How to Be a Guardian Angel - Chapter 1

Here's the start of How to Be a Guardian Angel, a rework of Guardian Angel and specifically started for the purpose of fulfilling a literary based scholarship. I'm sure this was by far no winner -- especially since I never did hear back at all -- but as this is my writing blog I'll at least share that I'm still writing. (On a side note, it was for the L Ron Hubbard Scientology scholarship, and this is a piece with a lot of Christian symbols in it.)

Chapter One

“What the hell, Krista?”

The fifteen year old street urchin glared at me through his chipped sunglasses and the scarf that covered almost the remainder of his dirty face.

“What did I do now?” I asked, though I already knew. The measly amount of money that I’d been able to get for playing on the street today wasn’t much – but with the weather the way it was today, I didn’t see why it was a shocker. “Look, Dev,” I sighed. “I’ve managed to get a lot for what I do over the past couple of weeks. It’s just a bad day. Don’t spoil what’s left of my mood.”

Devyn Hartfield didn’t look very consoled, but he said nothing more as I placed the remainder of his allowance in his pocket carefully, before watching him walk off. I didn’t blame him for being miffed – I was too. I also accepted my own situation. At the age of sixteen, my parents had emancipated me. The only things I’d managed to take were my guitar, and a backpack full of things that I treasured. The clothes on my back came from the halfway home – the only place that I’d found that would take my shunned now-seventeen-year-old ass. Hefting the battered but still sturdy guitar case over my shoulder once with these thoughts in mind, and looking into my well loved “New York,” sweatshirt to see what little extra money I’d made today, I sighed at the prospect of living this way forever.

I imagine that things could be much worse than what they were for me right now, however. I could be like Dev, who’d been hiding from the foster care societies for almost two years. He was a pickpocket, but for three months now I’d been giving him money from what I made on the street fairly, to keep him from stealing. In the middle of a city like New York, getting caught by a cop wouldn’t be good for him. Or worse, he could steal from the wrong person, and who knew what would happen. I idly fingered the thin chain that bore a gold cross around my neck, the next most valuable thing next to my guitar, and chuckled at the thought that the cross might also have influenced my decision to help the poor boy. Tucking it into my sweatshirt, I made it to the doors of the halfway home.

Most people who resided within were recovering addicts of some kind or another, staying here until they knew they had a stable job and support themselves long enough to be on their own again. A few of the people, however, didn’t have much hope at all. They got in trouble with the police and the house management, and fought a lot with other people in the building. Often, I thought, they themselves even knew it. From where I stood outside of the withering building, I could actually hear some of them fighting. When I heard the sirens coming from one of the streets, I knew that what was inside wasn’t going to be friendly. Deciding to get inside and just get to sleep before I became embroiled in anything by accident, I slipped inside the front doors and past slower-moving bodies. Nobody looked at me twice when I made my way up the stairs, onto the floor free of fighters and spectators, and into the room I shared with my roommate – Cash.

When I saw that he wasn’t there, I guessed he must have been helping break up the fight up on the next floor. A pair of pajamas, freshly cleaned, lay on my bed. I thanked God then, for charities, and climbed into them gratefully. I didn’t need a shower yet – I’d taken one this morning before everyone else woke up. Nothing had gotten on me since, so why bother?

I closed the curtains on the bright outer-city lights and the cop car’s flashers, and then slumped onto my double bed that sat parallel to Cash’s. There was no sense in waiting for him to get back, so closing my eyes and grabbing my old teddy bear, I fell asleep with my knife and money under my pillow.