Chapter 3

Lora's pov

I scrambled backward from the window, my spine colliding hard with the edge of my narrow desk. The rusted iron of the fire escape seemed to rattle long after I pulled my hands away. My breathing was ragged, tearing through my throat as I stared at the warped glass of the closed window.

The boy in the alley. The cardstock. The knowing, cynical smirk.

He didn't just know my name. He knew exactly where I lived, and he was completely unafraid to let me know he held the matches for my entire life. I reached up with trembling fingers and locked the window, an utterly useless gesture against a guy who looked like he could kick the glass in without breaking a sweat.

Before I could even attempt to process the panic clawing at my ribs, the front door of our apartment slammed open, the deadbolt smacking against the drywall with a sickening crack.

"Don't start with me, Sarah. I swear to God, do not start with me tonight."

My father’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble that vibrated through the cheap, paper-thin walls of my bedroom.

 I froze, the terror of the boy outside instantly eclipsed by the suffocating reality inside.

"I’m not starting anything, Mark," my mother replied, her voice tight, strung so thin it sounded like a wire about to snap. "I just want to know if you got the advance. The foreman said he’d authorize it if you worked the double shifts. Did you get the check?"

Heavy work boots thudded against the floor. A kitchen chair scraped violently across the floor.

 "The foreman is a liar. He told me the company is freezing overtime. They’re cutting hours across the dock. I’m lucky I even have a job come Monday.”

"Cutting hours?" My mother’s voice rose, the panic bleeding through the forced calm. "Mark, the rent was due four days ago. The car is dead in the lot. I have final notices from the electric company and the hospital bill from my urgent care visit in March. We need two thousand dollars by Friday, or they are going to lock us out of this apartment."

I slid down the wall, pulling my knees tight to my chest on the faded carpet. This was the routine. The intense volume, the bitter accusations, the heavy, suffocating scent of cheap beer and desperation seeping under my bedroom door.

"I’ll figure it out!" he shouted. A fist slammed onto the laminate kitchen counter. The cheap wood groaned. "I always figure it out, don't I?"

"No, you don't!" she screamed back, the dam finally breaking. "You borrow from people you shouldn't borrow from! You take out payday loans that bleed us dry. I am drowning, Mark. We are drowning. Look at this place! We are one missed shift away from living in a shelter, and you want to pretend everything is fine?"

"You think I want this?" The sheer agony in my father’s voice made my chest ache. "You think I want to look at my wife and my kid and know I can't provide for them? You think I don't see the way Lora sneaks out of here every morning, pretending she doesn't live in this filth? She has to lie to her own friends just to survive in that school." His voice became soft “I regretted taking her from where she is doing well.

"Her school is the only thing keeping her future alive!" my mother fired back, her voice cracking with a sob. "If Beverly High finds out she lives out of district, they’ll pull her transfer. If she loses that academic that Calloway's gave her, She’ll be stuck here, Mark. Just like us. Grinding her bones to dust for pennies."

"Then maybe she shouldn't have been returned to us!"

Silence. Absolute, ringing silence.

The words hung in the air, toxic and heavy. My breath stopped. I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead against my knees, digging my fingernails into my calves until it burned.

Returned to us.

The phrase was a jagged knife, tearing open a ten-year-old wound. I was six when I found a new family that took good care of me. I lived with them for four years. I was ten when the state finally deemed my biological parents financially and mentally unfit, ripping me from a cold apartment and placing me into the foster system. I was six when I learned what a home felt like. Luxury lifestyle, the scheduled meals,-I don't know why they were looking for me back then. It took them two years of court battles, mandatory counseling, and crushing debt to get me back.

They loved me. I knew they loved me. But the cost of my return had broken them, and we had been bleeding out ever since.

"Don't you ever," my mother whispered, her voice shaking with a lethal, quiet fury, "ever say that again. We fought for her. We bled for her."

"And look what it cost," he rasped, utterly defeated. "I’m tapped out, Sarah. I can't pull blood from a stone. I’m packing a bag. I’m going to sleep at the docks tonight to see if I can catch the early shift. Don't wait up."

"If you walk out that door,

 Mark, don't bother coming back."