Chapter 4: Nessa

Nessa turned and went up the stairs two at a time.

I had the door open before Dez finished saying my name.

"Annabelle! Stay in the..."

"Watch the street!" I shouted. "If she comes down, there's a van!"

Then I was across Lake Street with a cab leaning on its horn.

I hadn't run since I was four.

The new legs didn't know how.

They thumped and jarred and sent a white bolt up through each stump on every step.

I took the stairs with both hands on the rail, pulling more than climbing.

At the top I caught a toe on the last lip and went flat on the platform.

My palms skidded on the salt.

My left leg twisted half off its liner with a sucking pop.

Somebody said, "Is she drunk?"

Then a pair of dirty sneakers stopped in front of my face.

"Get up," Nessa hissed. "You're making a scene."

She crouched down like she was helping me.

She was helping me.

She shoved my leg back into the liner with both hands, hard, the way I'd once shown her to fix a little one's shoe.

"You got legs," she said.

"I got legs."

"They're ugly."

"They cost as much as a car."

"Then they're stupid ugly."

She was eleven now.

The last time I'd seen her she'd been ten, asleep on a mattress with two of the little ones curled against her back.

Her red hoodie had a new tear at the shoulder.

There was a yellow bruise along her jaw, two days old, maybe three.

I knew whose hand was that size.

"Nessa. Where is he?"

"Don't know. They put us in the van with the windows painted. It's a different place. It smells like soap."

"How many of you?"

"Same seven. The littlest one's coughing."

"Is he feeding you?"

She gave me a look.

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