Rock Chick Renegade (Rock Chick #4)(4)

Then there was the bathroom and the kitchen. The hall was lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves that housed my massive CD collection. Mostly rock ‘n’ roll.

I loved my duplex and it was all for me. I didn’t have parties because I didn’t have very many friends and none of them I knew well enough to ask to a party. I didn’t have a rollicking good time in my bedroom refuge because I’d never had a boyfriend.

In my life, it was just Nick and me.

Before that, it was Nick and Auntie Reba and me.

Before that, before I could really remember, there was Mom and Dad and Mikey and me.

But, when I was six, Mom and Dad and Mikey died in a car crash. Well, Mom and Dad did, instantly. My brother Mikey died in surgery a couple hours later, though it was the same thing. I’d been with them and survived, even though I’d been in the hospital for three months.

Then I went home to Nick and Auntie Reba.

Auntie Reba was Mom’s only sibling, much younger than Mom. My Dad had no siblings and all the grandparents were dead except my Mom’s dad and, at the time, he had Parkinson’s and was in a home (now, he was dead too).

Auntie Reba and Nick had only been together a few months when my family died. They got married a few months after I got out of the hospital.

Then when I was fifteen, Auntie Reba died. She’d had a routine surgery, all went well, and then, a couple of days later, she just died.

A blood clot dislodged in her leg and lodged in her heart and then… gone.

Nick, who wasn’t even my real family, didn’t turn me out.

Something happened between us, losing Auntie Reba like that.

The only love I knew growing up (or remembered, really) was Auntie Reba and Nick’s love for me.

And I knew Nick’s love for Auntie Reba.

He loved her in a way that was indescribable. It wasn’t like she walked on water or was the earth and moon and stars.

It was different.

It was breath.

It was necessity.

She was the last of my blood and she was life to him.

So we hung on to each other. It was the only thing we could do.

Nick put up with me, which was saying a lot. I was a difficult child, an even worse teen, always on a mission to save a broken-winged bird; a shy schoolmate; a forest in Brazil I’d never even see. I didn’t party or get out of control in any normal way, but I was out of control just the same.

I became a social worker which had Nick worried. He didn’t think I needed any more causes.

“Christ, you’ve saved the trees, you’ve made the wilting violet into the prom queen and you’ve marched to take back the night. You can’t save the world, Jules,” Nick said.

“Maybe not, but I can try,” I retorted, full of youthful bravado.

“Then I hope the Lord saves us all from you trying to save us all,” Nick finished.

After graduating from college, I had a few jobs and kept my boundaries. Nick was surprised, he was certain I’d run amok in my quest to save the world.

This unfortunately put Nick at his ease. He’d thought I’d settled down.

Then I got the job at King’s Shelter for runaway kids.

This went well, for awhile. The kids responded to me and I’d found my niche.

That was until about four months ago when I walked into the Shelter and Roam and Sniff were looking funny.

* * * * *

I walked back into the kitchen opened a bottle of red wine and poured myself a glass in one of my big bowled, red wine glasses. I went back through the hall to the living room and threw myself on the chaise lounge.

Boo jumped up and settled in my lap.

“Meow,” he said to me.

“Quiet, Mommy’s thinking,” I told him and then slid my finger under his jaw and rubbed.

He purred.

I looked out the window and, even though I didn’t want to, I remembered.

* * * * *

Roam, Sniff and Park were my boys, we were close. It took months but I worked hard and got them to trust me.

They’d been on the street for years but none of them was over sixteen. I’d rounded them into the Shelter, going day in and day out to 16th Street Mall, where they hung out, and talked to them. I got a lot of kids from the street into the Shelter, then into counseling, then to reunions with their parents (if it worked), then family counseling, then home (if it really worked).

Roam, Sniff and Park were never going to go home. They told me about their homes. Their homes were evil and there was no way I’d finagle that kind of reunion. So, I just worked at keeping them clean, safe, fed and educated.

That day, that, shitty, awful day when I arrived at King’s, I noticed Park wasn’t there and I knew that Roam and Sniff knew something.

I cornered Sniff, the weakest of the pack, and asked where Park was.

“Dunno,” Sniff said.

Park had a crush on me, I knew this and used it. It’s not that I thought I was all that, even though Auntie Reba and Nick told me I was, in Nick’s words, “extraordinarily beautiful”. He said this because he loved me. I did have a mirror, though, and even though I didn’t think I was the hottest of the hotties, I was nothing to sneeze at. I had Dad’s black hair but, on me, because I wore it long, it had a bit of wave. I had Mom’s violet blues eyes and pale skin and Mom’s curves too. I wasn’t going to win any beauty pageants but no one was going to hand me a bag to put over my head either.