Handsome & Egret

Chapter 1

The first rays of dawn cast zebra stripes of light and shadow through the metal slats of a tiny window set high above Handsome's bed. He stretched his toes onto the concrete floor, already warm to the touch even at this early hour.

Pulling himself out of the thin sleeping mat he shared with his sister, he ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth and over the dry crest of his lips. No doubt about it: the day tasted like stale cereal. Not the best he could hope for, but not the worst either. Stale cereal meant an average day. Overcast skies, despondent but nonthreatening parents, probably even a little food at some point.

His parents' bed was on the opposite side of the room; two unmoving lumps under a tattered wool blanket. He approached them on tippy toes and crouched near where their heads lay, tilting his own down towards theirs. He waited.

A low, ragged intake of air from his father, a slow wheezy exhale from his mom.

Still alive, then. He knew they would be, of course, because a stale cereal day did not foretell of impending doom on any large scale. It was the sour milk days that he feared. Those took away pieces of his life, like when the baby had died in her sleep last spring, or when his father had come home with a blood-caked face, beaten by one of Boss's underlings for missing a payment.

Today was no sour milk day. Today would bring a normal struggle for survival—the sort of day Handsome was used to. In his eleven years, and especially the last few, stale cereal days far outnumbered any other kind. He could live with that. He had yet to experience what a day for giving up would taste like.

"Egret." He shook his sister gently. "Egret, it's time."

His sister moaned and turned towards the wall, hugging her dolly, Gemma, to her chest. Gemma's one remaining button eye glared up at Handsome, admonishing him for waking her mistress.

"Egret." He kept his voice muffled. Mama and Da hated to be woken. It was always best that he and Egret escape the house and let them sleep. "Come on now."

Finally relenting, Egret turned back to him, rubbing her eyes. "I was dreaming about a house made of food, but you woke me before I could eat any of it."

Handsome laughed. "I promise if we find an actual house made of food, I'll let you eat as much as you wish."

"Do you think there's anything to this one? The dream, I mean."

"Shhhh. Don't talk about it." He barely dared to whisper the words. "And anyways, I doubt it."

Egret sighed as she let her brother pull her out of bed. "What did you taste, Handsome? I'm hungry."

"Me too. Lucky for us, it's a stale cereal day."

Egret scowled. "I was hoping for broccoli."

He nodded in agreement. Broccoli days were the best, but they came so infrequently, Handsome had trouble recalling the taste. He remembered what that taste meant, though. Broccoli days were whole meal days supplied by parents who had made a score, the particulars of which they wouldn't share with their children. Broccoli days could last two, even three days in a row, but then they were gone. And who knows when they'd come again.

He put his arm around Egret's shoulders. "It's not so bad. We'll be okay."

Egret melted into his side. "That's what you always say."

A grey morning greeted the siblings as they poked their heads outside their cinderblock home. The narrow footpath zigzagging through the Maze between rows of mismatched shanties coughed up clouds of dust as wind forced its way through narrow alleys.