vaguely uncomfortable.
With a small click, the hatch opens up, gently lowered by Chip’s hands until it’s hanging quietly, the rope ladder swaying gently against the ground. He carefully makes his way off the table, returning it to its place under the window, then lightly jogs back towards the hatch area.
“You first,” Chip whispers with a bow, waving a hand towards where the ladder hangs unspooled.
“Gladly,” Reuben responds, testing the first rung, before fully attempting his way up.
Once he reaches the top of the ladder, he freezes and looks down at Chip with incredulous eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Keep moving.”
The ladder shudders as Reuben hoists himself into the attic, and Chip scrambles up after him.
As he reels the ladder back in, he can hear Reuben shuffling around the cluttered room behind him, and then the unmistakable swish of a yo-yo.
“Damn, Chip. You’ve got a lot of random shit in here.”
Chip chuckles. This guy doesn’t know the half of it. “You should see the bottom of the port. This is just everything I couldn’t get the chance to throw in there.”
Reuben lets out a whistle of disbelief. “And I thought the key was impressive.”
As Chip fastens the lock of the attic hatch shut, a look of pride flutters across his face, leaving behind a small smirk. He shouldn’t be proud of this, but it’s nice to hear a compliment every once in a while.
Eventually, he makes his way over to join the other kid. “Should be easy from here,” Chip says, nodding towards the roof hatch.
“You’re just gonna leave all this behind?”
He pauses, looking around the room. Soft light coats piles of random objects, anything from packaged plastic cutlery to pairs of socks, in a faint orange glow. A small wicker chair sits in the center of the room, something that Chip is still proud of being able to sneak up here.
He never really wanted the stuff in the first place. Itching boredom would just spawn underneath his palms which would lead to a ticking of nervousness in his veins and before he knew it, another thing was being thrown onto the pile. He meant to return a lot of the stuff- barely any of it had much use to him- but he never got the chance. Fear always kept him from giving the stuff back. As much as he wanted to return it, the things that could happen if he did were much worse, so the stash remained.
He picks up a small figurine from the pile and adds it to his bag, then a pair of binoculars.
“It’s fine,” Chip reassures. “Now, come on.” He flips open a small latch, and the door leading to the roof falls open. “Your future awaits.”
One by one, they crawl up onto the roof. It rests flat in the center, right above where the hatch opens up, so those who exit through the small door can easily pull themselves up onto the center stretch.
Chip closes his eyes once he’s on flat ground, deeply inhaling the salty sea air that brushes over the buildings of this coastal town. The quiet crash of waves drifts, barely reaching where he stands, to where he’s straining to hear even the smallest ripples. Unfortunately, incessant foot tapping breaks up his thoughts. As his eyes flutter open, he’s met with Reuben’s impatient stare.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this moment, but which way do we take to get down from here?”
“Uh…”
Chip looks around the roof and the surrounding area, all miserably bare.
“You took us to the roof without a way to get us down?” Reuben whisper-shouts.
“I don’t know! I told you what I could do and this was my first thought,” Chip protests, voice matching in tone.
“Maybe I’ll fucking push you off and you can break my fall,” Reuben growls, lunging towards Chip and grabbing the smaller kid by the shoulders.
“Get the hell off of me!”
Chip grabs Reuben’s arms in an attempt to push them apart, but instead, it sends the two swinging around. Loss of balance sends both boys stumbling over the lip of the center stretch- looking for any kind of purchase on the slick tiles coating the roof. Chip’s foot skids backwards from one tile ridge to the next, with Reuben’s falling closely behind, only catching hold the second they reach the roof’s edge.
A tile breaks off from under Chip’s foot and shatters against the ground. The shatter- amplified by the night air- splits through any other noise that the two were making until it’s dead silent.
Fear crackles through Chip as he looks up at Reuben, who’s gone still.
“Don’t move.”
“Okay,” Chip mouths, barely a sound coming out.
“Now, we’re going to slowly move towards the center of the roof and hope to hell and back that we didn’t just fuck ourselves over with that sound.”
Together, they move inch by inch back to the center. With each stumble, the other grips tighter, anchoring both of them to the roof through trust.
The second they make it to flat ground, their legs give out, soft pants of fear decorated with the background crash of waves.
“Not much for plans, are you?”
Chip looks up to meet Reuben, or at the very least, his glasses- fogged up by the cold of the night and the heat of stress.
“I had a plan! It just… wasn’t a very good one.”
Silence pulls over the two for a second, and then a soft snort rips itself from Reuben, quickly collapsing into broken laughter.
As the laughter dies down, Reuben falls back onto the roof.
“So I’m really stuck here.”
Chip sighs, falling next to him. “It’s not that bad after a while. You get used to it. I mean, it’s better than being out there,” he says and waves into the air, a vague motion towards the city below.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t out there,” Reuben whispers, and Chip sits up.
“What do you mean you ‘weren’t out there’? Where were you?”
“There are people waiting for me.” Reuben sighs, running his hands down his face. “I was supposed to be done quickly and get back to them, but all because of a stupid shopkeep, I ended up here instead.”
Chip sharply inhales, looking down at the kid next to him. “Are- are you a pirate?”
“What?” Reuben huffs a laugh, waving off the idea as if it’s out of the realm of possibility. “No. I’m with a gang- a group of rebels that work to change this city. We take in people that need it, bring justice to those who deserve it, and-“ Reuben shoots up, recognition fluttering across the kid’s face. “You would be perfect! Your skills with stealing are exactly what we need!”
Reuben’s eyes shine with excitement as he grabs Chip’s shoulders, and Chip can’t help but feel a bit of the excitement that passes like electricity from the new kid.
“I’d love to be helpful! I mean, I could help you guys with whatever you need!” Chip cheers, but just as quickly as the electricity is built, it fizzles. “… But I have people that I gotta get back to.”
Reuben frowns, furrowing his eyebrows. “I didn’t know there was another gang in this city.”
“No! I’m a pirate! That’s actually where I was gonna go once we, well, got out of here, but…” Chip trails off, looking out from their position on the roof. “I’m sorry. I should’ve thought this through more.”
“No,” Reuben says, determination filling his eyes as he looks out over the city. “We now know we can make it here. We know we both have the drive to make it out. All we need is something to get down from here and we’re set.”
Chip hums in agreement, and Reuben turns to him once more.
“Tonight, we can stay. Tomorrow, we can set up the things we need, whether that be rope in the attic, a ladder against the wall, or whatever we need to get down. We’ll be ready by the time the weekend comes.”
“That,” Chip starts, “Actually sounds like a good plan.”
“Hey, I’m not you,” Reuben teases as he stands up, and then offers a hand back down to Chip who- after a second of glaring up at the boy for his teasing- takes it, allowing himself to get lifted to his feet.
“So,” Reuben says, pulling open the door leading back down to the attic, “You first.”
Chip smiles and slides through the door, Reuben quickly following after. There’s a plan now- a way back to the Black Rose through this kid. And now? Now, he just has to take it.