Sleeves

Chapter One

I sigh, knowing that this was going to be a bad day. First my dad leaves with his coworker, Ruby, on his brand new boat. A boat that was bought with the money that I got for Christmas from my grandma. Of course, it's always fun when your dad decides to take your Christmas money and spend it on yet another boat that he doesn't need. Then he goes and sends a fucking sitter to babysit me. I'm almost eighteen dad, I don't need a crappy sitter that's younger than me. So I send the small sitter on her way back home and pay her with some of my dad's 'secret' stash of money.

I call my friend Amy, "Amy! I need somewhere to go today. My dad just left with this week's girlfriend."

Amy laughs but sighs into the phone, "Sorry Janie. I can't do anything today. You know I'm in Venezuela." 

"I know...I just wanted to hear your voice, I guess." I mumble. Amy quickly says, "We can go somewhere when I come back in a week, I promise."

I nod, "Yeah sure, Amy." I say, staring out of the window in my bedroom and looking out at the beautiful crystal blue lake I now live by. "I gotta go. See ya, Amy."

"Bye." She says curtly and hangs up the phone. Great. Now what do I do for the day?

I finally decide to go to this water-park place down the road and grab my running shoes, a swimsuit and a jacket, and I hopped out the door with one foot in a shoe. As I run down the street, I look around and spot a dark alleyway that I've been down plenty of times, and turn down the alley, expecting to see nothing but a few dumpsters and some stupid litter, but what I see besides that surprises me. There's a boy. No not a boy, a man and he was turning around to see who was coming up behind him before I leaped behind a dumpster, not wanting to be seen. 

"Hello?" He calls, eyeing the darkness. I've never seen him before, and I know almost everyone who lives here. I stay in my dark and stinky hiding-place, wanting him to go away so I don't have to reveal myself. "Is anyone there?" I lean back to rest against the brick wall that was supposed to be behind me but instead of feeling brick, I feel nothing but air as I scream and tip back into a deep hole dug into the side of the wall and inside the ground. I land with a thud of flesh and bones on the ground, gravel everywhere, and the air whooshes out of my lungs. 

Someone leans their body into the hole, before my fuzzy vision clears and I see the man that I was hiding from reach down to pull me out, "Are you okay?" He asks gently, his voice deep and husky. I shrink against the bottom of the hole, pain shooting up my back and right leg, "No." I hiss, "Get away from me. Don't hurt me." 

He chuckles and frowns, holding out a gentle hand, "Why would you think I'd hurt you?" He speaks softly, as if he were speaking to a child. 

"Because I've run into my fair share of muggers and bad people." I growl, trying to move away from his hands which were now an inch away from me. 

"I won't hurt you. I only want to help you. You look like you took a bad fall." He cracks a smile and I can't help but to feel safe and I nod slightly as he shifts so that he's able to reach down and pull me out. I flinch away from his hands but he whispers, "Shh..." with a soothing tone and I relax as he pulls me up and out of the hole, wincing as my back and leg move. 

He sets me down on the ground and I groan at the pain lacing its way up and down my right leg and my back. "Oh shit, girl. You took a worse fall then I thought." He mumbles, studying my ripped up leg, "There was a spike of rock down there that I had to maneuver around, you may have cut yourself on that." He picks me back up and I curl against him, wrapping my arms around his neck, "Come on, lets get cleaned up." 

He carries me toward a building around the corner and I squirm slightly, "It's okay," He murmurs, "It's just my house. I have supplies inside, and a shower. We need to get that wound cleaned up." He brushes a hand down the back of my head and I nod slowly as he takes me inside his home, and sets me gently on a cleaned off table. "Hold on, let me get some disinfectant and that crap." He disappears behind a corner and I look around at this stranger's home. 

There's dirty laundry strewn across the place, but it looks pretty home-y. There's a couch that looks like it's about to fall apart stationed in front of a brand new flat-screen television, and the kitchen is actually pretty clean. He comes back in and sets the antibiotics and bandages on the table beside me and tugs a sheet underneath my back, "Lay back, gently." He mumbles, almost too quietly for me to hear, and I obey. As soon as I'm situated he pulls the sheet up to the end of the table, sliding my body up so that I was lying all the way on the table. I bite a groan back as my calf bumps against the table and he moves to clean up my leg, placing a towel underneath it and ripping my jeans away from the wound and cutting the extra fabric away with scissors. 

"What do I call you?" I asked, curious as to what his name was.

He barely glances up at me as he grabs another towel, "Call me Sleeves." He says, rolling up the towel and putting it in front of my mouth, "Open up and bite down on this." 

I hesitantly open my mouth and he places it inside before I close my mouth again. "Brace yourself." Is all the warning Sleeves gives before he pours hydrogen peroxide down my leg and I shriek, clamping my jaws into the towel as the pain hits me even worse than before.

When the pain wore off I took the towel out from my mouth and glare at him, "Ow!" 

Sleeves shrugs, "It had to be done." He said, smirking. He lathered antibacterial ointment on my leg and bandaged it up before I could pull my leg out of his hands. 

I continue to glare at him and sit up, wincing as pain spirals up my back. "Do you have any pain killer?" I ask and before I could even finish my sentence he comes back with a bottle of Tylenol and shakes two into his palm, holding them out to me, "Sorry I don't have anything stronger."  

I swallow them without any water and shake my head as my vision starts to fade. "Was that really Tylenol you gave me?" His eyes widen and he checks the bottle, stripping way the top label and he gasps as he sees that it's soporific pills, and watches as my eyes slowly droop closed. "I didn't know." He mumbles, sorrow filling his voice as he catches me as I just about fall off the table, cradling me in his arms as I lose consciousness and the last thing I see is his face, looking down into mine, full of regret and sorrow. "It's okay." I whisper, not even knowing if he heard me before I slipped into dreamland.