I, Prince Charming       by: Becca Reed, 2001    Http://www.geocities.com/the_werewoman

 

Prologue

He was a small, slight young man, just about 5’9" and 170, with deep, blue eyes and long, oily black hair that he wore long, down to the bottom of his shoulder blades, and only hastily combed back over his head. His face was brown with dirt and mud when I first met him, but underneath his unintentionally earned mudpack, he had quite pale skin for a boy.

He dressed like a slob – and I do mean that literally. His faded blue jeans had more tears in the knee-caps and legs than I’d ever had in all my collected pairs of jeans, and his once-white tee-shirt (which hung loosely on his thin and utterly-muscle-less frame, despite it being a size too small for his build) was nearly black with mud. His shoes were a wreck, tattered and crusty, the laces all but shreds of cloth and nothing more.

And that was my first impression of him. That and the rain that was still pouring down, out of the sky, and just utterly soaking his body. I was safe from the damp, cold shower by the virtue of my umbrella, but this poor, slovenly-looking young boy before me was soaked through and through. And between the horrendously slobby dress, the frail and slouched posture, and the mud, dirt, and rain-soakings he’d evidently gone through, the young man standing before me in the wet did not make a good impression on me.

But he did, however, appeal to my pitying heart.

"Please, mister," he wheezed, then coughed with a rasping, choking tone, hacking up flem, "I haven’t eaten in three days."

 

Oh, gods above, I thought to myself, what a mess this kid is. Where are his parents? He doesn’t look like he’s been homeless long; those shoes are in last year’s style. So what the hell happened to him?

He was still coughing, a deep, flemmy, and throaty cough – the kind you get when you come down with bronchitis, strep throat, or a sinus condition. I winced at the sound of mucus coming loose, and he flushed a deep, cherry-red and turned away, spitting out his coughed-up lungs into the rain falling on the drenched pavement behind him. I winced again at the sight of blood in those mucus-and-puss filled remains. I was just absolutely revolted. And that, I think, is what decided me.

I’m usually a very clean person, and can’t help it if I have a poorer respect for the unkempt than I should, so in a broad-scoped, generalized sense, everything about this youngster before me shocked and repulsed me – to NO end. But the sight of this homely lad – sickly, hacking out his lungs onto the pavement – moved my heart to such pity that it overcame my repulsion to his form and dress, and made me see through the dirt and mud – to the heart of the suffering young thing within.

"Come here," I ordered, turning around making for my car. I glanced in my front window-shield, and saw that, after a moment’s hesitation, he had indeed followed me. But he had the look of an escaped, wild animal about him – hunted and hunter all in one, and wanting nothing more than to be away from the hunt, forever. He didn’t trust me, not enough to get within striking distance, which told me volumes more than I ever think he intend to let on, but he was hungry enough to follow me – at a discreet distance.

But I wasn’t in the mood to be any more charitable than I already was today.

 

Cripes, I cursed to myself as I slid into the driver’s side seat of my 99’ Honda Accord, I am NOT going to throw the kid in the car. If he doesn’t want to come, he can stay out here and swim with the fishes in this deluge!

Of course, I wouldn’t have ever done such a thing – I wouldn’t have left him all alone – but in those days, it was so much easier to act the role of the tough-nuts hard case I thought I was than stoop to be polite.

"C’mon, kid," I barked at him gruffly, throwing open the passenger-side car door and waving him inside, "let’s get out of this rain before you get any more soaked than you already are!" brushed the few papers I’d had on the seat beside me off and to the floor, and tossed my briefcase back behind the front seats, but when I looked up, he hadn’t moved an inch. He was still standing behind me, out of striking range, and caught between fear and hope.

With a sigh, I forced myself to soften my expression and my voice, and waved him to the other side of the car again.

"Come on, kid. It’s too wet to stay out here. You’re already sick – if you stay out in the rain any longer, you’ll catch cold enough to kill you, and that’s not pleasant." He wavered, stepped closer, and then stopped again. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to prevent myself from becoming frustrated at the scared young man, and then tried my last tactic. "I’ll give you all the food you can eat."

He was inside the car in less than ten seconds.

 

All the way back to my house, in Oak Park, Illinois (that’s a well-to-do Suburb of Chicago, folks), I kept throwing sidelong glances at the kid seated beside me in my car. He’d managed to nod off within minutes of starting off along the road, and instead of sprawling all over the seat and flinging himself – and the grubby mud he was wearing over his clothing – all over the interior the car like I’d expected a vagrant like him to do, he curled up against the door, and held himself still and quiet all the way home.

He looked exhausted. Beat, totally wasted, I said to myself. His eyes were so blood-shot, it made my skin-crawl, but after I got over my initial revulsion, I looked beneath the dirty surface of the lad and saw through to the person beneath.

He was thin, but not unseemly so – just thin like a young man can be. That spoke of being well fed, which meant, which had to mean that his homeless condition was a new experience for him. He had been moderately well-dressed before his homelessness, and that spoke of being financially secure, which also had to mean that whatever the cause of his homelessness, it wasn’t poverty. And then, when I paused outside one of the Dan Ryan Expressway Toll-booths, I managed to look over and catch a glimpse of the flesh beneath the torn and tattered cloth.

What I saw sickened me, and shocked me so that I didn’t even try to think again all the long way home. I just wrestled with the mind-numbing obviousness of the truth. He’d been beaten. Repeated, too, it looked to me.

 

Oh Lord, kid, I thought at the still, sleeping figure curled up against the passenger door, what in the name of GOD happened to you? Who did this to you, kid?

The boy’s body shifted in his sleep, and another ugly, sickeningly black bruise showed itself to me.

 

Heaven help me, kid, I thought to myself as we turned down onto Lake Street, heading east toward the Lake, if I ever find out who did this to you, they’ll wish they’d never been born.

Maybe I wasn’t such a hard case after all.

 

He ate for hours. Three hours, to be precise.

He didn’t eat that much, but he took his sweet time doing it. Little bites, here and there, now and again, when I was out of the room or turned away from him. Whenever I stopped fiddling with my Internet connection long-enough to look at him, he froze, staring straight down at the plate in front of him, and once or twice, I even thought I could see him trembling. My eyes would melt with pity for this abused young boy, and then I’d turn my head away again, determined not to upset him further at that time.

By the time he finished eating, it was near midnight, and I could already see the pale sliver of the moon, shining outside the den window of my two-level townhouse. He’d pushed his plate away from himself with a soft shove, and then with a sigh of contentment that moved my heart and melted the last of my crumbling resistance, he collapsed back against the chair.

I waited another minute or so, taking my own sweet time to close down the programs on my computer, because I was curious to see what he’d try to do, now that he was done eating and I was, to all appearances, ignoring him. Would he try to rob me, and run off into the night? Would he try to make for an obscure corner, shack up for the night, and hope I didn’t find him? What would the poor lad do?

I found my answer when, at last, I turned around to face him, and if there had been, at that point, any resistance left within me to this poor boy’s plight, it would have vanished upon the sight I was greeted with.

Resting his poor, dirty face upon the hardwood of the table, the young man I’d found begging along the Chicago Interstate was already asleep. Not asleep without fear – not so deeply that he wouldn’t rouse if I moved even in the least – but contentedly resting for what was probably the first time in the last few weeks.

Without thinking, I rose from my seat in front of my computer screen, and walked over to stand beside him. He shot straight up – alert and awake – his eyes wide with fear – at my approach, but I saw the look in his eyes, and made every effort not to reach out to the kid. I was sure it would only further terrify him if I tried to touch him. Instead, I pulled out a chair beside him, and as non-threateningly as I could, I sunk myself down onto the seat.

"Hey, kid." I started slowly, combing back my rakish blond locks of hair and tugging out my tie, "I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to touch you, and I’m not going to kick you out. I’m going to offer you a bed to sleep in – if you want it – and a deal to go along with it. Do you understand?"

The boy’s eyes calmed slowly as I spoke – softly and gently – to him, and he relaxed somewhat back into the chair. When I finished talking, he glanced around the room for a moment, as if he was waiting for someone else to tell abuse him, but when no monsters appeared, he looked back at me for a moment – just a moment, before he dropped his eyes again – and then, finally, for the first time since I’d met him beside the road, he spoke. He spoke softly, timidly, in a high, gentle voice that sounded like a pre-pubescent boy’s would, before it broke. Was he that young? I took a quick glance at his figure, and couldn’t tell. He sure did LOOK young. But underneath that mud, was the slightness of that form the result of puberty gone slowly, or no puberty yet at all? Just how old was my houseguest.

"What’s the deal?" he asked me, cautious before agreeing to anything.

"Just this," I told him, holding my hands wide open to show him I wasn’t going to harm him, "that you tell me your full, right name, and your true age, and that tomorrow, when you’ve gotten up, had a bite to eat," I wrinkled my nose a bit at that point, "and showered, we are going to have a talk."

"Wh-what kind of a talk?" he stammered.

"You will tell me what you were doing beside that road tonight, for starters. Why you happen to be homeless, and who did this –" I didn’t touch him, just as I said I wouldn’t, but my point at his shoulder was enough. He knew. "- to you.

"In return," I promised him, "you may stay here for as long as you wish and as long as it takes for me to locate your parents-"

"NO!" he exploded, interrupting me, and shocking me into silence with his vehement plea. "No, please! Don’t call my parents! I’m 18, mister, I promise I am! Here!" he dug into dirty jean-pockets frantically, and yanked out what looked like a license card, handing over to me to look at. On that card, I could see that he was telling the proof.

 

‘Beck Andrew Thomas, born 18 February 1982. Height 5’ 8 ½ ", Weight 173 lbs. Restrictions, none … The picture was a tad old, and had problem come from getting his license at 16, but there was no doubt as to the kid’s identity. After a moment’s more consideration, I handed the card back to the kid.

"Okay, Beck, no parents. I promise." He relaxed measurably at that, and I silently began to add A and B up in my head. That must be it. It was his parents. Either they beat him and kicked him out – and that’s! a Federal Offense, whether he’s 18 or 8! Or he left on his own. Whatever happened, he’s afraid of them. I smiled self-mockingly. Smooth move, genius.

"Okay, you can stay here for as long as it takes to get you set up on your own two feet." I hesitated for a moment, debating this whole situation to myself, and he could see me doing it. He blinked once, and then reached out blindly for me. "Please, mister, don’t change your mind!" he begged me, "I promise to your chores, I’ll wash your dishes, I’ll get a job! But please! Don’t kick me out to the streets again!"

I shook my head, smiling. "No, no, don’t worry about that. I was just wondering what to do with you. You see, I work at home as often as I do at the office, so I’ll need to have you doing something while I’m at home, or we’ll drive each other mad," You mean you’ll drive HIM mad, I chided myself. Then I told myself to shut up. "But I can figure that out later."

I rose from my chair then, got him in tow, and set off down the hallway toward one of the rooms I had continually made-up for whenever guests came over. It was fully furnished, and the bed was comfortable, if a bit small for someone my size. But for this short young man, it should be just perfect.

I had him start getting ready for bed (I’d considered having him take a shower first, but after seeing what time it was and noting the heavy bags under the kid’s eyes I dropped that notion immediately!), and went to my own room, coming back a few minutes later with some pants, shirts, and a towel. I laid them on the dresser beside him, and put a fifty-dollar bill on the top of the stack "-for underwear and shoes." By time I left the room, Beck was fast asleep.

As I climbed into my own bed, in the master bedroom just downstairs, I felt pleased with myself. I’d done a good thing, took in a poor young kid for the night (and depending on the story he told me tomorrow, maybe a while longer), probably saved his life, and gotten him to trust me enough to get a good night’s sleep. Maybe, with a bit of luck and a lot of patience, I could even befriend this boy and help him turn himself into a strong, capable college student, and help him make a happy life for himself in the future.

 

Yeah, I thought to myself as I drifted off, that’d be nice.

Little did I know then how fruitless my planning would turn out to be.

 

© 2001
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