Chronicles of Araxx - Forever Broken
Chapter 7

When Lee emerged from the underground station, she was soon met with the iconic view of London.

The station at Embankment brought them out next to the river Thames. From where she stood, Lee could see the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

Memories flooded through her as she remembered this sight from when she was a child.

The streets were packed with people and it made Lee a little uneasy. She’d been locked up for so long, she forgot there were so many people in the world.

It was noisy too. People shouted to each other, cars piped horns, the sounds of people going about their everyday lives were loud.

Her one saving grace was that she was at the opposite end of the country from where she had been the day before, and hopefully far away from ‘Araxx’ and Kane.

It was a short walk to the rally from the station, and there were indeed other people there. Lee was a little sceptical about whether people would turn up for something like that, but there was quite an atmosphere. There were forty-six people on the patch of grass, including Lee and her companions.

A tall, lanky girl with black hair longer than any Lee had seen before, walked towards Bear and Blossom. She was wearing all black and had multiple piercings on her face, and maybe more Lee could not see.

A slightly taller man, dressed in the same way but with only shoulder length black hair stepped up just behind her. “Glad you could make it.”

“Tom, Kate, I didn’t know you two were going to be here!” Blossom embraced them.

“We couldn’t just stay home for this,” Kate said. “And who’s the redhead?” She asked, looking Lee up and down.

“I’m Lee.” She stepped forward before Blossom or Bear had the chance to introduce her. She could introduce herself, and she had a feeling a sixteen-year-old, homeless girl in London would need to demand respect from others, otherwise, she’d be walked all over.

After the introductions, Lee and the others joined the group of people on the grass.

The rally wasn’t exactly what Lee had expected. In fact, she wasn’t sure what it would be. It turned out to be just a group of people sitting around singing songs Lee did not know and holding up signs about not cutting down trees, saving the planet and keeping the air clean.

In truth, Lee found the whole experience very boring, and it was a long day of it.

The group caught the attention of a news crew, and Lee had to make her escape before she was caught on camera. She knew it would not be good for her face to be all over the television.

That would make it all too easy for her Kane or ‘Araxx’ to replace her, and that was the last thing she wanted.

She stepped away from the group and stood to the back of the camera.

“You look a bit bored,” a girl about her own age said to her.

She hadn’t seen the girl walk up to her, and was shocked she was being spoken to. “Who me?” Lee asked.

“Yeah.” The girl laughed. She had long blonde hair, the kind of blond you knew wasn’t natural, and a warming smile. “My name’s Bree. What’s yours?”

“Lee.” She smiled back at the stranger.

“Nice to meet you, Lee.” Bree smiled. “How about we get out of here, go do something more interesting?”

“Like what?” Lee asked. She didn’t know what Bree was intending on doing, but anything was bound to be more fun than the rally. She would go for a little while and meet Bear and Blossom later in the day. They wouldn’t even know she was gone.

“Come on.” Bree took Lee’s hand and pulled her away from the crowd.

They crossed the bridge in front of Big Ben and started walking down towards the London Eye.

“Let’s go shopping.” Bree smiled.

“I don’t have any money,” Lee admitted.

It seemed money wasn’t a problem in Bree’s world. “Who said anything about money?” Bree grinned.

There was something about this girl, something strange, but Lee liked it.

“Watch this.” Bree stepped off into the crowd.

Lee watched closely. She had a feeling she was going to learn something there and then, and it would prove to be extremely valuable.

Bree stepped around the people on the crowded path as though they weren’t really there. She was looking for something specific, someone specific. She saw a man walking with what she presumed was his wife or girlfriend who was wearing a fur coat. That was all Bree needed. These two were clearly tourists, identified by the tube map in his hand. Bree stepped towards the back of the man, and as quick as a flash, she took his wallet from his back pocket, then made her way over to one of the food stands at the side of the path. She took out the wallet, leather and black, bold as brass, and bought something with it.

Lee could not see clearly what it was, but the smell of greasy food in that area hung in the air.

Within no time at all, Bree had come back to Lee, and she was holding a brown paper bag in her hand. “Doughnut?” She asked, as if nothing had happened, and took a bite from one she was holding in her hand.

“Bree?” Lee was shocked. “But you just…”

“Yeah I know. It’s too easy.” She opened the wallet, taking out a handful of cash. “There’s at least a hundred here.”

She brought the money to her nose and breathed in deeply, taking in the scent of the cash. She put the money back into the wallet, and stuffed it into her satchel, then pulled another doughnut out of the bag and handed one to Lee. “Let’s go shopping,” she said with a mouth full of the hot doughnut.

Lee took a bite of hers. The dough was soft and warm, and as she chewed her mouth watered. It was delicious. She moaned with pleasure as she chewed.

Bree giggled at her.

“What?” Lee asked as she swallowed. “Do I have something on my face?” Lee wiped her mouth and covered her arm with sugar as she did so. Then took another bite of the fresh doughnut. She didn’t care about the sugar. The doughnut tasted amazing.

After replaceing a tube station, Bree took them to Camden Market. She said it was her favourite place to go ‘shopping’ and Lee would love it.

She was right about that.

Just a short walk from the tube station, Lee was met with market stalls full of clothes. She’d never seen so many clothes in one place all at the same time, and so much she would wear. There was every kind of item of clothing in the market, and all different types of people too.

Bree looked Lee up and down. “Hmm, I think we can replace something nice for you to wear, but first things first.” She took Lee’s hand and pulled her towards one of the stalls. “You need a bag to carry it all in.”

Lee spotted a black backpack, made from a soft fabric, with rope-like tassels coming down from it. “I have a bag, though,” Lee said. She pulled the old rucksack from her back, the one she found in the salvation army bin, but Bree wasn’t listening to her.

She’d already spotted something that was better. “This one’s beautiful,” she said.

Lee picked up the price tag. £25 it read.

Bree looked around. The market was pretty quiet, and the vendor was at the other side of his stall, dealing with another customer. “Take it,” Bree whispered.

“What?”

“Come on, pick it up and let’s go before he sees us,” Bree urged.

Lee wasn’t so sure about taking the bag. After all, it was stealing. But the bag was nice, and she didn’t have any money, let alone enough to buy it. She picked it up, her heart racing then threw it on her back and started walking away with Bree.

It was a bit of a rush, stealing the bag. Lee found she almost liked the feeling. Danger.

Bree congratulated her on taking the bag without getting caught. “That was your first time wasn’t it?” She asked as they walked down the street towards a clothes stall that looked particularly interesting. “Stealing I mean.”

“Yeah,” Lee said shyly. She was ashamed of what she had done.

Bree reassured her, “Here in London if you live on the streets, you don’t have much of a choice. It’s either stealing or go very cold and very hungry.”

“How did you know... Do you live on the streets too?” Lee asked.“Am I really that obvious?”

“It wasn’t obvious, no. I’m just good at knowing that sort of thing, and, yeah, have done for the last year,” Bree admitted.

“So what were you doing at that rally?” Lee’s curiosity peaked.

“Easy pickings,” Bree said bluntly. “A lot of those hippies have more money than sense, and they’re so distracted by ‘saving the world’ they don’t notice me taking their dosh.”

She opened her satchel to show Lee and revealed another two wallets. “What were you doing there?” Bree asked as she closed the bag again.

“I was with these two people. They picked me up off the street, helped me get cleaned up, fed me and brought me here. I was coming to London anyway, so it was convenient.”

“Odd, but fair enough.” Bree shrugged. “Where did you come from?”

“Scotland.”

“You don’t sound Scottish.”

“I wasn’t born there, just stayed there for a while.” Lee didn’t really want to say much more.

The two girls walked through the food market at Camden Town.

The smells of the different foods were driving Lee wild. There were different foods from all around the world. Some of them she recognised, and others she didn’t.

“What’s calamari?” Lee asked as she pointed at something that looked a lot like onion rings.

“That’s squid rings in batter, basically,” Bree explained as she laughed.

Bree bought them both a polish sausage in a roll. Lee added fried onions to hers, and they both went to sit on a bench by the canal to eat.

“This tastes amazing!” Lee exclaimed after her first bite of the juicy sausage.

“They’re good aren’t they?” Bree said with her mouth full. “So, what’s your plan while you’re down here?” Bree asked.

Lee didn’t really know how to answer this. She didn’t really have a plan. “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “I need to replace somewhere to sleep, and go from there, I guess.”

“You should stay with me,” Bree suggested.

“You have a house? But I thought you said you were homeless?” Looking at Bree, Lee could tell the girl was not completely homeless and living on the street. She was too clean.

Lee looked at her properly for the first time since meeting her. She was a pretty girl, with small features, and a few freckles dotted on her cheeks, partially hidden by light make-up. Her hair was blond, but Lee could see the pale brown roots underneath. Her hair was neat and tidy like it had recently been cut with care, unlike Lee’s mop of shoulder length hair. Bree was also wearing nice clothes that looked clean, although most likely she’d stolen them recently. Bree also smelled nice, which meant she must have been staying somewhere with a bath or shower. She was wearing skinny jeans in a stonewashed blue, and a long-sleeved bottle green shirt, white trainers on her feet, and a leather jacket on her back. She looked as if she just stepped out of a film.

“Technically, I have a place, yeah, but I wouldn’t exactly say it was mine,” Bree answered, taking another bite of the sausage.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m dossing.”

Lee looked confused. She’d never heard the term dossing before.

Bree explained it to her.

“So you’re living in someone else’s house while they’re not there?”

Bree nodded.

“Have they moved out then? Or just on holiday?”

“The place I’m in at the moment is totally empty. Well, there’s furniture, but no one lives there. It’s been empty for a while,” Bree said.

“How often do you have to move?” Lee asked.

“Every few months or so. I’ve been in this place only a week, so I’m hoping to stay there a while. So what do you say? Wanna be roomies?” Bree was smiling brightly now.

“Sure, why not?” Lee answered an equally big smile graced her face.