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The girl, her eyes fixed on me, said, “Impossible to escape, really.”
Rian’s eyes darted between the girl and me. To cut off any chance of suspicion, I thumbed over my shoulder toward the sidewalk.
“Listen, Aurnia,” her name on my lips for the first time caught me off guard and I quickly cleared my throat, “sorry for making you trek all the way out here, but we don’t need your help, I’m afraid. I’ve cleared everything up with Diarmuid. So…”
I gestured again toward the door, but Aurnia just crossed her arms over her chest, that damned grin still there on her little petite mouth.
“Funny,” she said, tilting her head slightly to the side, “because Diarmuid called me this morning and said you were all really looking forward to meeting me. You especially, Conor.”
She said my name so casually that I almost believed she’d known it the whole time, that she’d held this power over me without me ever knowing it. By the look on her face, hair falling childishly over one eye, I expected she thought she now had a secret weapon against me, having my name, a secret weapon in this game of chicken.
She’d have to wield it more than once for it to take me to my knees. She’d have to say it over and over and over again, bottom lip between her teeth, chin tilted up toward me, eyes consumed by blackened pupils, for me to fall.
But in this little war of ours, I made one mistake. I assumed that I had allies, Mason and Rian. This, however, was wrong. The two jackasses had gone turncoat.
“I mean, we really could use the help,” Mason supplied before I could send my volley at the girl, at Aurnia. “There’s lots of stuff she could do. And she’s eager to learn.”
“Very eager,” Aurnia said behind his back.
“And she’s free,” Mason added before twisting around and blabbering, “I mean, your labour is free. And not that kind of labour, you know? Physical labour. But not that kind of physical labour. You’ll work for us for free. Not, like, on us or anything like that. Not that that’s what you were thinking. Or what I was thinking. I mean, I always buy dinner. Appetizers at least. I mean, I’m always good for a beer first. At least, you know?”
I rubbed my fingers with a tired sigh against my temples. Aurnia, to her credit, just nodded along good-naturedly. Mason, for perhaps the first time in his life, was red in the face with shame (foreign to him, I assure you) when he turned around. Maybe it was because she was a fucking child.
“What Mason here was so eloquently trying to say,” Rian interjected, giving Mason the side-eye, “is that Aurnia is looking forward to participating in the Young Offenders Program in a location that can help foster her own love of art.”
“Right,” Mason said, nodding back at Aurnia with a sheepish smile. “That.”
I’d lost the troops, that was clear. Aurnia was beaming behind them with an obvious air of victory. Her chin was jutted up. Her grin had grown. Her eyes sparkled at me.
“Alright,” I said, matching her grin with one of my own, though I’m sure it looked slightly maniacal from disuse. “I know right where you can start.”
Mason and Rian parted for me when I walked past them, suspicion on their faces. Aurnia did not scramble away as I rested my arm across her thin, narrow shoulders.
“Right this way, dear,” I said in my best imitation of a sweet voice, guiding her toward the back of the parlour.
“See, he wasn’t all that hard to convince,” Mason called out to Aurnia, who was glancing nervously back at the two of them over her shoulder.
“He’s not as scary as he looks,” Rian added, though he didn’t sound entirely convincing as I led Aurnia farther away.
She looked up at me after glancing at my hand around the base of her neck and said, “You’re letting me stay?”
“Why, of course,” I answered, snatching up a broom as we passed and jabbing it toward her. “You managed to convince me that you were definitely not going to steal anything. I totally believe that your intentions truly are just to take an opportunity to learn a new trade. There is no doubt in my mind that the other day you were just sorting the cash in the register.”
Aurnia began to squirm when I threaded a mop bucket on her thin arm, shoved a broom in her hand, slapped a dirty rag over her shoulder, and tucked a bottle of some sort of bathroom solution beneath her armpit.
“Conor?” Mason shouted back at me.
“Just doing a little new employee orientation,” I called back as I kicked open the back door which led to the alleyway.
I managed to cup my hand over Aurnia’s mouth just as she was about to holler at Mason and Rian. Her eyes were enraged above my fingers which consumed half her face as I walked her and her armful of cleaning supplies outside. I kept going till her back collided with the brick wall of the opposite building. She tried to press back against me, but it was, of course, futile; she was never going to win that battle against me, no matter how hard she tried.
Hunched over to meet her eyes, my face was close to hers, closer than it should have been. From there I could see too much.
The light freckles across her nose. The striations in her eyes, golds and ambers amongst the deep brown. The bags that coloured her undereye in varying shades of purple, blooming against the paper-like skin. It clashed with the youth of her eyes, the vibrancy of her stare, the fire of her anger. Someone so young, so alive, shouldn’t have that kind of weariness, that kind of weight.
It was almost enough for me to hang my head, to sigh, to take back all the things I’d burdened her with from her arms. She could have come inside where it was warm. She could have sat beside Mason or Rian as they worked. She could have slept on the couch if she wanted. But then there would be the temptation to put a blanket round her shoulders. To turn up the heater for her sake. To slip an extra pillow beneath her head. And I feared if I did those simple things, it would be like a tipping point: there would be nothing in the world that I would not do for her, give for her, sacrifice for her.
My aid would ultimately be a curse. Just as hers had been all those years ago.
