The Soul Painter [completed]

-Chapter Five-

Location: Central

Today, we have an outing planned. Femi and I are going on a sightseeing trip around town. 

It's a crazy idea, if you think about it, taking a trip to see the sights around a dump-hole like Central, but when I suggested it, she brightened up considerably. I think she's been bored the last few days.

Now she isn't quite as excited, with her arms in the sleeves of my hoodie and her breath hissing like steam out from under the hood as her thin shoes slap the sidewalk.

It's gotten pretty cold recently. So cold that she turned around and marched back to her couch when she came to see me in the shop. You wouldn't think that one open window in a room would make that big of a difference, but by golly, it does to her.

I know that she'd be grumbling about the cold right now if she ever grumbled at all, but since she can't, I can just rejoice in the silence and freeze to death myself since she has my jacket.

"Do you think we could share that?" I plead, almost joking. 

As usual, her sense of humor disappears as soon as I use mine, and she stares at me with such intensity that I shiver harder. Then, with a stern shake of her head, she dashes my hopes and dreams of a warm jacket to the ground.

"Meanie."

She sticks out her tongue as she scatters a flock of pigeons

I laugh inside, past the strange thoughts that wear me down.

She can't stay here. 

The sound of a train horn alerts me to the fact that we will soon be crossing a bridge. The bridge over the railway, in fact.

I reach my arm around her as we walk, first of all because she's a softie for affection, and also because I'm freezing to death. 

Why does it seem like the temperature just keeps dropping? Either it's getting colder, or I just keep becoming more of a wimp with every passing second.

Femi seems pretty fascinated by the sight of her breath looking like smoke. She keeps sucking in and blowing out, like a train spewing exhaust everywhere. 

I laugh, and she turns to smile at me, cheeks flushed.

"I thought you hated the cold."

She nods.

Apparently, not even the joys of pretending to be a fire-breathing dragon can shake her adamant dislike of the icy weather. 

Can't say I'm surprised.

We come up on a hotdog stand, nestled between two faded umbrellas. A sad replacement for trees, I think, as we stop and order some food. 

I've never seen trees. Or grass. But one time, I did see a few weeds popping up from between sidewalk cracks. That was right after my mom died.

I was a scared little kid back then. Well, not exactly little. I was fourteen, and almost as tall as I am now, with no place to live, just barely escaping the wrath of a real estate broker who thought our house was uninhabited. 

I managed to scratch out a living by stealing for the few weeks after she was gone, up until the point I left.

No one beside Matt and I know that she's dead. My other three brothers have been gone for about six years, having left when I was young because they hated mom for being black and hated me for being the one with a white dad. Matt couldn't stick around since his presence meant for sure that his gang would be poking in on our daily lives, and no one in our area of Central knew or cared that I was alone.