Aj Blackbird's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

The rent was paid, but Aj did not feel safe. Will's compass and coin sat in her pocket now, the last thing his father left him. She had traded his memory for one more week under her own roof. Two days after she said no to Barbara, someone knocked. Aj opened the door and her stomach dropped. Her adoptive mother stood on the step, moving in her slow, stiff way, like a wind-up doll winding down. "You didn't call," Barbara said. Her voice ticked out flat. "A daughter should call." She stepped inside without asking. The striped cat fled under the couch. Barbara looked at the bare walls, the single chair, the cracked window. She smiled her painted smile. "So small. So sad. You could sleep in your old room tonight. It's still made up." "I paid the rent," Aj said. "I don't need your money." Barbara set a fold of bills on the table anyway. "For groceries. For the cats." She tapped it once. "You'll owe me. You always owe me. Come home and it all goes away." She reached out and touched Aj's cheek, cold fingers, the way she had when Aj was eight and had nowhere else to go. Aj felt herself shrinking. The old pull dragged at her. Take the money. Go back. Let Barbara watch her again. Her hand went to her pocket and closed around the compass. She thought of Will handing it over, his face still, giving away his last thing so she could stay free. He had not asked her to come back to anyone. He had set her loose. Aj pushed the bills across the table, back toward Barbara. "No," she said. "Take your money. I want you to leave." Barbara's smile did not move, but her eyes went hard. "You'll fail. You have no work, no savings. You'll crawl back." "Then I'll crawl back on my own," Aj said. "But you don't get to stand in my house and wait for it." She opened the door wide. Her hand shook on the knob. It stayed open. Barbara gathered her bills with clicking fingers. She walked to the door and stopped close to Aj's ear. "Don't call me when it breaks," she said. Then she went down the steps, stiff and slow, and did not look back. Aj shut the door and leaned against it. Her legs felt loose. For the first time, Barbara had left with her money still in her hand. The trap was gone from the room. But so was the safety net. Aj had no mother to call now, no loan waiting, no old room made up. She pulled the compass out and held it in her palm. The needle swung and settled. She had won her freedom clean. Now she had to keep three cats fed on it, and Friday's rent would come again.