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It's snowing hard now, and the world from her windshield is blurred white. Carolina has the radio turned low and the heat cranked up high and she's driving slow, slow, slow. No reason to rush home. Tomorrow she's off, and tonight she has...
The car rests at a red light and Carolina glances at the passenger's seat where York is curled. His breathing is slow and steady; his eyelids drooped shut about ten minutes ago. (It would've been a five minute drive if not for the snow and the stopping-by-an-abandoned-barn thing. And the dragging-home-a-stranger thing.) Even asleep, he looks hungry, his hands clutching at the seatbelt and holding fast. She sort of wants to wake him up, to get him to put on that dumb grin again.
But the light is green and the snow is thick and she doesn't look at him for long.
She'll take him home. Let him sleep. Let him eat, if he wants. And in the morning, she'll talk to Niner. Niner...knows things.
*
Niner knows things about strays.
Well. She knows about keeping them, mostly. And letting them eat all your food. And about how after three months you have to gently but firmly encourage them to fill out job applications for retail stores that they mistakenly view as existing beneath their talents – for example, the local coffee shop.
Okay, but mostly – mostly she knows the look of them. It's not the clothes or anything like that; god knows South dresses like she lives under a bridge. ("It's called having some fucking style, asshole.") It's just...the look of them. Something about the face, something about the set of the shoulders. The too-big smile, the rough, fear-born confidence. That way of eyeing up all the doorways, just in case.
She's impressed; this kid hardly shows it. Not even when she walks into the kitchen and stares openly at him, sitting there at the kitchen table. Carolina had never managed that kind of almost-natural grin.
"Hey, man," he says, and Niner looks him up and down one more time before she sits down across from him. He's got impressively scruffy hair and he's halfway through an enormous bowl of Cheerios. Like, a mixing bowl.
"Hey, strange person in my apartment who's eating all my cereal," she says amiably.
South will be happy. The existence of Cheerios is an insult to her kitchen, South maintains. Niner, however, maintains that it's important for Carolina to have access to breakfast food she can make herself without setting the entire apartment on fire. ("That's your problem," was South's response to this reasoning, which is her response to pretty much all things regarding Carolina.)
"I'm York," says York, informatively. He swallows a spoonful of Cheerios with no sign of chewing. "These are really good." And he actually offers up an appreciative smile.
"They're Cheerios," says Niner, glancing at the microwave clock above his head. Seven in the morning. Great. "It's not like I made them."
"Oh. Are you Carolina's friend? Only, Carolina said I could stay here, just for the night, y'know, and she said no one would mind, and if you mind, that's okay, it was just for the night, since, y'know, my house is, I don't have, y'know," York says, coherently. His leg's tapping and his spoonless hand is drumming lightly on the table. Niner wonders if Carolina gave him some of her extra-ultra-caffeinated coffee, fondly referred to by some (South) as the Surprise Heart Attack.
Niner also wonders, briefly, where Carolina is. But that's an easy one. It's either running or working, and today's her day off. So she took off for a jog and left her new friend behind to eat all of the Cheerios in the cabinet.
"It's too early for this," Niner mumbles, and to her deep disappointment, York tilts his head at her like a confused, scruffy-haired dog.
This is how they get you, she thinks darkly. They draw you in with the sad eyes and then they're just living with you until you can't even remember living without them and you say it's just for a month but you know better, you know you're going to have to provide for them until they can do it for themselves and I mean, that's fine, I mean, you can't just leave them out there, you know what it's like to be –
"Hey, man, are you okay?" York's voice cuts in. Niner blinks and focuses a hard stare on him.
"Look, I don't have a problem with it, just as long as you get a job and don't go running in the dark and the snow constantly so that everyone's always worried about you falling or getting hit by a car or something," she answers.
"Um," says York, shrinking back just a little. "Um, I don't –"
Niner sighs, heavily. It turns into a yawn. Seven o'clock. Why. "Sorry, getting ahead of myself. Just eat your Cheerios, kid. We'll talk about it later. You can call me Niner. I'm...Carolina's friend. The mean one's South. She's my girlfriend. Welcome to our shitty apartment. Please note the bold and artistic decorating choices." She waves an arm at the haphazardly strung Christmas lights over the kitchen archway, held up by thumb tacks and electrical tape.
"I think South yelled at me this morning," York says cheerfully. He lifts up his bowl to drain the rest of the milk, and Niner has to respect that kind of shamelessness. She leans forward on her elbows.
"Yeah? What'd she yell?"
"Well," York says, setting the bowl down and furrowing his brow. "First she said, 'What the fuck are you doing on the fucking couch?' Then I tried to explain and she said nevermind, she didn't care, and that I'm Niner's problem." He smiles as bright as the goddamn cartoon bumblebee on the stupid Cheerio box.
Niner stares at the horrifying cartoon bumblebee for a moment. Then she stands up abruptly, chair scraping the shitty fake wood floor. "Do you want fried eggs right now? Because I really want fried eggs right now."
"I want fried food almost all of the time," York replies, suddenly wide-eyed.
Niner flashes him a grin. "You're my kinda guy, York," she says, patting him on the shoulder as she strolls over toward the fridge. "You're my kinda guy."
He flinches a little at the shoulder pat, but he covers it well. It's almost worse, Niner reflects, when they're used to it.
"One egg at a time," Niner mutters under her breath, and pulls out the carton.
*
Carolina runs the usual route at the usual pace. She passes the coffee shop, the book store, the little movie theatre with only one screen. The bakery where she met Niner, ducking under the awning to take cover from the rain. The pizza place that South worked at for two days before she maybe got into trouble with the mafia (Carolina still can't tell if she's joking about that, and Niner just starts humming loudly whenever it comes up). The sidewalks are salt-covered but still slick, and she's glad for the traction of her winter running sneakers, a birthday gift from South this year. ("Niner said something about a birthday or whatever and I saw these and there was a sale and you get fucking crazy when you don't get out to run and when you're crazy you're just fuckin' annoying as shit, and the sidewalks are shitty as fuck so I figured, you know, might as well not break your neck. I guess. Whatever.")
The air's almost too sharp on her throat this morning, and she thinks suddenly, unexpectedly of glass shards on cold kitchen tile. Of a backpack stuffed with a change of clothes and a few books and some energy bars and a photo of her mom. Of the patter of rain on the bakery awning, of blood dripping from her heel.
And she thinks of York, looking hungry. She thinks of York, who'd been asleep on the couch within seconds, who'd woken up the moment she stepped into the living room this morning, quiet and careful but not enough. She thinks of his stupid, tousled mess of hair, and the gentle, cautious way he'd smiled at her when he'd woken. The abnormal enthusiasm with which he had taken to the Cheerios.
She runs the usual route, and then she runs it again. Faster this time.