My Life As It Should Have Been Ch 1.3 The Lovely Rochelle

Now it’s difficult to remember just how Zachariah and I were able to survive those first few weeks there.  It didn’t take long before all hope was lost.  I think it went somewhere in between the Hawaiian punch bars and the pixie stix houses.  Those first weeks were the hardest for Zachariah I do believe.  We tried to stay clear of it all, we were good kids.  We made it alright until Rochelle.  Little Rochelle.  She’d been there for a month or two prior because her parents abandoned her to work two jobs.  It wasn’t a pretty picture.  She was there so much every day that she didn’t stand a chance against the system.  She was quickly taken in by one of the smooch dens.  I’m sure it looked like compassion at the time, but it wasn’t long before she was handing out kisses to any kid so long as they had the sugar.  She certainly had the lips for it though.  She made a killing but then she turned to drink.  Kool-Aid left an ever present stain above her lips.
Zachariah didn’t care though, he was smitten.  He would scrounge up whatever treats he could find.  He never ate them.  Just gave em to her so they could have a little more time together.  But she was in high demand and he couldn’t afford her prices anymore so he turned to lifting things out of lunchboxes.  A juice box here a Twinkie there, every now and then he’d snag an honest to god butter and jelly sandwich.  I didn’t see him for ten whole minutes after that.  But I knew where he was.
The lovely Rochelle had him.  It was a bad situation but I’d seen worse.  In fact considering den of sugar we were in it might as well have been a fairy tale.  Fairy tales don’t last though.  Rochelle fell prey to the cooties.  It happens.  She worked in a smooch den so the doctors had little sympathy for her seeing as she did nothing but spread the epidemic.  There were kids from all over the center laid out on blue mats.  The adults never thought anything of it.  ‘Naptime’ they called it, no one who was paying attention could possibly call it that.  The cooties, though treatable, had no cure.
The doctors had no room for Rochelle.  They turned her away like the sugar sweetie she was.  Zachariah and I took her back to our place.  It wasn’t much, we could barely get by on the commissions I got from my private investigator practice.  The only real jobs I could get were small time jealous sweethearts trying to see who was using their squeezes hand to draw a turkey.  It managed to give us a little out of the way place though.  We laid Rochelle out so she could rest.  I don’t believe that Zachariah left her side for even a moment.  At least not until Blue showed up.

Ch 1.4 The Rangers