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“Yes. Where?” someone barks.
“They ran off tha’ way. ‘Bou’ five minutes ago.”
The booted footsteps turn into trotting, weapons clicking, and the rasp disappears in the distance as the guards run off in the direction we just came from.
I exhale in relief and surprise.
The boy’s head appears between the dumpsters. He is grinning, little trickster.
“That was fun,” he says. “So you, like, runaways?” he asks, sitting down on his haunches in front of us again.
“What’s your name?” I ask instead.
“Sonny,” he says. “They call me Sonny Little. Bu’ I ain’ little no more.”
“Yeah,” I exhale, already liking this little fella. “Thanks, Sonny Little.”
It’s only a matter of time until another round of guards come looking for us. We have to move. But I’m not sure where. Then I have an idea.
“You know your way around this place, Little?”
“Where ye trying to go?” he asks.
“To the port. To the cargo boat.”
“There’s security there.”
“No shit.”
“Bu’ there’s a way around.”
I sit up. “Past security?”
“Yeah.”
“Show me.”
He doesn’t move. “What do I get for it?”
I would’ve given him my bank account number if I had one. “I don’t have anything, kid. Sorry.”
He exhales heavily in disappointment, almost like a grownup. “Another dud.” He shakes his head in the way that can only be learned from being around adults rather than kids your age. Then he gets up and motions to us with his head. “Follow me.”
35
KAI
It’scrazy what kids learn when their school is the streets.
Sonny Little moves with a swiftness that surprises me. He takes us to the farthest northern point of the port, where the warehouses drop off and the dilapidated buildings stare with their empty windows. He ducks into a gap in the half-collapsed wall, and we follow.
It’s a succession of tunnels and overgrown paths with crumbled stone and rusty metal sheets, broken bottles and cans, garbage and possibly dead animals. Little’s body veers from one path into another, under a pile of collapsed wooden boards, then down the hill and through the thick bushes that turn into a rocky beach.
Bush branches whip at the boy’s shirtless body. I can now see bruises and cuts covering his body. His bare feet carefully but swiftly step over glass and rubble as if he’s gone along this path a hundred times. He is the Mowgli of the slums.
He starts sliding down big rocks, then crawls over some of them, making his way downhill along the path between tall rocks that obscure everything around.
We follow in his footsteps, barely keeping up.
