Perversion (Perversion Trilogy #1)(2)

I tied the top of the garbage bag in a tight knot and gave her a what do you want look.

She held the kitten in a choke hold around its neck, legs dangling in the air, but oddly enough the thing didn’t seem to mind. When the girl got closer, the little shit hissed at me. The girl giggled loudly. I shifted uncomfortably, not used to such a sound.

Her laugh was gone as quickly as it came. Her expression turned very serious as if she remembered something.

“My foster mama, Aunt Ruby, said I can’t keep Mr. Fuzzy.” She sniffled. “She…she said I gotta give him...” She breathed in a shaky breath and clutched the little furball tighter to her chest. Her shoulders shook as she cried.

I crossed my arms over my chest. Maybe, it was because behind her giggles and tears for Mr. Fuzzy, I spotted a familiar sadness.

She glanced at the house. “You’re a foster kid, too, right?”

I nodded.

“You can’t talk?” she asked, without judgement.

I didn’t shake my head or nod. It’s not a yes or no question. It wasn’t that I couldn’t talk. It’s just that I didn’t.

Ever.

She looked me over, taking in the sketchy tattoos on my arms. They were all done by thugs and wannabe artists during my many visits to juvenile detention centers around the state. They were just a bunch of crooked scratches dug into my skin, done with paperclips or sharpened pencils then rubbed in with pen ink. I planned to get them covered up one day with something compelling, epic, and meaningful.

As soon as I had something like that in my life.

The girl glanced down to the cat, then back up to my face, her long eyelashes wet with fresh tears. What the fuck did she want with me? Even though it was nearly ninety degrees outside, I raised the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head.

“You…you okay, mister?” She wiped her red nose with the back of her hand.

What the fuck is wrong with this girl? She was the one crying, and she was asking if I was okay?

I didn’t know shit about kids, even though I was technically still one myself.

I slammed the trunk of Marci’s car. The license plate, adorned by a bleeding black rose around the stamped numbers, rattled with the force. I turned my back on the girl and started up the driveway.

“Wait! Wait! Don’t go! We haven’t been properly introduced.” She ran around and threw herself in front of me to keep me from heading back into the house. She shifted the cat to the crook of one arm and extended her hand. “I’m Emma Jean Parish. I just turned twelve, and I like magic and reading. I also like fairytales even though Aunt Ruby says I’m too old to like ‘em. Also, I don’t like scary movies or yelling,” she rambled. “What about you?”

She offered me a small, sad smile and sniffled, her hand dangling in the air.

I sighed heavily. I knew from the determined look in the girl's eyes that she wouldn’t scram until I answered her. I glanced down at her hand and raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t gotta talk if you don’t want to. Do you sign?” she asked, and I realized she was looking straight at me so I could read her lips. “I learned how to sign the alphabet from an old encyclopedia. I can spell things out, but I don’t know much else.”

She thought I was deaf.

A lot of people did at first.

When I was first put into the system, they placed me in an American sign language class because they thought I didn’t know how to communicate. While I was in there, I picked up a thing or two.

She began to spell out the same thing she just said with the hand not choking the kitten. Her tongue hung out the side of her mouth as she concentrated on making each letter perfect. If she continued like that, she was never going to leave.

Frustrated, I blurted out, “Tristan. And I’m not deaf.”

The sound of my own voice, which hasn’t rattled my eardrums in years, startled me as much as it did her.

“Tristan?” She smiled, cocking her head to the side. “You’re not deaf?”

I shook my head.

“Tristan,” she repeated. She reached out and removed my arm from my chest until she freed my hand. She shook it with more force than most grown men, but that wasn’t what shocked me.

It was the zap of her skin on mine. The feeling of something shattering all around me until gone. I was too young to be having a stroke, so what the fuck was that?

I stared down at our connected hands in wonder. It’d been a long time since I’d spoken and even longer since I let anyone touch me. That’s all the feeling was. I shook it off, but the current still hummed between us.

“Funny, you don’t look like a Tristan.”

No, I didn’t. I looked like a criminal. A thug. Although, I did agree with her. I never cared for my name. Tristan sounded like someone who went to a fancy private school and did his homework before lacrosse practice. Not someone who spent more time in a cell than a classroom, and the only time he ever touched a pencil was to sharpen it into a weapon.

“I like it though,” she mused, stroking the kitten. “I mean, it’s a nice name. Not for you, though. You might want to look into that.” She pressed her lips to the cat’s head.

I lit a cigarette. Over Emma Jean’s head, I spied my social worker inside, sitting at the table and talking Marci politely while smiling and nodding. I hoped they’d hurry up so I could finally get the fuck out of there.