Runaway Model (2 page)

***

T
here was a little old lady on his block who liked to see his fresh young face. She'd call him in for tea and ask him to help her change a light bulb or clear a stopped-up sink. She tipped well. Better, she left out small items that seemed to beg Kyle to put them in his pocket.

Maybe she left them out for him on purpose—little bribes to keep him coming back. Maybe she was just forgetful.

Kyle never knew. He did know she'd never tell. He was learning what he could get away with.

"I haven't seen my son in ten years."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Shane." He wondered how old her son was. She could be anywhere from sixty to ninety for all he knew. The son might be fifty himself.

"Your eyes are very like."

People always commented on his eyes. To Kyle, they were just brown eyes like everyone else's. But the shape of them, the way the light danced in them, seemed to draw people.

***

S
toney's drummer found the edited YouTube clips and posted the link to Twitter. Kyle's Tumblr blog took off. Other Stoney Rockland bloggers began to reblog his posts. Some of them began to exchange private messages with him.

He didn't want to say he was fourteen. You could be any age on the internet.

He said he was eighteen.

He said he'd gotten backstage. "I didn't meet Stoney, but I was there."

If anyone noticed the video had been filmed from the barrier and not from backstage, they were too polite to say so.

Once Kyle's crush stopped him in the hall. "Cool video, mate."

Kyle wasn't shy but he felt shy then. Harry had never spoken to him before.

"Yeah. Thanks."

"You gonna make any more?"

"The tour for this album's over. I have to wait for the next."

"Yeah."

Harry touched Kyle's shoulder and then went on his way. He wanted to touch someone who had actually seen Stoney with his own eyes. Maybe he believed he could touch the Stoney Rockland magic by touching Kyle.

Maybe he could.

Maybe magic is contagious.

Kyle no longer went to the spot behind the library. He'd buy a small Coke and work in McDonald's, loitering for hours in a back corner with good access to the wireless. No pigeons or dog-walkers in here, but there was plenty of friendly noise. Sometimes kids from his school came in little groups. The boys mostly ignored him, but the girls often came and sat with him.

They thought he was cool. Birds loved music.

It was a fine refuge for three or four days. Maybe even for a week or two.

Then a shadow fell on his table.

"Kyle. Not hiding, are we?"

"No, sir."

"You can't run away from your problems, lad. You need to face them head-on."

Something snapped. "I'm not running away from me problems, sir. I'm running away from you."

***

I
t was a terrible thing being fourteen. You had no power. Others told you what to do, where to go, what to read and think.

They even told you what to fucking eat.

"You're too thin, Kyle," his mum said. Nobody could say that about her. At forty-six, with a child moving into his mid-teens, she'd allowed herself to soften at the waist. But she hadn't completely surrendered to time. A few months back, she'd dyed her brown hair blonde. To Kyle, she still looked like a mum. But the older patrons of the local where she pulled ale liked her well enough.

"You're not smoking, are you?"

"No, mum."

"Eat your greens. You can't fill out if you don't get your vitamins."

Kyle pushed them around on his plate. They always said you should tell somebody. But what was there to tell? Kyle knew for a stone-cold fact Nigel was following him. But the man seemed to know exactly what he could get away with.

"Mum, if a teacher made me feel funny..."

"Made you feel funny how?"

"I go places. He always turns up."

"Did he touch you?"

Kyle would always wonder if he should have said yes.

Trouble was he already had a history. He knew he wasn't exactly famous for his honest character.

Two years ago he'd seen a gold bracelet in the shops. Eighteen-karat rose gold. The slight blush in the metal would look perfect against the ivory of Kyle's inner arm.

But he was only twelve. It would be a thousand years before he could earn the money for something like that. He'd been in and out of the shop ever since, only half-aware of the skeptical eye of the woman behind the counter.

He couldn't say why he was so drawn to that particular bit of bling. He even dreamed of wearing it. The weight of the gold, how heavy it would feel on the wrist. So many things in dreams are flimsy. Not that. It felt more real than reality.

One day there was another customer at the counter handling his bracelet, along with several other gold items. A stylish man of about thirty or so, with leather boots that cost more than the entire wardrobe of everyone else in the shop combined. He inspected the bracelet carelessly, as if it were no more beautiful than any of a dozen other pieces he was considering.

Kyle loitered a little too close, a nuisance of a baby brother.

When the man had made his selection, and the clerk had put the other items back in the glass case, the gold bracelet was deep in Kyle's pocket. He got only two steps down the road. He figured out later they'd let him get that far—better evidence that he'd deliberately stolen the piece.

He'd been fighting to regain his mum's trust ever since.

Maybe he should have told the easy lie. Maybe it would have changed everything.

Or maybe it would have just made Kyle the Klepto look like a liar as well as a thief.

In any case he never seriously considered it. He told the truth, a little ashamed of how weak it sounded said out loud.

"He doesn't touch me... it's just that he's... he's... he's just always there. It makes me feel like he's watching me."

"Love, you can't make that kind of accusation based on a feeling. Someone could have a feeling about you one day. Not for anything you did wrong. Just for you being... who you are."

For being gay, she meant.

She sounded so sensible. Kyle felt so silly.

Still.

He didn't miss his father. He'd forgotten his face. But suddenly he wished with all his Soul that he had a man to talk to.

"K
yle Marchane."

He jerked awake on hearing his name from the hated lips. The teacher was perched on the edge of his desk, a faux-casual pose that endeared him to the students. Some students. The girl students.

"Yes, sir."

"Can you come up to the blackboard and answer the question?"

"No, sir."

"What?" Some of the girls giggled. "Do you mind telling us why not?"

"I didn't hear the question, sir."

"You will stay after class, Kyle."

"Yes, sir."

But when the bell rang, Kyle trooped out with all the rest.

***

"I
've heard from school. You've been skipping classes." Kyle's mother sounded tired.

"I'm going to be a music blogger. School is a waste of me time."

"Kyle, love, we all have to do things we don't want to do to get a living. You can be a music blogger in your spare time, but you'll need a trade that earns money."

How did they get on this subject again?

"Yes, mum."

***

W
hen his knees were acting up, old man Nielsen sometimes paid Kyle to walk his dogs. The thirteen-year-old Alsatian had a trick hip, but the four-year-old black Lab kept Kyle hopping.

"If something happens to me, lad, you be sure and take care of me dogs," the old man would say as he pressed several pound coins into Kyle's hand.

Their landlord wouldn't tolerate one dog on the property, much less two. Kyle had no idea how he could keep that promise. But he nodded.

If you wanted to make people happy, you had to say what they wanted to hear.

One evening when he stopped at Mr. Nielsen's, Kyle noticed a fake Venetian glass paperweight with a swirl of rainbow colors inside of it. It held down a fifty-pound note.

Kyle didn't even think about it. His fingers seemed to move of their own accord.

The note disappeared into Kyle's jeans.

If the old man noticed, he never breathed a word.

If they can afford to forget about that much money, they must not need it. If they're willing to pay to look at me pretty face, I might as well take it.

***

K
yle went to his maths class late and left early. Sometimes he didn't go at all. He wandered the halls.

Sometimes he found himself in an empty classroom where he could work on his blog or check in with the other fans. Sometimes he actually did his homework.

He wanted to have a future—and not as a semi-pro pickpocket. Of course he did.

Maybe he could sing. Not as good as Stoney, but no one was as good as Stoney. But Kyle could certainly carry a tune and look well on stage.

Or maybe he could be a model. He photographed well. Skinny boys with big eyes always did.

Maybe he didn't need school at all.

Roman Nigel made a coin appear from Kyle's right ear. Well, it wasn't illegal to perform a magic trick, was it? But Kyle still jerked as if he'd been slapped.

"What are you so afraid of, Kyle? You needn't run away from me. I care about you."

"I don't care about you so fuck right off."

"You don't have to make things so hard for yourself. You're imagining things that aren't true. And the only person you're hurting is yourself."

If they weren't true, if they were imagined, why was Nigel standing so close? Why were his big hands—both of them now—on Kyle's thin shoulders?

"Don't touch me. You don't have the fucking right."

He ran. Again he ran. This time he didn't return to school for three days.

***

N
igel didn't report him.
Didn't want to draw the attention, innit?
Instead it was another teacher who filed the complaint.

"Where have you been, Kyle?" The head was looking at Kyle's attendance record, and he wasn't best-pleased by what he saw.

A shrug.

"You are required to attend school until age sixteen. Until then, you will be respectful to your teachers, or you will land in a situation much less pleasant than this one."

Another shrug.

"Is there a problem at home?"

"No, sir."

"Here then. Is there a problem with school? If you're being bullied, we will do something about it. This school will no longer tolerate harassment of its..." The head hesitated as he struggled for a tactful euphemism. "We don't tolerate harassment of smaller boys. We don't tolerate hazing. The bad old days are gone."

"No one hazes me, sir."

"We have a therapist you can talk to."

By "can" the head meant "must."

Kyle had never really understood what therapists did, other than get a living off a kid's bad luck. He'd had to see one of them after he got caught stealing. She'd said a lot about understanding himself. About how angry he was at not having a father. About how stealing was a way to even the score.

Words. He understood one thing. The price of getting caught was being forced to waste a lot of time.

He was twelve. Then thirteen. He surrendered enough of his free hours to being talked at and then he was free.

He'd learned his lesson. He'd be more careful next time.

Don't steal from just anyone.

Steal from somebody on your side. Somebody who has something to lose if you get caught and taken away.

The school's therapist didn't seem much different. She was middle-aged and middle-weight, with hair the color of a mouse. Hadn't she heard of Miss Clairol?

"Everything you say here is confidential. You can be completely open with me."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Please, Kyle. Don't call me ma'am. Call me Tessa."

Oh. One of those.

"Yes, ma'am."

***

A
t last school was out. Summer. Kyle was free. But he couldn't help looking over his shoulder.

He couldn't shake the sensation of being followed.

Kyle liked to run sometimes in the cool of the evening. He didn't go back to the village park. There were a dozen small towns within running distance of Vixensfox. He programmed their names into a randomizing app. On any given day, he'd run to whichever name came up and then back home again.

But Roman Nigel somehow found him anyway. Kyle had paused at a leafy bit of deer track to rehydrate. Suddenly Nigel was standing there, as if he'd materialized from the overgrown bushes that screened the two of them from the road.

"There's been some misunderstanding."

Oh, there was no fucking misunderstanding. He must have been following Kyle. There was no other explanation, since Kyle himself hadn't known he'd come this way until forty-five minutes before.

"What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

"I don't want to fucking talk to you."

Kyle was getting taller every day. He could go the distance now, but he still had it in him to be a sprinter.

His leggy gallop left his erstwhile teacher far behind.

***

H
e was safe around other adults. Kyle spent more time visiting Mrs. Shane, Mr. Nielsen, and all the rest. They doted on him. Showered him with tips and treats. Mrs. Shane baked English tea biscuits almost every time she knew Kyle was coming over.

His rose-petal skin and huge brown eyes made him look so lovable.

But he didn't feel very lovable. Often he felt hot and sticky inside, as if he were swimming in shame. He kept promising himself he'd never steal again. One thing to steal money. He might be in need of money. But why take rubbish?

There was Mr. Baron, for example. The red-nosed pensioner had nothing of real value, but he had entire cupboards of cheap wine. Stockpiling for the zombie apocalypse, Kyle supposed.

One of the bottles found its way home, although Kyle already knew he'd never open it.

Kyle had taste. He wasn't going to drink a four pound bottle of cat piss.