Friday, April 28

When she came home that day, there was a little pink slip taped to the door of their -- not anymore -- apartment. The bright color felt like an affront to her memory. Chris gripped it with trembling fingers.

Christina Ange,

We are deeply sorry for your loss and would like to remind you that you must be moved out by noon tomorrow.

Spalding Apartments

Chris shredded the paper with anger that had been absent the last week and a half. The bits that were left found themselves scattered on the ground as the teen stepped over them and into the small hall that lead to the living room that would only be hers until morning. Not that it was really hers at the moment; all the furniture hand been sold yesterday and all the family photos were safely packed away in one of the cardboard boxes stacked where the dining table use to sit.

She tossed the keys into the little bowl by the door that she couldn't bare to pack away just yet and sank to the floor. The pizza box with the last slice of veggie from Daddy Green's thumped carelessly to the ground from where it had been pinned under her arm.

Snaking still shaky fingers through tangled auburn locks, Chris took a deep breath that seemed too long in the making. Part of her, a bigger part than she wanted to admit, was ready to run away and pretend to be two years older and get a job. The part of her that still gave a damn, though, had very different ideas. Chris sighed and banged her head back against the door.

The idea of moving to a small town alone was daunting. Moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere with a paralyzed uncle on the side of a father she never knew? Yeah. No problem.

The sound of knocking from the fire escape broke her out of her reverie. She stumbled over on half-asleep legs and slipped outside. Luke was sitting there in complete nonchalance, looking the same was when they first met two years ago. His ruddy hair and tanned skin somehow always seemed to stay clean despite living on the streets, and his face held one of those lazy, confident smiles girls always fell for.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Name's Luke. Just thought I'd come see who rented the Wilsons' old place."

"I'm Chris. Just moved here with my mom for a fresh start. Now would you kindly get your ass off our fire escape?"

"So what's it gonna be, kiddo?"

Chris sighed. "I'm sorry, Luke, but I can't keep running away from my problems like my mom did. I'm going to Clark."

"Wise lady!" He gave her a soft smile. "My alley's always open if you need somewhere to run to, kiddo, never forget that."

"Thanks, Luke." Chris leaned over and gave him a hug. His leather jacket smelled like smoke and sandalwood, which it shouldn't, considering where he lived. "This isn't bye, dude; I'll see you again some day."

He gave her a light punch in the arm. "'Course it isn't. The city's in your blood, Christina Ange, you could never leave her forever. Hell, I bet you'll haunt the Bronx long after you die!"

Chris shoved the bum playfully. "Yeah. I'll come back and haunt all the descendants of Luke Stella that dare to enter my city!" Luke snorted.

"Whatever, ghost lady. Take care of yourself, you hear? I can't been there to babysit you like I can here, so I'm counting you to finally take some responsibility for that body of yours. Three square meals a day! Real food too; not that crap from Daddy Green's."

Chris pouted. "Fine! Only if you stop eating out of the cans behind Lee's. I don't think what comes out of there is even from this planet." A shudder ran through her.

Luke sighed with a fond look. "Get some sleep, kiddo. You got a big day tomorrow."

Chris yawned and looked at him sadly. "'Night, Luke Stella."

Luke sat until Chris' bedroom light went out for the night. "Goodbye, Christina Ange, safe travels."

.

Saturday, April 29

Saturday morning found Chris cramming the five boxes she was taking with her to her new life into the trunk of Tony's taxi. He was a family friend that had volunteered to be the one to give her a ride to the small town that lay eighty miles south of NYC.

"Terrible what happened to your old lady, Chris. Just terrible."

"She sure as hell didn't deserve it." 

And she didn't. Katherine Ange had been walking home from the diner she worked nights on the weekend at when she was shot. The cops told everyone that it was a mugging when they couldn't find her purse afterwards.

"Did Luke look into what actually happened?"

"He had his whole network on it, but they couldn't find anything that would suggest that it went down any different that what the cops were feeding us. 'Sides, my mom got clean away from Satan's Army when she was still young. Haven't heard from them in two and a half years."

Satan's Army was a gang down in Queens that Chris' mom had been a part of in its early days. Kat hadn't said one way or another, but Chris was pretty sure that's where she met her dad. Chris was also pretty sure that she was the reason that her mom got out of the gang. Tony was one of the few people that knew about her mom's past life that was still alive.

Tony hummed. "Either way, I'm glad you're gettin' your ass out of Dodge."

Chris snorted. "I'm gonna miss the old neighborhoods, though."

Tony cocked a smirk. "And Daddy Green's pizza, eh?"

"Especially the pizza!"

Clark was a small town of one thousand people and one Walmart. It backed up onto the sea and the biggest business it boasted was the Galilee Fishers, which Chris was informed her uncle was co-owner of. He apparently went out on the boats before the accident that paralyzed him. There was one school that hosted pre-k through twelfth, smack-dab in the middle of town. Five restaurants, three gas stations, and one theater. And not much else beside that.

Tony dropped her off two hours later outside a big house covered in vines, sitting on an overgrown lawn. The grey stone building backed up to the churning sea and gulls pitched a warning caw overhead.

Tony leaned out of the cab. "Call me if you need a ride back to the city, kid."

"Will do, Tony." Chris gave Tony a weak smile and he nodded back before driving off. She sighed and climbed the cracked stairs to the small porch and pushed the door bell. Chris shuffled on her feet and glanced back to make sure her boxes were still sat down at the end of the drive.

The door creaked open. A stout man with bright blue eyes and fiery red hair stood before her. He had a strong jaw and narrow eyes on either side of a needle-like nose that gave him a sort of pinched, grumpy look. By the scrubs he was wearing, she guessed he was her uncle's nurse. He looked at her blankly for a moment and then slowly moved to let her in.

"Arthur? Who's at the door?" somebody, probably her uncle, called from the next room.

"Your niece."

"Bring her in, you daft fool! I want to see my brother's child."

Arthur-the-nurse turned back to Chris. "Follow me."

He started moving without actually waiting for her to follow. Chris huffed and shuffled into the sitting room. Uncle Mark looked like an ancient relic that fell off the shelf of antiques shoved into one corner of the room, but he must have been quite the looker in his younger days. He had greying, auburn hair, like Chris's, and a tweed jacket that probably hadn't been washed since the seventies -- hell, it looked like the whole room hadn't been cleaned since the seventies. Some how though, his honey-colored eyes held this spark and incredible thirst for life. Uncle Mark's whole face lit up when it landed on Chris.

"Ahhh, you must be Christina."

"Chris."

"What?"

"My name is Chris, sir."

Uncle Mark chuckled. "If I am to call you Chris, then none of this 'sir' stuff. I'm your uncle, not your truancy officer."

"Yes s- er, Uncle Mark."

Mark laughed lightly. "I hope you like your room, Chris, and that you will join us for dinner later tonight. It's been too long since anything but old fossils have haunted the family manor; I'm glad to finally have some young blood here again."

"I'll be there," Chris stated. "I just hope you don't get too tired of having 'young blood' around anything breakable."

Uncle Mark smiled and turned to his nurse who had been hovering off in the shadows over Chris' shoulder somewhere. "Arthur, show Chris to her room and then go get her belongings, would you?"

Arthur nodded and strode out of the room. Chris struggled to keep up with his clipped steps. They went up a set of stairs, took a left, went up a set of spiral stairs that must be in the tower she saw from outside, and through the door at the top of them. He unlocked the wood monstrosity and ushered her inside.

"Mr. Olsen thought that you would like the view. I think you'll appreciate the solitude more."

"Thanks, Nurse..." she tailed off. What was his last name, anyways.

He stared at her for a second that stretched into a century. "Michelson," he stated before leaving abruptly. Creep.

Nurse Arthur Michaelson. He was curt and emotionless and generally acted like Spock and a robot's love child. If she was Uncle Mark, that man would have been out of there a long time ago. Something was just off about that man; like he's ghost that haunts the manor or something. Whatever it was, she couldn't put a finger on it for the life of her.

Chris huffed a sigh and flopped onto the lumpy mattress that was slid into one of the walls underneath a window. She missed Nina with her always-present earbuds, Tony and his cab, Luke and his bum network, Pete and Lawrence and Michelle and the rest of the track team, Mrs. Wright with all her cookies.

Mom.

In less than two weeks, Chris' life had done a one-eighty and she found herself in a big house in a little town with an eccentric and paralyzed uncle and his creepy caregiver, living in a tower like some princess that needed to be rescued. Maybe Tony would come be her knight in shining denim. She snorted at the idea. Sir Anthony and his big yellow steed shall come and whisk her away to be the mighty queen of the gutter!

All the same, she wonder if it was too late to change her mind and take Luke up on his offer to be inducted into his underground hobo organization.