Yesterwary

“How’d you sleep?” Bastian asked, leaning against the lobby desk with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Paul was happily engaged in a very serious conversation with a busty woman who was wearing something short of an adequate amount of clothing.

“I didn’t,” Demi frowned, eyes puffy and hair a mess as she followed him out the door.

“Too quiet?” he asked, face illuminated by the flame of his lighter.

“How’d you know?”

“It’s a pretty common complaint from newcomers. Your heartbeat is the unacknowledged soundtrack of your life,” he muttered distantly, examining the cut on Demi’s palm as his cigarette teetered between his teeth. “The silence never quite feels right, but you’ll get used to it.”

“That’s reassuring,” she muttered, trying to get a good look as he peeked beneath her bandage.

“It’ll be fine,” he said, keeping her hand in his a moment longer than necessary before hurrying her across the street.

“Can I have one of those?” Her eyes were trained on his hand as he raised the cigarette for another puff.

“You smoke?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” she asked, digging into the pack as he held it out for her.

“You just don’t seem like—” His words ended abruptly as he watched Demi put the wrong end of the cigarette into her mouth.

“What?” she said, wide-eyed and innocent. Bastian stared at her for a long time, before she finally said, “I’m kidding,” and flipped the filter to her lips.

Bastian shook his head and handed over his lighter. It had been a long time since he last smiled—really smiled. He’d never imagined that a newcomer would make him want to break his non-emotive streak. But smiles didn’t exist in Yesterwary. They were much too close to happiness, and happiness was much too close to love.

Demi coughed, choking on the smoke that had sunk to the bottoms of her lungs.

“Are you okay?” Bastian asked, as cloudy jets wisped out from his nostrils.

“Yup,” she hacked, eyes watering. “Totally fine.”

“You don’t smoke,” he said, eyes squinted knowingly as he grabbed for the cigarette in her hand. He chucked his own half-finished one to the ground, where it sizzled against the wet stone.

“Maybe I want to take it up,” she wheezed, catching her breath just in time to follow him across another street. Yesterwary was far bigger than it seemed, and yet it was so cramped that Oxygen felt of short supply. Or, perhaps, she was just lightheaded from the smoke.

“Don’t. It’s bad for you,” he said, pausing to let a stream of bodies and carriages cross his path.

“It doesn’t count here, though,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, this isn’t really my body, right? Just my conscience, or something.”

Bastian lowered his eyebrows in thought. “Do you want it back?” he asked, jutting the cigarette toward her.

Demi stared for a moment, tonguing at an uncomfortable itch in the back of her throat. “No… no, I’m good. Thanks.”

“Thought so,” he said, stopping outside a building that was only distinguishable from the others in the sense that it had a decomposing sign above the door, which had surely read ‘Work Placement’ at a previous time in its existence.

“Wok lament?” Demi mused. “Sounds like a sketchy Chinese restaurant. Or a bad Jackie Chan movie.”

Bastian was absolutely certain that, had he been capable of doing so, he would have laughed. For the first time during his stay in Yesterwary, he would have laughed. Until his ribs hurt, until his cheeks gleamed with tears of amusement, he would have, undoubtedly, laughed. And it wasn’t even that funny. But Yesterwary was a cold-hearted bitch, and if a smile was unpermitted, then laughter was worthy of hanging.

“Maintenance is a bit lacking, around here,” he said, holding open the rotting door. “No one cares enough to fix anything.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?” she asked, stopping in the doorway.

Bastian shook his head. “Adrian and I don’t get along.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story. Go get placed,” he said, nudging her inside.

Demi waited for a moment while her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness. Not that the outdoors were made of sunshine and rainbows, but the room in which she had found herself was completely black, save for the dusty lantern that dangled from the center of the ceiling. The walls were black, the floor was black, and the long, curly mane of the man sitting behind the warped desk was… slightly off-black. Dark brown, you might even call it.

“How can I help you?” the man, who Demi assumed was Adrian, said without interest from behind a yellowing newspaper, which consisted only of faded pictures and brief, broken sentences.

“I need a job,” she said, situating herself in a lopsided, wooden chair, which tilted so drastically to one side her calve muscles would have put forth less effort had she just made the decision to stand. “…Please.”

Adrian grunted as he folded up his paper, making it quite clear that Demi’s presence was an inconvenience to him, even though it was his job to help her. He eyed her over from head to toe, and threw back a swig from his mucky flask.

“When did you arrive?” he asked, digging a handful of papers from his desk drawer and plopping them in front of himself.

“Yesterday.” She was focusing noticeably hard on his eyes, making it less than discreet that she was trying to avoid gawking at the deep, jagged scar that ran from the top of his forehead to the bridge of his nose.

“Let me see your pamphlet.”

“I… I don’t have it,” Demi said, creasing her forehead and wondering of what use her pamphlet could have possibly been. “No one told me I needed to keep it.”

With a long sigh, he asked, “What was your guide’s number?”

“Uh,” she stammered. She recalled the tattoo on the back of Bastian’s neck, but having just found out that he and Adrian weren’t on the best of terms, she was wary about relating herself to him in any way. “I don’t remember.”

“A name, perhaps?” Adrian squinted his beady eyes in suspicion.

Demi shook her head, hoping the blank look on her face was convincing.

“What did he look like?”

“Uh…”

“Bastian McCall! In here, now!” Adrian shouted, eyes fixed on the door.

Demi closed her eyes against the wave of dull light that flooded the room with the creak of the opening door.

“Adrian. I didn’t realize you still worked here,” Bastian said with a gleam in his eyes.

“Mm hmm,” Adrian grumbled. “What have I told you about trashing the newcomers’ pamphlets?”

“Do it? No, that doesn’t sound right…” he said in false contemplation.

“Still a wise-ass, I see,” Adrian said.

“Still a jackass, I see,” Bastian retorted.

Adrian’s eyes gleamed dark. His mouth contorted into a malicious, sideways slant. An oily lock fell across his face as he handed Demi a paper from the bottom of the pile.

Her eyes narrowed as she examined the bold, hand-scribbled header of the sheet. “I don’t think this would be a good match for me,” she said quietly, looking up to meet Adrian’s cold gaze as she returned the paper to the desk. She could feel Bastian peeking over her shoulder.

“No?” Adrian asked, digging out another sheet. “Perhaps this would be better suited for you?”

Demi caught a glimpse of the words ‘exotic dancer,’ and immediately snatched up the previous option. “This works. Thanks,” she mumbled, rising from her chair and grabbing Bastian’s hand as she made for the door.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Bastian,” Adrian called from behind them.

“What happened between you two?” Demi asked, after they’d returned to the rain-slicked street.

“I made an arguably inappropriate comment about his mother when he placed me as a guide,” he said, waving his hand as if it couldn’t have been less relevant. “What’d you get?”

Demi handed him the sheet as he lit up another cigarette.

“It could be worse,” he shrugged, passing back the paper as he led her past a tall, wobbling clock-tower in the middle of town.

“I don’t do well with children,” she grumbled, absentmindedly following him. She stared down at the paper, which read ‘Childcare Assistance’ across the top.

“Better than you do with poles and skimpy lingerie, apparently…” he said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye to judge her reaction.

“I don’t know… I’ve had enough experience with kids to know I don’t like them. I’ve never tried taking my clothes off for money,” she joked. “Maybe I made the wrong choice.”

“Our burlesque house is called ‘The Broken Oyster,’” he said, “and it’s attached to the liquor store. Your decision could not have been less wrong. Besides, the orphanage really isn’t so bad.”

“Wait, orphanage? There’s an orphanage here? I thought I’d be nannying, or something,” she said, eyes wide as they came upon a six-story, beaten-down wreck of a building, which had a concerning amount of boarded windows.

“Are you really surprised? There are a lot of unloved children in the world,” he said, as they made their way past something that vaguely resembled a swing-set and could have potentially infected someone with tetanus just by looking at it. “And I don’t think ‘nannying’ is a word.”

“I’m a writer,” she muttered. “Anything can be a word.”

“Do you have much experience with children?”

Moira was a stern, older woman with a fluffy bun of gray hair atop her head, and Demi found it only slightly distracting that the administrator of the orphanage was nearly bursting out of her torn, corseted dress.

“I babysat in high school,” Demi answered, attempting to keep her line of vision above the woman’s chest.

“Any notable incidents during that time?” Moira sighed, not particularly interested.

“Notable incidents?”

“Did any of the children for whom you cared ever experience any injuries, illnesses, or deaths while under your supervision?”

“One kid got a toy soldier stuck up his nose.”

Moira nodded and scribbled something onto Demi’s paper, then filed it away in a drawer. “You’ll be assigned to the fourth floor. That’s the seven-to-nine-year-olds. Mr. McCall, I trust you know your way?”

Bastian nodded somberly and held the door open, waving a hand to suggest Demi go ahead of him.

“You know your way around the orphanage?” she asked, following him down a corridor that was lined with drawings of greyscale-doodles. Some of them were quite good, but, mostly, they weren’t.

“I’m a guide,” he said in a quiet monotone, “it’s my job to know my way around.” But something in his tone suggested that his experience with the orphanage involved more than just tourism.

“Oh!” Demi gasped, clasping her palms to her face as she came to a sudden halt at a large pane of glass, which separated the two of them from a dimly-lit room. The floor was filled with at least thirty tiny cribs, all occupied by equally-tiny bodies. “There are babies here?”

“Some of us run out of love much sooner than others,” he said, forcing the words from his throat as if they were clawing his insides to shreds on their way out.

In the discolored reflection of the glass, Demi noticed his jaw twitch in the way hers sometimes did when she was trying not to cry.

“Bastian?” she asked, keeping her eyes trained on the poor little souls in the room ahead.

“Yes?”

“How long have you been in Yesterwary?”

“A long time.”

“I’ll meet you back here after work,” Bastian said, leaving Demi outside a warped and cracking door on the fourth floor.

“That’s okay, I think I can find my way back to the apartment,” she said, not wanting to be an inconvenience. “It’s not far.”

“We could get something to eat…” he insisted, looking for any excuse to spend more time with the only person in the history of Yesterwary who had ever made him wish he could laugh.

The corners of Demi’s eyes wrinkled as she tried to smile. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“No,” he said quickly and surely. “I just thought you might be hungry after your shift, and I know I’ll be hungry, so if we’re both going to be hungry it would make sense for us to eat together.”

“Jesus Christ, calm down,” she said. “I’ll go to dinner with you.”

Bastian felt a twitch in the apples of his cheeks, and he could almost sense his teeth begging to be seen between his lips. He chalked it up to nerves.

“I… will… see you later, then,” he said, slowly backing away before finally turning to tend to his guidely-duties.

Demi took a deep breath and pushed open the door to her new job. Children sat at desks as old as time, faces blank as they doodled with plain pencils. Pairs of young eyes followed her as she nervously made her way into the room. No one had ever looked so incredibly bored as these children, and she couldn’t decide if it would have been worse to grow up in Yesterwary than to find yourself there later in life. After all, you’d never really know what you were missing out on if you didn’t have anything with which to compare it.

“Hello,” Demi said with a small voice. “I’m—” She cleared her throat, trying to seem more like an adult than she felt. “I’m Demi Harper. I’ll be… helping to take care of you?” She didn’t really know what her duties were, but it seemed like a good enough introduction.

“Hello, Miss Harper,” the children said in eerie, droning unison, before looking back to their drawings.

She sighed and looked to the back of the room, where a woman older than herself was barely aware of her presence. A few short tugs at the bottom of her dress pulled her gaze downward to find a young boy with bright, coppery eyes and cropped blonde hair looking up at her.

“Hi, there,” Demi said, doing her best to sound as if children didn’t make her want to run away screaming. “What’s your name?”

“Michael,” the boy squeaked, handing her a drawing of… well, it wasn’t really a drawing of anything, as far as Demi could tell, but she pretended to admire it anyway.

“This is lovely, Michael,” she said. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the woman at the back look up and shake her head in annoyance. God forbid someone humor a child.

“May I have a sandwich?” he asked with exceptionally sad eyes.

“Uh… sure,” she said, glancing around the room. There were only desks and beds. “Where might one find sandwich-like materials?”

Michael took Demi’s hand and used all of his strength, which was very little, to drag her from the room. He led her toward the end of the hall, to a kitchen nearly as small and depressing as the one in her apartment. He hoisted himself up onto one of the rickety wooden stools that sat next to the stained countertop, and stared expectantly.

Michael yawned in his seat as the floor began to shake beneath them, glasses and cutlery clinking against each other in the cupboards and drawers as billows of dust floated down from the ceiling. Demi desperately clung to the countertop.

“Whatthehellwasthat?” she whispered, once the tremor had finally ceased.

“We just got a new floor,” Michael said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“What do you mean?”

“More kids must have showed up. We didn’t have enough room, so the building made more.”

“The building… made more… room. A whole new floor.” Demi said, thinking if she heard the words from her own mouth she might be able to better comprehend them. “Nope. I’m not even going to try to deal with that one, right now.”

She held her breath as she peeked inside the rusted refrigerator, and was relieved to find that it was not empty, which she’d almost been expecting it to be. After some searching and digging, she finally happened upon a package of deli meat that showed no signs of mold, and sat it on the counter.

“Bread?” she asked, glancing at the young boy.

“Above the fridge,” he said, pointing to one of the few cupboards in the room.

Demi stood on tip-toe to reach the door, and yanked a bag of stale bread from the cupboard, then grabbed a plate from beside the sink.

“Crust or no crust?” she asked, laying the slices out across the plate. The boy stared at her with furrowed brows, completely befuddled by her question.

“You can make it without crust?” he asked, head tilted to the side.

Demi gaped at him a moment, then started searching drawers for a knife. After finding not a single sharp utensil within the kitchen she resorted to peeling the crust off by hand, and passed the sandwich to the boy. Michael eyed it warily, then took a hesitant bite. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he looked up.

“This is the best sandwich I’ve ever had,” he said through a mouthful of food, flecks of bread spraying past his lips.

“That seems like a bit of an exaggeration,” Demi winked, “but my sister liked them better without the crust, too.”

Michael shook his head and took another bite before he’d even swallowed the first. He was beginning to resemble a very blonde chipmunk preparing for the winter. “Really,” he mumbled, “it’s the best sandwich ever. It tastes!”

“Of course it tastes,” she said, making a sandwich for herself.

“But…”

“What are you doing?” Moira called from doorway, voice thick with disapproving astonishment.

“Oh, Michael was hungry, so—” Demi began.

“Meals are at eight a.m., noon, and six p.m.,” she huffed, entire body tottering as she hurried to the counter. “And the daytime staff are not permitted in the kitchen.”

“I didn’t know,” Demi said, finding it very difficult not to roll her eyes.

“Yes, well… Young Mr. Everly, here, knows,” she said, glaring down at the boy. “I’m very disappointed in you, Michael.”

“Sorry, Ms. Moira,” Michael said, hanging his head as he lowered himself from the stool.

“He was hungry,” Demi said testily, weaving her way around the counter to follow Michael, and shoving her uneaten sandwich into the batty, old woman’s hands. “It’s just a sandwich.”

“Miss Harper,” Moira said, just as Demi and Michael reached the door, “I’m sure you’re aware that you don’t get a second chance for job placement. If you don’t do well, here, you’ll be left with no other option than non-conformism.”

Demi stopped in her tracks and looked down at Michael’s worried, little face. “No, I wasn’t aware.”

“Perhaps you’ll keep that in mind when you test our rules.” Moira’s voice trickled with soggy triumph, as if Demi were a bull whose horns she’d managed to tightly grasp.

“Perhaps,” Demi said, not looking back as she and Michael carried on. “I guess we’ll see.”

“You shouldn’t upset Ms. Moira,” Michael squeaked, retrieving the remains of the sandwich he’d snuck into his pocket. “She can be a real bitch.”

Demi snorted in surprise. “Where’d you learn that word?”

“I’m eight,” he said matter-of-factly, as if his age were enough of an answer.

Demi glanced down at him, as he ate with gusto. Something about the kid reminded her of Margo. His blatant disregard for rules, perhaps. His familiar eyes, maybe? His fondness of sandwiches, even. Whatever it was, it didn’t take long for her to decide that he’d be the first human-like thing under the age of sixteen whose company she didn’t completely despise being in.

“Did you grow up, here?” Demi asked, careful not to cut herself on the rusted chain as she pushed Michael on the swing.

“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said, jutting out his feet to swing higher.

She shuddered. “Call me Demi. What do you think of this place?”

“It’s okay, I guess,” Michael shrugged. “I like when it stops raining.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” By this point, she was simply running through the questions to which she’d gotten responses when she was babysitting.

Michael turned his head as he whooshed back through the air toward her. His feet skidded across the damp gravel, grinding himself to a stop as he stared at her in confusion. “Me, I suppose.”

“No,” she said, “I mean, what kind of job do you want?”

Michael gave her the look most people give when someone is trying to explain The Copenhagen Interpretation. Because, generally, there is a universal facial expression displayed when someone tries to tell you that your sofa behaves differently when you’re not around to keep an eye on it.

“Isn’t there anything you’d like to do?” she questioned.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I won’t get to decide what I do,” Michael said, as if Demi were a fool for even proposing such an idea.

Demi felt a pang in her chest, even though there was no heart left there to break. She realized that, even though the people who’d spent their entire lives in Yesterwary wouldn’t have anything better with which to compare it, they’d never get to experience all of the wonderful things in life; dreams, and goals, and love. Even if the love wasn’t returned, even if it was the reason she’d found herself in this damned place, she would much rather have felt it than never have known it at all.

“Do you want to hear a story?” Demi asked, cautiously situating herself on the swing next to Michael.

“You mean like the history of Yesterwary? I already know it,” he said.

“No, not like that at all.”

Michael looked at her with even more confusion. “There are other stories?”

“Of course there are,” Demi cried, repeating the words of advice Margo had once given her during an exceptionally frustrating bout of writer’s block. “There are more stories than you could ever imagine. There are so many stories, the entire universe couldn’t even hold them all.”

“That’s impossible,” he said in his young, knowing voice.

“Nothing is impossible,” she said in a serious tone. “Anything can happen in a story.”

Michael’s eyes widened as he inspected her face, trying to figure out if she was pulling a prank on him, as so many of the kids in the orphanage often did.

“Anything?” he whispered.

“Anything.”