Where Roam went, Sniff went, so Sniff was staying with Shirleen too.

When Roam was fit enough to take to the streets again, Shirleen told both him and Sniff they were welcome to stay as long as they liked.

They told me since Shirleen lived in “one phat crib” they decided to stay awhile even if staying with her had rules.

It was a long time later that I realized that during all of Roam and Sniff’s visits they never cursed.

Not once.

* * * * *

By the way, Roam and I never talked about it, him trying to save my life and me taking two bullets to save his.

However once, while I was still in the hospital, I caught him looking at me funny. I grabbed his hand and mine went tight.

So did his.

For a second.

Then he pulled away.

With a fifteen year old runaway that was all that needed to be said and it was the best he would allow me to give him and it was the best I was going to get.

I was happy with that.

* * * * *

Needless to say I wasn’t pregnant. I’d asked a nurse in a quiet moment and she told me there was bleeding, what kind of bleeding she couldn’t say.

After I got out of the hospital, my periods resumed as normal and I went right on the pill.

My body, the nurse told me, had been through too much trauma not to miscarry.

Whether I had been or hadn’t been, I’d never know.

* * * * *

Third, about four days out of ICU, the girl gang showed up one afternoon with a juicy piece of gossip.

Indy, Ally, Jet, Roxie and Daisy all waltzed in grinning like fools. They hung around my bed as Indy told me that Lee had fired Dawn.

I didn’t gasp because that was a luxury I didn’t have at the time (it hurt like a bitch, so did laughing, moving and breathing). So I just widened my eyes and my mouth dropped open.

“Apparently,” Indy said, loving every minute of this, “Mace and Monty were in the surveillance room and for shits and giggles they flipped on the sound and visual to the reception area. Dawn was on some call to a girlfriend and she was talking about you. I don’t know what she said but Mace and Monty went ballistic. They called Lee and Lee was with Luke.”

Daisy let out a tinkly laugh and rubbed her hands together and I knew that we were getting to a good part.

“Lee and Luke went directly to the offices,” Indy continued, “Lee walked right in and told her to pack up her desk; she was fired.”

“Luke escorted her out of the building,” Roxie threw in, her eyes alight.

“They taped the whole thing,” Jet added.

“Brody even cut it into a music video with some old footage of her scowling and glaring and making catty phone calls. He gave it a soundtrack ‘The Bitch is Back’. It’s f**kin’ righteous! I can’t wait for you to see it,” Ally said, grinning like a loon.

“Yeah, we all went down there and watched it a billion times. Dawn was totally pissed when Lee fired her. It was great!” Indy finished.

Considering the fact that I’d had a near-death experience, I knew I should be a better person, live my life doing good deeds and not be bitchy, even when it was being bitchy about someone who was a bitch. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help being pleased that Dawn had been fired. Especially since everyone seemed so happy about it.

And of course the stupid bitch was talking about me.

* * * * *

Fourth, Luke came to visit me.

I was getting a lot of visitors. The girl gang; Tex and Nancy; Tod and Stevie; Duke and Dolores; Shirleen; Heavy and Zip. May came by all the time, full of stories from the Shelter (and carrying with her purloined pudding cups). Frank slunk in, talked to me for five minutes and slunk out, clearly uncomfortable with sunlight shining on him even through a window. A bunch of my kids came and the Nightingale Men came too, Mace, Ike, Bobby and Monty. Then, of course, there was Nick and Vance who spent the evenings with me mostly kicked back and boring me to death by watching endless football games, talking about who would win the Heisman Trophy and shit like that, luckily I was drugged out most of the time and slept a lot.

It was awhile before Luke came.

I was sleeping and when I woke up I saw him sitting in a chair pulled up to the bed, his fingers linked and resting on the side of the bed, he was bent forward, his forehead resting on his hands.

I was a little stunned at his posture. It was seriously un-Super-Dude-like.

“Hey,” I said and his head snapped up and he looked at me.

This stunned me too because Luke was not the kind of guy you could take by surprise and he was so lost in thought, I’d done that.

“Hey,” he said, face serious, mouth tight. He sat back and put his forearms to his knees.

“You okay?” I asked.

He stared at me and said, “I’ll be okay when I can close my eyes at night and not see you lyin’ on the floor among a mess of dead bodies and blood.”

Yikes.

Not, I feared, a visual that led to sweet dreams.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered and wished there was something better to say.

There wasn’t.

He kept staring at me but didn’t say anything. Then with a voice low and quiet, he said, “You killed a man.”

I nodded.

Shard was dead. I shot him in the head. The police waited until I was out of ICU and with Vance standing next to me holding my hand, I’d made my statement. Roam and Sniff had made theirs too. The police were not going to press charges as obviously I’d done it in self-defense. Shard had killed Cordova, shot me and Roam. They were more than happy to close the case on him.

For my part, I was trying not to think about it.

“You gonna be able to live with that?” Luke asked.

I nodded again. “I don’t have much choice.”

Luke kept staring at me so I kept talking.

“It’s the difference between him being here and Roam and me being here. I picked Roam and me. I think that was the right decision.”

“It was. It’s still gonna f**k with your head,” Luke told me.

I had no doubt he was right.

“It starts f**kin’ with your head, you talk to Vance,” Luke went on. “You can’t get to Vance then me, Lee, Monty, Mace, Ike. Any of us’ll listen and we’ll know where your head will be at.”

It was my turn to stare at him. If I was reading his underlying message, he was telling me they all had killed someone.

“Now I’m really one of the boys,” I said softly, testing out my theory.

“Welcome to the club,” he affirmed my guess and said this in jest but he wasn’t amused and neither of us laughed.