I never asked her for her name. It wasn’t like that.
Pizza Hut and I am closing. It’s a Friday, and that means I don’t get out until one a.m., and I told Bubbly I had a ride. She wanted to wait at the restaurant for me, but after about twenty minutes of arguing as we folded silverware and took out the trash, I got her to agree. When she left, I started to walk.
I passed Waffle House and saw it was almost dead. They had another hour at least before the place exploded with after-hours diners. I stood outside the window for a while, debating whether I should go in, but I said fuck it and kept walking.
It was cold. I do remember that. I just lowered my head against the wind and kept my feet moving under me. They hurt. We had really gotten hit that night and I had been running since four in the afternoon. I knew I would have no visitors for a few days. It was before Bell and Burg started coming to the house. Before Precious and Chanel, Misty and Bliss made my house their home away from home. That wouldn’t happen for another few months yet.
When I hit the door, I found it locked. Usually I left it open, but I reached to the window and pulled it up. Arm around the wall, and I unlocked my door. The light outside didn’t hit her. She was still dark. Totally dark. I slapped the light on and saw her. She was laying on my loveseat curled up sleeping, with a bag I didn’t know leaned up against the table, and a cup half-filled with water sitting on that table.
At first, I thought it was a girl I knew. Scratch maybe, or Draconic. I turned off the light and silently moved into my room. I turned on the bathroom light, and what little I could see of the living room showed that the girl was a brunette and wearing no makeup. She had small hands, I could tell that by the one I saw dropped off the loveseat and almost touching the floor. As I looked at her face and studied the eyebrow I could see, and I studied the tiny bit of lip and the cheekbone visible, I realized one thing very slowly.
I had no idea who this was.
I covered her up with a blanket and sat on the end of my bed, looking into the living room at my house guest. I tried to think of what I would need to do. What could I do? There was a stranger in my house. No doubt about that, and I had no idea when she would wake up, or more importantly, how she had heard about the last apartment in the row. And that it would be a safe place for her.
And she was safe.
I sat in the chair by the window and thought of who she might be and how she had heard of this place, and I could find no answers there in the dark. I was tired and I knew I stunk. I had my Pizza Hut uniform on. I decided I needed a shower. I went into my bathroom dressed, with a set of clean clothes in my arms, and locked the door. I took my shower and, while I was washing my hair, I realized she was not really there.
I had seen people in my house before. Standing in my kitchen. Sitting on my toilet. I had seen people sleeping in my bed and, while they did scare the shit out of me, I never disturbed them. When I walked away, or even looked away, they vanished. This had to be one of my hallucinations. There was no doubt. I laughed at my stupidity and finished my shower, telling myself how stupid I was.
I still dressed in the bathroom, which was almost impossible because it was little more than a closet. The bathroom was so small that in order to close the door behind yourself, you had to step into the shower. Steam, and I was sweating by the time I made it into my bedroom. I walked to the living room and she was still there.
This was not a hallucination. This was real. This person was real. I went to my fridge and saw that my Dr. Peppers were untouched, but the pizza I had planned on eating when I got home was gone, the box setting on the counter empty. I touched the empty box to check, but the box was real. The pizza had vanished.
This was real.
She slept until three in the afternoon. Then she started awake, jumping and pulling a small blade. She looked around and I was still sitting on the chair in the living room. I hadn’t slept, and I was very tired, but I looked at her with no alarm.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“I just needed a place to crash, man. I’ll suck your dick if you want me to,” she said.
“No, none of that.”
“Do you want to fuck me?” she said. “You can do whatever you want. I won’t put up a fight.”
“I think my mother made chicken last night. Probably mashed potatoes. Maybe some carrots. I can go get some for us,” Shadow said. “She is probably gone. I didn’t see her car last time I checked.”
“I should probably go,” she said. “I don’t want any trouble.” She stood, stowed her knife, and grabbed her bag. She made for the door. I didn’t move to stop her.
“Who are you running from?” Shadow said.
She stopped. She looked at her feet and sighed. “Can’t say.”
“They gonna find you if you leave here?”
“Maybe not.”
“But maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“How about that chicken?”
Her shoulders slumped. “Last guy I stayed with had me fuck his friends for a little cash to pay my way.”
Shadow’s heart hurt. His chest seemed like it was caving in, and he stood.
“I do not want your body, and I will not let anyone touch you. I just want some chicken, and I want to know if I should get enough for you or just myself.”
She looked at me and I could see she was probably beautiful. Her hair was hanging in greasy cords, her eyes weary with dark bags under them, and her mouth was doing a thing I knew well. She was defeated.
“You a white meat girl or a dark meat?”
“I’ve got about five bucks, man, I can’t buy any chicken.”
“What makes you think I want your money?”
She turned and pressed her back against the door. “Then what do you want?”
“Chicken.”
We ate at my table. It was small, maybe four feet by four. It was shoved right up against my loveseat, and the chair was pressed against the fridge. She sat by the fridge. I sat on the arm of the loveseat. She ate voraciously. She cleaned the bones of every shred of meat. She grabbed the carrot coins and threw them in her mouth with her bare hands, and I handed her the fork.
“I can watch you eat your chicken and your carrots with your hands, but the fork…” I waved it above the mashed potatoes. “I need you to eat the mashed potatoes with a fork.”
She took it and held it in her fist. She looked at me with a hard look for a while before turning it and eating the potatoes. When she was done, I went back to the bowl and filled her plate again. She wept as she finished her second portion.
“What do you want from me?” she whined.
“I need you to give me your dirty clothes. You can change into a set of mine, but not before you take a shower,” Shadow said. “I’ll mix them in with my clothes and go to my mom’s house to do some laundry.”
“Do you want to watch me shower?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “I’ll be at my mom’s house long enough for me to wash and dry the clothes. You can take a shower and dress, and do whatever you want while I am gone. There are nail clippers in my top drawer.”
She looked at her nails. They were ragged and chipped.
“I only have one toothbrush, but I think I can talk my mom out of her spare. I will give you plenty of time to get yourself together. Then I’ll come back and we can hang out.”
“Then I tell you what I am doing and who I am?”
“Not unless you want to.”
“They told me to come here,” she said. “Said you were a nice guy. That I could maybe crash and get some pizza. I did that. I can go now.”
“Yes, you can if you want to.” Shadow looked at her bag. “Or you can take a shower. Brush your teeth, get clean clothes, and stay another night if you want to.”
“In your bed?”
“Yup, I’ll take the loveseat.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Just a guy.”
“You’re going to tell the cops I am here. They will take me back,” she snapped. “You walk out that door and you are going to rat on me.”
“Not the ratting type,” I said. I walked to my dresser and pulled out some jeans that would not fit her, a shirt that would devour her, and a pair of socks.
“Look, I’m going to go wash your clothes and get you a toothbrush, and I want you to take care of yourself. I have no key to my apartment anymore. Lost it about a month ago.” Shadow walked to the window. He locked it. “Go get in the shower and I will let you lock this door behind me.”
She threw her clothes out the bathroom door, and I could see they were barely rags. I threw them in with my clothes, locked the door behind me, and walked across the massive driveway to my parents’ house.
I kept looking in the basket to make sure her clothing was actually there. Now that I was out of my apartment, they were the only real proof that she was real at all. They were filthy, crusty, and stained. I checked the sizes and washed them. I ran them through twice and dried them. I talked to my mother about everything else. When I ran out of things to say, I asked if we could watch a movie.
We watched Independence Day and as my mother laughed and cringed at the jokes and the aliens, I wondered what I was going to do with the runaway in my house.
Rose went to the dryer and I beat her there. I talked her out of the room and shoved the clothes in the basket as fast as I could. I took a bath towel and folded it in half, laid it over the clothing like a bed, and tucked in the edges. This was not weird. Rose did this all the time. I left her house after apologizing about her chicken and I walked across the driveway. It was almost dark when I got there, and I could see that the light was on. I knocked. She opened the door.
She had on my brown shirt that I called my gunslinger shirt, a pair of jeans with holes in the knees, and no socks. I dropped the basket in front of her and she picked it up and put it on my bed. She pulled out her clothes and looked at me. She stared for a long time, and I closed the half curtain that served as a door between my room and the living room. It was nothing more than a British flag, but it served, and I heard her moving around in there.
I assumed she was dressing and she would be gone soon, but when she pulled back the flag, I saw that she had folded all my clothes. They were folded weird, and she looked up at me, smiling. I handed her a toothbrush and she grinned.
She brushed her teeth a long time before coming out and dropping on the couch.
“What do you want from me?” she said.
“Is there going to be someone knocking at my front door with a gun?”
“Do you want me to leave?” She started to get up and I held my hand out.
“No,” Shadow said. “Just tell me what I am looking at.”
“Everything was fine with my stepdad. He seemed like a good guy. Didn’t do anything that concerned me. He stayed by my mom’s bedside all the way through the cancer.” She ran her hand through her hair and I realized she probably had not had brushed hair in a while. “When mom died, we buried her and…” She looked at her fingernails. Trimmed and clean. “Well, after the funeral, he started coming to my room at night. Started having friends over I hadn’t met before. He started beating me.”
Shadow gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, and her eyes went directly to them. She looked ready to bolt. He took a deep breath and stared at her.
“When he started sharing me with his friends, I knew I had to do something. I called the cops, but cops don’t believe girls like me.”
“Girls like you?”
“Had a few bad boyfriends, had a few girlfriends. Got caught smoking weed a few times. Girls like me.” She held her arms out to her sides, “Trash.”
“Call yourself trash when you leave if you want to, but what I am charging for rent is that you speak nicely of yourself,” Shadow said. “You treat yourself like shit and I will ask you to leave.”
She looked at him for a while longer, and he looked at her.
“How long do you need to stay?”
“They are following me. About three guys. Two cars. They search every town I get to. They talk to everyone. They have gotten ahold of me a few times, but I broke free again.”
Both of my knives out in a flash, and she pulled back. “They had better be ready if they come here.”
“Who are you?” she asked again.
“Jesse Teller. You heard of me from somewhere, I am sure. No way you were just trying doorknobs. Someone told you to come here. And now you are here.” Shadow nodded. “You’re gonna stay here until you are ready to leave.”
I called D.
I was waiting for him outside the apartment when he showed up. “She is at her parents’ house, but will be coming to my place soon. If I am not there, she will freak out and think I am cheating. Dude,” D said. “I have about one hour.”
“That will be plenty. Let’s go.”
We stopped at Pizza Hut first, and I begged Meta to make me a deep dish supreme. Said I would come back later and pick it up. I tried to give her money, but she shoved me off. We went to Walmart. D went to talk to his dad, who managed the place, and I slipped into the women’s section. I bought her two more shirts, a pair of jeans, and a pack of socks. I bought her a few pairs of underwear and grabbed a coat. It was so cold outside, and I hadn’t seen a coat with her. I went to sporting goods and bought her a bigger bag than she had, and I grabbed a pair of sunglasses and a hat. A pair of boots that I knew were probably too big, and I paid for all of it quickly before D saw what I was buying.
He didn’t ask questions. We stopped by Pizza Hut and I grabbed my food, and we head back to my house.
“Thank you so much,” I said to him with my hands filled with shopping bags.
“Would come in, but I’m out of time. I gotta run and run fast.”
“Go.”
I knocked on my door and I walked in. She was dressed and ready to bolt.
“Stay. Let me show you what I got for you.”
I laid it all out on the bed as she stood with a piece of pizza in her hand, half eaten, crying.
She slept in my bed. A few times during the night, she asked if I wanted to come join her, but I stayed on the floor. The loveseat proved too small for me and I slept poorly.
I left her to go to work. Told her that if she wasn’t here when I got back I would understand, but I would come home with food.
Best Western all night. In the morning I am up and walking the four miles home. When I get to my door, I can hear music in my house. I knock on the door hard enough to be heard, and she throws the door open.
Her hair flew back as she whipped her head in my direction and I realized this girl was gorgeous. She was wearing my white button up the front shirt, with the top and bottom button undone, and she had pizza in her hand.
“Where’s the food?”
“Couldn’t get a ride. I’m going to get it now,” I said.
I dropped off my bag, turned around, and she kissed me. She tasted like sauce and cheese and pizza grease, and she pulled back and giggled.
Shadow was shocked. He looked at her as she smiled at him. Her eyes were on fire and I shook my head. “You gotta let me through,” I said. She giggled again and stepped aside.
Long cold walk there and back, and I walk in with what has to be cold McDonald’s breakfast. I have no microwave but she doesn’t care. All the egg McMuffins, all of the sausage biscuits. All of the orange juice. All of it, and she devours it all, and when it is nothing but a bag of wrappers, she looks up at me scared.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She looked terrified and I realized she was waiting for this whole thing to blow up and get real bad.
I was hungry, but I laughed it off. “No big deal. That was your breakfast. I ate bagels at work.” Shadow chuckled. “Continental breakfast.” It was a lie, but I needed her to believe it.
“I gotta get rest,” I said. “I gotta work tonight,” Shadow said. “Twice.” He held up two fingers.
I came back with two hundred dollars cash. Business had a no cashing checks policy, but we had a good night and Bubbly went ahead and did it for me. She swore me to secrecy and I laughed. I walked home with a pizza in my hands, and it was cold when I got there.
She was still there.
She had her hair pulled back with one of my hair ties, and I could see she had a scar under her left ear.
We ate the pizza cold and she went to sleep. As I was walking out of the house, I stuffed the cash in her new bag and left.
I did my shift at Best Western and walked home. When I got there, she was gone.
She had to be a dream. No way all of that was real. But when I went to bed, I could see it had been made sloppy, which was not my style, and on the pillow was a torn out page of one of my journals. She had drawn a heart, the bottom turned into an arrow swooping down and pointing to the side of the paper.
She took one of my flannels, but I knew I had worn it recently and it still smelled like me.
And that is the only proof I have that she was real. She was with me for four days. She ate like a horse and never asked for drugs or booze. I never touched her. Not even a hug. And every day, for a long time, I looked at that drawing to remind myself it was real.
The people searching for her had moved on. She had slipped behind them, and with new clothes, she would be hard to spot.
Never heard from her again. Never knew her name.
Bekah remembers me showing her the picture of the heart when we got together.
Shadow’s runaway was real.
For more about the series Reality of the Unreal Mind, visit Amazon.
Jesse Teller 
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