Shielded: A Valkyrie Saga Book 1

A Piece of Normal - Chapter 7

Max just let her walk away and now we had no way of getting a hold of her. Even if she did get a cell phone over the weekend, she didn't have any of our numbers. What if something happened and we didn't even know that she needed our help. I needed to at least get her my number. I think there were still payphones around. Or she could borrow her foster parents phone to call. I ruffled through Elijah's files because he was a stuck up professor type that still kept paper records. I finally found Ray's file and scanned the single piece of paper until I found her address. 303 Lincoln Street, Oakland CA 59087. Okay, I would just drive by her place, make sure she was okay and give her my number. Maybe I could even give her a ride to the cellular store and find some way to pay for the damn thing. I bypassed Blake's annoying truck, hopped into my jeep, and plugged her address into my phone.

When I pulled up at the correct location I had to double check the address. This place was a dump. An old, poorly maintained Victorian style house that had been chopped into at least five apartments. When I knocked on the door a middle aged woman who clearly didn't take care of herself answered the door in a skimpy nightgown. She was drunk and sketchy as hell when I asked about Ray. I was not getting a good feeling about this. I tuned out the screeching woman and pushed my way into the apartment. The kitchen sink was piled high with dirty dishes and smelled like rotten food. The living room was littered with clothes and there was a half dressed middle aged man sleeping on the couch. The one bedroom was a tornado of clothes, full ashtrays, and more dirty dishes. This room was clearly the woman's. There wasn't a single sign of Ray anywhere in this house. But the woman had known who I was talking about so I didn't think that Ray gave a fake address.

I needed to know where Ray was and if she was safe. What the fuck was going on here?

--Connor

I had been so exhausted after my shift that I had splurged for a taxi and crashed for a solid eight hours. When I woke in the morning I took my time tinkering around my bus and eating a ham sandwich I had snagged from Polly's kitchen last night. Then I headed over to the truck stop for a shower and paid for a large cup of coffee with a heavy dose of cream and sugar. I grabbed one for Jack and a small bottle of orange juice for Amy before walking over to their trailer. Luckily their mom was gone, because that lady was crazy and really didn't like me.

Amy and Jack both still looked exhausted and I could only guess that they had another rough night. Amy was only fourteen. Her life should be filled with lip gloss and boy bands. I wish there was more that I could do to put her life back together. But the reality was that Amy's childhood had always been tarnished by the life choices that her parents had made. All three of ours had been. But we were strong and we would make it through.

Jack gratefully took the coffee and was able to wheedle a smile out of Amy with another giant cinnamon roll to go with her OJ. Jack always had shifts at the scrap yard on the weekends and before long he left to catch the bus so that Amy and I could use his mother's car. We loaded up two weeks worth of laundry into the old Honda civic and I drove us over to Klean Bubbles Laundromat. Both of us brought school work to do while we waited for the machines to do their thing and I only had chemistry left once all of our loads were done.

Amy wanted to just throw the clean clothes back in the baskets and leave right away, but I convinced her to take the time to fold everything with me by telling her I would help with hers once I was done with mine. Amy was doing the washing for her, Jack, and their mom so her pile was considerably larger than mine. After we were done I asked if Amy wanted to hang with me for the rest of the day, but she told me that she already had plans with her friends. The buzzing in my head told me that she was lying to me, but I couldn't blame her for wanting some alone time right now.