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The floor of the youth shelter was always dirty. It was one of the first things Harry noticed about the place on her return. The first time she set foot into Regina’s Flock, she had thought it would be the last, and she hadn’t paid much attention to the state of the place. Now she wondered how many people in her county did the same thing with their young, homeless population, and felt a gush of shame well up from her chest to her head. She held a foam cup in one hand and gripped a cigarette pack in her pocket with the other. Closing her eyes against the pathetic sight, she blew at the open notch in the cup's lid and hot steam poured out.
"A little early for you, Detective?"
Harry opened her eyes and saw Sanura Johnson. Her slacks clung to her, tailored well in a deep purple that brought out the bronzed gleam of her dark skin and went well with her sleeveless, mottled cream silk singlet. Her eyes shone as her mouth curved into a wide grin. She gave Harry a once-over before she walked over and joined her at the door.
"You can call me Harry."
The counselor's smile widened. "But I like 'Detective' so much more. All that power and virility wrapped up in three syllables... Mmm."
Harry stopped fiddling with her cigarettes, took a drink of her coffee, and forced her eyes wander the sparse room. Sanura Johnson was attractive, and Harry was more than interested, but she needed something that another random bedmate couldn't give her. She couldn’t engage.
"Well, as of December, getting that title back is still a matter of debate," she told the counselor, then cleared her throat. "So, what can I do to start getting this fundraiser together? I know you all only have a month or so. Surely things already need to be done."
Sanura's lips came together in a tense pucker for a moment, then her face went smooth again. "Of course. As I hope David already told you, the fundraiser is going to be based on the artwork, music, and writing of the youth who make this place home or use its services. It’s a lot of work. The first step is getting enough of the youth here to volunteer to make and sell their work to the donors who wish to see them off the streets."
"Is that hard to do?" Harry asked after a drink of her coffee.
The counselor shrugged one shoulder, and Harry couldn't help but watch the muscle ripple there. The woman was lithe, feminine, and had smooth, hard muscles that burned in Harry's mind. Harry turned her eyes, but she could still see that arm in her mind. She wondered whether the rest of Sanura Johnson was the same shade of dark, molten copper.
"It's harder than you might think, Detective." She glanced at Harry. "I mean, Harry."
Harry smiled. "And how do you normally get them to volunteer?"
Sanura leaned in close so that her breath slid across the skin of Harry's neck. "Now, where would be the fun in me telling you? That's something you have to figure out on your own." She pulled back with a seductive smile. "Good luck."
With a quick turn of her heel, the counselor strutted back across the room and through a hallway toward what Harry presumed was her office. Harry watched her all the way, the curve of her back sliding precariously from shirt to pants in an arc that could rival a theme park slide.
Harry sipped her coffee for another minute before she made her way over across the room to where most of the kids were crowded. The television set was old, and the game system was probably older, but it had two functioning controllers and a handful of games. Two of the older kids were playing a game Harry vaguely recognized from her own misspent youth.
"What game is that?" she asked one of the teenagers lingering at the back.
He sneered at her. "It doesn't have naked chicks, so I don't care," he said, and ambled away from her with another boy about the same age. A girl beside her stuck out her tongue in disgust.
"Ugh," the girl said. "Those guys are so nasty. They're always talking about porn. Like, who really watches that stuff, anyway? It's all fake, from the girls in it to the stories and the crazy way they talk. I mean, come on, who really says, 'I hear you need a good spanking, naughty girl'?"
Harry snickered along with a couple of other kids near the girl. The girl turned to Harry. "I'm Selena. This is Estelle, Carmen, and Dru."
The girls stood around her in a semi-circle, making what almost looked like a rainbow of skin tones from light to dark. Something familiar and bothersome tickled the back of Harry's mind, but she ignored it. Harry gave them each a nod.
"I'm Harry. I volunteered to help all of you plan out what you're going to be making for the fundraiser. You don't have a lot of time, so I figured you needed to get started pretty quickly."
The girl gave her a perturbed look and put a hand on her hip. "We're not doing a damn art project."
"Why not? It's to generate the money that keeps this place open." Harry could tell the girl wasn't convinced, and she was the leader of her little clique.
"Yeah, but why should we let them take the money? Isn't the point to get us on our feet so we don't have to live on the streets anymore? Or is it to keep this place in business?"
Harry dropped her head and laughed. She took a drink of her coffee, which was slowly cooling, and glanced back at the kids playing video games. Time to wait it out.
There were murmurs between the teens looking her way, then the leader, Selena, shushed them all. "Hey, white lady. Didn't your parents ever teach you it's rude to ignore people?"
Harry waited a beat before she glanced over at the group of girls. She took another sip of her coffee, then set hard eyes on Selena. She could feel her jaw tightening, but she kept her voice calm. "I don't really remember. My parents were both gone before my First Communion."
The small, sallow girl, Estelle, shook her bush of dark, wavy hair and whistled her appreciation of their shared experience. Dru, the lone black girl in a group of Latinas, leaned forward and whispered in Selena's ear, then pulled back and stared at Harry with confusion. Selena turned her head, and said, "It's a Catholic thing."
The girl sneered at Harry. "I was wondering why you were so white. You’re Irish. The whitest of the white feet that push us down."
Harry gave her an incredulous look and put her coffee down on a nearby table. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah," Dru answered. "You're practically clear."
Selena gave her a subtle shake of the head, but the taller girl stepped forward to look Harry in the face. Harry rubbed the back of her neck, willing the stress building there away, and tried to keep herself smiling. If she was smiling, she couldn't raise a hand to fight.
"I know what my skin looks like, Dru, but it isn’t my intention to hold anyone down."
"Bullshit," Dru said.
"I'm telling the truth. I don’t know what it’s like to be black, but I do know what it is to be a minority." She looked into Dru's eyes. The girl was as tall as her, though that wasn't saying much, and just as proud. "If you see some way I’m not checking my privilege, I’d love to hear about it, but I’m not actively or knowingly holding anyone down. I'm here to help."
Dru snorted as if she were dismissing Harry's words, but she could see something there that hadn't been there before: doubt. "Yeah, well, no one ever calls you names."
Harry laughed out loud, and Dru backed up a step. "Pig? Whitey? Cracker? Dyke? Queer? Any of those ring a bell?"
Selena grinned at her and pulled Dru back. "I think you've made your point, Officer."
"Harry."
"Harry," Selena repeated, then linked arms with another girl, who linked with the girl beside her. "Maybe we will do your little art thing. With conditions."
"What conditions?" Harry asked, determined to give the kids what they thought they needed.
Selena shrugged, and the shrug went down the line of girls like the wave at a football game. "We'll see."
As they walked toward the front door, David sidled up beside her with his clipboard. He smiled and patted her shoulder with his cool, limp hand. "I think you're going to be perfect for this. If I had the budget for it, I'd hire you."
"I don't know where you would get the budget. I think your counselor's outfits alone must drain most extra funds you pull in here."
David’s eyes went wide, and he glanced at the closed office door. "Oh, Sanura doesn't work for pay, and thank God for that. She does this on a permanent volunteer basis. She started in November and only finished training last week, not that she needed it. That's why you didn't get to meet her when... Well, when you were here before."
Harry gave him a nod to indicate her thanks for glossing over it, but she still knew what he meant. When she was here investigating Sunny Galaviz and Lee Barsten, before she had her badge taken away, dragged her partner down with her, and the world lost another good cop.
"Let me know how many you get on board. Anything is better than nothing," David said. His hand slid off her shoulder and she turned to watch him go. He was painfully thin, and his clothes didn't quite fit him right. He worked too hard, she thought.
Her phone rang, and she pulled it out of her pocket. At the familiar face smiling sweetly back at her, she muted the ring and let it go through to her voicemail. She didn't know what to do about Busy. Harry was a lot of things, but she wasn't a rake, the kind of person who populated romance novels and left poor, sweet Victorian girls alone without a reputation, no matter what Cal said. She just needed time to think.
