CHAPTER SEVEN
That winter was bad, the worst Tara ever recalled. Stephen had been coughing for days, first in his throat, and then in his chest. The other kids, too, in their shanties that gave whole new meaning to the word “makeshift”, were struggling to keep the weather off. The flu was making its no less than third rounds of the Central Park settlements, and it was taking its toll on her group.
In one respect they were fortunate: Stephen, as a budding engineer and all around genius, had designed their shelters. So while they didn’t look like much, they were, at least, structurally sound and able to withstand the worst of the wind and storms. More than one adult had been around to ask about that little, not insignificant fact, along with complaints that the children shouldn’t be alone without proper supervision, and Tara had sent them all packing. If they wanted to figure out how Stephen had managed it, they could pay for the privilege. Anyone from Children’s Services were treated to a show directly out of Lord of the Flies, and encouraged not to come back.
Thugs came around on occasion, too, thinking themselves modern day mobsters or black market dealers. A lot of the time it was older kids, but every so often the grown-ups came, too. Very rarely Tara did business with them, but only if she had no other choice, and only if the terms were favorable. And thus she earned herself a reputation as a fierce negotiator. Nick Santos, would-be kingpin of Central Park, came around every few months to see if he could get her to work for him, and every time she sent him off empty-handed. She trusted “Nearly Saint” Nick Santos about as far as she could throw him.
And she really, really wanted to throw him, at least as far as the East River. That piranha would no doubt survive, but at least there was the off chance he might wash up in Jersey and hassle someone else for awhile.
Just last month he’d sent his heavies around to make threatening noises. Tara had given one of them a thrashing none of them would forget in a hurry. It’d been all quiet on that particular front since, which only meant Nearly Nick was, no doubt, planning.
Tara waded through knee-high snow on her return trip to the Children’s Shanties. It wasn’t just their original group, anymore. Runaways and the abandoned of every stripe were now among them, and their three shanties had grown to nearly ten. They would have to expand again, soon. The older kids were looking after the younger ones, with a sort of unofficial chain of command leading to Tara and Stephen.
But now Stephen was sick, and he wasn’t getting any better. In fact, he was getting worse. Much, much worse.
Somehow, Tara had managed to avoid getting sick altogether. No influenza, no viruses, hardly more than a hangnail. On one hand, she wasn’t surprised—she’d never been sick a day in her life. On the other… surely she should have at least gotten the sniffles by now? They weren’t exactly residing in the lap of luxury at the moment, and outdoor living wasn’t all that conducive to health standards.
There was a clinic over at the recreation center—monikered the Wreckory after the roof had been blown off not long after Tara’s group had arrived—but it was overburdened with patients and under resourced at the best of times. Stephen needed a doctor, and medicine. In that order.
So how was she going to go about getting just that.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, after wrestling closed the corrugated metal they used for a door, and shoving the stack of tires they used to keep it shut back into place.
“Better,” he croaked, sounding worse than ever.
Tara swallowed. She’d gotten them through just about everything, but there was nothing she could do on her own for her best friend. She needed help, and had no idea what to do about getting it. Stephen was now relegated to bed, and it was all she could do to keep the fire going. “I managed to scrounge up tea,” she told him, striving to sound cheerful. As though all he had was a cold rather than some form or other of a viral plague. “And even a little honey.”
Stephen’s response was a rough bout of coughing that left him breathless, pale, and nearly sick. Tara could hardly stand it.
She made him his tea, stoking up their little fire in the shanty that smelled of cold, wet metal and rust. She got it as hot as she could get it, added the little bit of honey she’d traded two hours’ worth of manual labor for, and sat reading to him from a battered book he’d ferreted away from their old school—Romeo and Juliet. Knowing Stephen, he still felt guilty for not returning it.
Tara was horrible at reading Shakespeare, but Stephen didn’t seem to mind. He smiled sweetly at the infamous balcony scene, until her heart felt fit to break. Eventually, he drifted off sitting up, as laying down only made the coughing that much worse. She gently eased one of a series of endless notebooks from beneath his hand, and the little stub of pencil he scribbled with constantly, yet always seemed to make last somehow. She wondered he could hold it at all in his long, agile fingers. She wondered, not for the first time, if he’d played piano in his previous life, or violin. It wouldn’t surprise her. He was one of those geniuses that tended to do everything well without really trying, yet blushed furiously at the sight of a pretty girl. But despite his height and general, underfed scrawniness, there was a certain sensitive beauty about him, intelligence coupled with kindness, that would drive the girls wild once he filled out.
Something that wasn’t going to happen unless he got better, and their quality of life overall improved.
One of Stephen’s ever-present handkerchiefs tumbled from his hand to the floor. That was when she noticed the blood speckled on it.
After a long moment, Tara bent down to collect the rough square of fabric, crumpled into shapelessness, and tucked it back into his hand. Then she left the shanty as quietly as she could, and waded across their little clearing and pounded on the door there. One of the girls pulled the door open, making it shriek, and blinked at her. It was one of the newer girls, not part of her original party. “I need Tabitha to sit with Stephen for a spell. There’s hot tea.”
There was no protest. There never was. Tara was their unofficial leader, but Stephen was everyone’s favorite.
Once Tabitha was settled with her own book and a mug of tea, Tara pulled her gloves back on and headed back out toward the main settlement. There were a few doctors settled in the shanty community, she knew, but without resources they could do little good.
Feeling lost and chilled to the bone as the feeling left her legs from the knee up, the harsh wind whipping her face as though in punishment for being out of ideas, Tara left the ravine that buffeted the Children’s Shanties from the worst of the weather and came up on East Drive. The main settlement was over on the North Meadow, and she could see the little metal drum fires from here. Off in the distance she could just make out, through the driving, pelting, snow, the colored lights illuminating the tennis courts where the Parkies gathered to share news after a communal dinner in the rec center.
She turned away, however, making her way south at East 102nd Street, turning up her hood as she followed the path in a state of desperate worry. Her one, constantly revolving thought was that she could not lose Stephen. There had been nothing within her control when her mother died, or those people in her school, or any of the refugees she saw on the way here, devoid of any help. For them it had been too late. But Stephen, she could do something about. An unrelenting, hounding instinct told her that to save Stephen would be to make up for all she hadn’t been able to do before. Somehow, helping him would save countless others in the future.
Stephen was special. With that brain of his, and all that compassion and kindness, he could do so much. He could figure things out, change things for the better. Tara, all she could do was scrap and stop others from being beat up on. But Stephen’s mind and heart were extraordinary. Saving him, she felt, would save them all. It would be the most important thing she had ever done, or would ever do. He just needed a chance.
Before she quite knew it, she was staring up at the hospital from across the street, her hands gone numb on the metal fence that now surroun
ded the entire park. The fence topped with rings of razor wire, with gates guarded by private security troops.
The fence keeping her from help. And wondered, in words and thoughts she was finally able to articulate, what right they had from keeping her from getting the help she needed. From getting Stephen, the best of them all, the help he needed.
For the first time, she understood they weren’t being protected, but made prisoners, in their own city. Anger welled up inside her, and this time it had a conscious purpose.
Get over the fence. Get to the hospital.
Get help.