Romeo is Homeless by Julie Frayn Page A

smallish eyes, their color so unexceptional they were barely noticeable. She was curvy all over, her too-small top straining against the heft of her breasts. Any movement made them bounce and jiggle like water balloons about to burst. August was a stick figure, an underdeveloped little girl, by comparison.
    They sat in a ragtag circle, sipping coffee from cardboard cups and eating sweet-smelling pastries. August swallowed the saliva that filled her mouth, her stomach announcing its emptiness.
    “Where the hell is Tanya?” Amber sipped her coffee. “She blew me off again last night, probably to tweak as usual. She’s missing out on all this great grub. That girl needs more meat on her bones.”
    Reese sucked on his cigarette, sent smoke into the fresh morning air with a heavy exhale, and butted it out in the grass. “Me and August found her in an alley this morning.” He pulled another cigarette from the pack in his jacket pocket and lit it. “She OD’d. She’s dead, Amber.”
    With his words the vision of Tanya’s body rushed back into August’s mind. She hung her head and started to cry.
    “Ah fuck,” Amber said. She stared at her cinnamon bun. “God damn it.”
    “What’re you bawling for?” Guy asked “That’s life in the big city, baby. Better get used to it.”
    “Leave her alone, dude. She only got here a couple of days ago.”
    Amber wiped a tear from her cheek. “You think Tanya did it on purpose?”
    Reese shook his head. “Nah. Didn’t matter what happened to her, she never wanted to die.” He took August’s hand and caressed the top of it with his thumb. “How’d you get the food?”
    “Man, I turned enough dates last night to buy pizza and donuts all fucking week long,” Ricki mumbled through a mouthful of pastry. Crumbs flew from her mouth, carried out by her sudden loud laugh. “One loser gave me an extra twenty just to cuddle with him! Can you believe that shit?”
    August stared at Ricki. She clenched her teeth and squinted at all of them. Death was a big deal, not a passing comment. Something to reflect on, brood about, cry over. Grieve.
    In seventh grade, a boy in her class was helping his dad unload grain and fell onto the spinning shaft behind the tractor. Both his arms were ripped off and he bled to death before they could get him to the hospital. School was closed for a week, the whole county showed up for the funeral. Counselors were brought in to talk to the students and teachers. Two weeks later his dad died. They found him hanging by a rope in the hayloft.
    These city kids didn’t even skip a beat when faced with death. It’s like they didn’t give a damn about Tanya, like it never happened at all.
    “Don’t you care that your friend died? You just keep eating. And laughing!” She ripped whole tufts of grass from the ground. “What is wrong with you? Don’t you want to remember her? Talk about her?”
    “Okay, Miss Priss,” Amber said. “I’ll talk about her. She was my best friend. I helped her run so she could get away from her freaking father.” Amber started to cry, red patches blotched her cheeks. “He fucked her every chance he got.” She stared at August. “Since she was ten. Ten fucking years old! And he hit her and her mother all the time. Drunk bastard.” Amber reached over and took the cigarette from Reese’s hand, sucked on it hard, and blew the smoke right at August. “She hated it when she got boobs because he came after her more. She didn’t want to grow up, wanted to be a little kid forever so he’d leave her alone. But he didn’t. Not ever.”
    Amber took another deep drag of the cigarette and butted it out in the grass, motioning for Reese to give her another.
    Guy untied the ribbon, his hair falling around his shoulders in thin, matted mop strings. Without a word he deftly tied it with one hand around his left biceps. Like the black arm bands the veterans wore at the Legion in town, only pink. And dirty.
    “Yeah,” he said.