Rokia/Sara
Sara is good at finding hiding spots. For stolen pre-dawn meetings, but even more for folded and refolded scraps of whatever paper she can find: the backs of mis-filled loading forms, torn paper from sugar sacks, out-of-date crew schedules. Her pinched handwriting fills every inch, and then Sara folds the thing up small, tucked in on itself into a tiny little package and jams it in broken window ledges, under loose bricks, behind peeling siding.
Matt tells Rokia where to go, skeptical about the secrecy as always, laughing it off as one of Sara’s games. And today it’s an old spot, an apartment building near the El with peeling paint and conveniently rotten mortar.
It’s a longer note today, must’ve been a boring run for Sara to have this much time. Rokia finally gets a chance to read it after the girls are in bed, and she spreads the paper on the table and leans close.
Inhales, first, the smell of diesel smoke and grease and a hint of manure and sweat, then takes in the note, stories about a fuel spill in Nine that sounds too convenient to be accidental, jokes about finding a cowboy boyfriend in Ten or a sweet sugar-mama in Eleven, hints and clues hidden everywhere and Rokia will spend the rest of the week turning everything over in her head to find the hidden story Sara’s not quite telling.
But for now it’s late, and she’s tired, so she climbs the stairs to her room. Opens the chest against the wall and sets the note inside with the others. Washes her face, brushes her teeth, climbs into bed alone and wishes that just for once she didn’t have to.