Chapter 1
"You filled the candy."
"Yes."
"And the coolers?"
"Yes."
"Those kids ate me out of house last week. If they eat me out of home, you're fixing it."
"Jeez. Everything's stocked! Candy? Check! Chips? Soda, ice cream? All checks!"
"Then you can scram."
"Thank you."
Jinx turned to head out the back, mumbling something about credit where its due. Though she had gotten better over the months at thoroughly stocking the small corner store, Sevika still couldn't help but see around her tenant's growing work ethic. There was something wrong with that girl, but Sevika couldn't quite put her hand on what.
Jinx was a different kid since she first started occupying the small lofted apartment above Sevika's garage. Though she still wore that ratty burgundy hoodie, it was cleaner. Jinx was cleaner. Her hands and clothes didn't have that persistent grime and dirt on them, she smelled better, and she wasn't in the Last Drop every few days penny-pinching for a sandwich. Sevika always wondered why Jinx, at a very barely eighteen, was sleeping lord knows where with only a backpack of a change of clothes, a stuffed rabbit, and a high school diploma.
"You looking to rent a room kid? 'Cause I'm looking to rent one."
"Don't think I can afford a room," Jinx replied, kicking out both dirty jean legs to demonstrate how obvious that was.
"Turns out I'm also hiring, a little short handed," Sevika had said gesturing with the absenteeism that was now her left arm. "How about you stock the Drop every other day. That's your rent. I'll pay you seventy five dollars a week on top of that."
That was more or less how that conversation went. Jinx didn't accept initially, but after a week of penny-pinching sandwiches, she showed up a week after that a little beat up and accepted with the reluctance of someone wary of anything too good to be true. It wasn't much, what Sevika could pay her, but she knew she needed to get a roof over that kid's head. The loft above the garage wasn't anything to gawk at: one room, bathroom, and a conjoined kitchen and living room area. Much better and much safer for Jinx than sleeping on the streets.
Jinx didn't talk much. At first. She just stocked the Drop every other day, disappeared for a few hours, then came back and closed herself up in the loft with her sketchbook before falling asleep on the old twin bed she'd pulled into the living room. It was two weeks of this before Sevika got frustrated and gave the kid an old CRT television and dvd player out of the garage and took her to the thrift store to get some clothes and some movies. Sevika may have paid for most of the few things Jinx was comfortable with getting. Comfortable. Like there was no point in amassing many material possesions.
"Just cartoons?"
"So?" Jinx was defensive at best and hostile at worst.
"If that's your taste, then you missed a classic," Sevika had said before she plucked another movie from the bin.
Jinx didn't sleep in the small bedroom in the loft. She didn't know what the kid used it for, and she always had the door closed whenever Sevika brought her a dinner plate on the nights that she cooked. Her refrigerator was bare bones too. Sevika had gathered that Jinx probably didn't know how to cook from the lack of any ingredient in her kitchen and the few cans of soup she kept. This realization was why Sevika made a point to bring her a plate whenever she made a meal. It was also a reason why she made a point to try and cook more often than she usually did.
Jinx opened up to Sevika over time, in a non-commital way. The girl had a mouth that wouldn't quit once it started. She would ask Sevika if she needed any more help around the store or with anything in her house or on the property, and then proceeded to talk a nautical league a minute whenever she was around helping. Jinx would talk about the new movie she had watched, or vaguely about some drawing she was working on in her sketchbook, and rarely, about some odd memory she had of her and her sister. She asked Jinx about her sister one time, and where she was.
"I don't know," Jinx had said, and after that Sevika had never witnessed a silence so deafening that it smothered the room with its presence.
Yeah, there was something wrong with that girl.
Sevika, late one night, had decided to sit on her porch and smoke a cigar when she caught Jinx walking home. A cold stone had settled in her gut at the sight of the kid, head hung under her drawn burgundy hood and carrying a bag from the nearest 24 hour pharmacy.
"Come here, kid. New movie?"
Sevika tucked a finger in the bag when Jinx was close enough and pulled it open a little to see what was inside.
"I wanted to put a curtain up," Jinx had said.
Sevika gently took the bag with the rope in it from Jinx and told her, "I've got a spare set of curtains and a rod. I'll help you put them up tomorrow."
"Okay," Jinx had said.
"Let me know if you need anything else. I've got plenty of stuff around the garage."
"Okay," Jinx had said again before leaving the porch for the loft.
Sevika made a point to ask the kid about her day as more often after that, and it seemed to make a world of difference.
Ekko, one of her afternoon cashiers, was still wary of her. Sevika noticed they didn't seem to talk much whenever they happened to work together.
"She seems mad all the time," Ekko had said when Sevika asked him how Jinx was doing at the store. "People kind of avoid her, with her headphones in all the time."
Sevika scrapped the idea of eventually training her on register.
The Last Drop was right on the county line in an area folks like to call The Lanes. It was both one of the nicest parts of Zaun County and one of the worst parts of Piltover City. The Pilt ran right through it, but was burdened by the same division. Piltover end had the marina, and Zaun end had the oil refineries. Jinx's diploma was from a school in Piltover, but she seemed to know her way around The Lanes a little too well to have grown up in the city. Sevika figured that might explain a bit of why an officer from PCPD came looking for Jinx the week before she moved above her garage.
"How can I help you, Officer?"
"Kiramman," the woman offered. "I was wondering if you've seen this girl. With the blue hair."
Officer Kiramman held up a photo of who'd Sevika come to know as Jinx sitting beside a woman in military fatigues.
"I can't say she's one of mine," Sevika lied by omission. She wasn't one of the Drop's regulars. If anything, she was an irregular customer. Sevika took the photo and examined it closer. "The kid missing?"
"Not.. missing," Officer Kiramman had said.
"She in some sort of trouble?"
"No. She was mugged last week and had her phone stolen," Officer Kiramman provided. "I'm trying to reach out to her on behalf of her sister."
"I'll keep an eye out, let her know her sister's looking for her. You got a card?"
Sevika ended up taking Officer, rather Detective Kiramman's card, but she never did tell Jinx she came around looking for her. The kid was eighteen, off the streets, and Sevika figured if she wanted to get in touch with her sister, she would know exactly how to. Jinx's entire situation didn't add up to Sevika. From what she could tell, Jinx had been homeless for months, well before she turned eighteen, and now a sister who had a means to reach her comes looking for her. It wasn't Sevika's circus, therefore this wasn't her monkey to deal with. So she lied to a police officer. She was Zaun born and bred. Wouldn't be the first time.
So, the months played out pretty much the same since Jinx started living above her garage. She came in every other day at noon and stocked until four, then went about her business. For all Sevika knew Jinx kept to herself, entertained herself, and kept herself upright without any issue. Officer Kiramman never came back around after that, but Sevika kept an eye out for any tinted cars that seemed from across the river.
Sevika shivered a bit as she exhaled the cigar smoke. Not really like her to get lost in thought. Fall was turning into winter quick, which more than likely meant early snow that stayed on the ground for much longer. She tucked into the couch and zipped her fleece jacket up more. And like the clockwork of a homemade timepiece only keen to its own hour, that ratty burgundy hoodie caught the corner of her eye as it started across the yard.
"Kid. Come here."
"I didn't do nothing," Jinx heaved dramatically. "Just, minding my own! Unlike someone."
"Stop being a brat." Sevika narrowed her eyes at her. "Get a winter coat, kid. Gonna start getting in the forties soon with the cold coming off the river."
"I've got gloves and a hat," Jinx said, pointing to her knit cap and waving her fingers in her fingerless gloves.
"Not gonna do you much good in the next few weeks," Sevika said before exhaling again. "Look, kid. Come sit."
Jinx eyed her warily before she came and sat on the porch steps.
"I get your trying to strike out on your own, be a grown up," Sevika started. "But part of growing up is taking care of yourself."
"Been doing pretty good so far. Hardly need a lecture about it."
"Not trying to make it one," Sevika said. "Look, I know you got a sister out there, but you're here living over my garage and making a deal out of getting a coat. If you've got yourself squared away, why not just get the coat?"
Jinx was quiet for a long while. Long to the point where Sevika thought she might just get up and go about what she was doing without saying anything else about it.
"..I don't like having a bunch of stuff."
"Why not?"
"Never got to hang onto it that long."
"Well," Sevika said lowly, "now you've got a place to put it."
"I guess," Jinx said.
"You've got a place to put it, kid," Sevika told her again. "You hang a coat up in that closet and it'll be there, for however long you want it to be there. Okay?"
"Okay."
The very next evening Sevika caught sight of Jinx stocking the cooler in a purple down jacket.