Four fingers and a thumb's worth of the passenger door's handle, a fistful of her pyjama bottoms soldered to her thigh, narrowed brows and darting eyes and curiosity gaoled behind chattering teethâthere is as it happens not a lick of discretion to Eve's blighting anxiety. Perhaps hinged upon that puddle of shadow that'd bled through the crack beneath her flat's front door a mere hour ago, perhaps the unsettling yet settling fact that it was Jahseh's. Perhaps his typical deadpan dead with something else this morning, something Eve couldn't read for anything.
It's unnervingâthe silence in the car as Jahseh spins it about the roundabout and the 40 miles per hour he zips down an undiluted 20. And then he sharps a leftward turn and Eve regurgitates the lump in her throat in a daunted spiel of panic.
"What are you doing? Where are we going?"
Nothing.
Eve glares down the rusted signage, crippled and leaning, an emboldened Thistlebrook beneath its layers of graffitiâthe Thistlebrook in question being a grayscale tetris of beaten caravans, junk oozing from the gaps in-between them like jam, flogged pavements and potholed roads. One bellyaching sandwich of poverty, disorder and a garnish of dashed hopes.
"Jahseh, what's going on? Are you okay?" Nothing. "Are we going the right way? Aren't we, like, trespassing?"
These roads are narrow in width and narrower by the bin bags that line them, the peds and dismantled bikes, the odd dinger and odder state of each one they roll past. Five miles per hour for a reason, yet Jahseh cruises double that. His head is elsewhere, beyond the curbs of Thistlebrook, beyond the handicaps of Abbey Wood. Eve can see it in the dullness of his stare, the emotions askew beneath the straightest of faces.
Jahseh takes lefts and rights and more lefts and more rights. The trailer he ultimately parks beside is as ugly as every other, yet not even half as sullied. Drawn curtains and the stains of age, but openly un-lived in. Jahseh gets out and Eve daren't a breath. All his rush and bustle is slurred now, for all the speed limits he'd breached to get her here, his urgency recedes to reluctance by the second. Still, he rounds the car to open Eve's door. And she might've put up a fight if not for the hand he extends, her palm meshes with his own like it was made to fit. His grip is snug, and in that reassuringâthat humming worry quells.
He leads her right up to the front door, up two steps, his fist clenches around the handle, it takes that and the weight behind his shoulder to urge it open.
"Wait there."
Jahseh gestures towards the L-shaped bench, mounted against the wall and fitted with padding. Eve toes the cream carpet and ogles about the minimal furniture and no sight of decor. There's no way he lives here. Somewhere behind her, Jahseh rattles at one door and then another.
"Oi, come out."
The suspense is stifling. Eve's breaths are tight in her throat. Jahseh reappears and when he steps aside to reveal a black-eyed Kamale, she's unburdened by more than held breaths and frenzied anxiety. Her gasp is captured by the hand that flies up to her mouth. For weeks, he'd struck her senseless with dread, the endless possibilities in his disappearance. The fear of waking up to his face on the news had rendered her sleepless more nights than not. And now he stands before her, battered but safe. Jahseh urges the boy forward. "Go on, then."
Kamale sniffs, his gaze switches between Jahseh and Eve. "Sorry for running off."
The resounding relief at the mere sight of Kamale cannot in that moment make space for all that's misfortunate about his situation. He soldiers through the urge to cower beneath the spotlight bestowed upon him, the does of Eve's eyes and Jahseh's feigned attempts at indifference. Yet it was he who'd sought the boy out, it was he who'd beat Parker every way but loose, it was he who'd given him a place to go, indifference and all. And Kamale knew all that and the latter couldn't be true at once. Nor did Eve have it in her to question it, because he'd done what she couldn't. Eve had been granted the opportunity to help him once, and vowed to herself if given another, she would never screw it up again. She'd long ago deemed herself one of the lucky few her age to know her purpose, and so she walks in it headstrong each and every dayâEve lives to help people. And come hell and high water, she was going to help Kamale.
"It's fine, you're fine. You're... You're fine now. God, what happened to your eye?" Eve guffaws. Kamale only offers up a shrug. "Look, is there anyone you wanna call? Do you have any family?"
He shakes his head, "Not anymore. It's just me."
Just him.
Past him, something molten rears itself upon Jahseh's face like smoke, sheer but there. But elsewhere just as quickly. He fights between a roll of his eyes and the peccant kiss of his teeth. Eve can't owe his foul mood to anything other than their ungodly hour of the day and the lengths she can only imagine he'd gone to find Kamale. Yet there's something queazy about the daggers he's occasional to shoot the boy's way, too heavy to ignore and too baleful to address. Every time she feels the slightest degree closer to figuring his angle, he does something so out of his ominous characterâbuilding her furniture and treating her to breakfasts and helping the same boy he'd wrangled only weeks agoâshe realises she doesn't quite get him.
Eve clasps her hands together, "Alright... Okay. Uh... Well, first thing's first, I'm gonna sort you a place toâ"
"The kid can stay here."
No, she doesn't quite get him at all.
Jahseh is blasé at both their quiet guffaws, with an uncaring shrug and a gesture towards the kitchen. "Everything works. He's alright."
"What about his stepdad? Will he find him here? Will he come looking?"
"Let him."
Eve purses her lips. His words are somewhat settling. Eery, but settling nonetheless. She routes her attention back towards Kamale, who wears his disbelief and tantamount distrust at the surface, "Are you sure there's no one we can get in contact with? No one?"
Kamale scratches at his ear, "My sister went missing a year ago. And my mum ran off a few months ago, tooâ"
The gust of air that sweeps in as the door opens and the thunderous clam to follow as it swings shut behind Jahseh's departure reckons them both still for a moment.
Eve takes about a quarter of an hour to get as much out of Kamale as she can, but he's a well bound jar of one word answers and I don't knows, and by the baritone croon of his fifth yawn in a row, she recesses, and orders him to get some rest. She laps the trailer twiceâaside from the one bedsheet and no pillow in the bedroom, the place is bare.
When she finally emerges to find Jahseh poised against his car, patiently awaiting and screwface habitually set, she doesn't let it deter the slow steps she takes to meet him, nor the two arms she throws around him to bear hug at his looming frame. She doesn't care for the face she's sure he's making, only the gratitude that becomes her in the moment.
"Thank you, Jahseh. Thank you."
She bets it's an awkward sight, even moreso when he takes a hand to the lows of her back and pats. When she releases him, Jahseh stares down at her. That same loaded stare she couldn't describe for the life of her. Like she'd gotten her hands on the most heart-wrenching of novels only to find it redacted from the back to front. She half expects him to utter something brisk, usher her back into the car and pretend the whole ordeal was anything but intense, like it were any other Thursday morning.
But Jahseh's jaw ticks, "I had a sister too, y'know."
Her head tilts.
"I didn't know."
Jahseh hums. It's brisk, and then he ushers her back into the car. And when he gets in and makes the silent journey back to her place, she's unstirred by his now lax nature. As if the whole ordeal was anything but intense.
Like it were any other Thursday morning.
That writer's block is a bitch. FREE ME. Like, I actually hate it here. And I hate how one minute I love this story then the next I think it's rubbish.
If I had to make a trailer for this book, this song would be a top contender. Can't wait to make Jahseh and Kamale bond.
Kamale is safe, now. I'm kind of ready for shit to hit the fan now, but I have relationships to build, sigh.
Let me know what you're thinking. Thoughts and feels and all of that.
No proofreading, apologies for mistakes or gibberish or repetitiveness.
See ya.