Your Frown Is My Umbrella

“Whoa! Look! It’s Batman!” a young boy shrieked in front of Reign, pointing at a man dressed as the caped crusader. “Timmy! Look!”

“That’s not Batman,” the older boy (Timmy) protested.

“Is to!” argued the little one. “He looks just like him!”

“Batman doesn’t come out in the daytime, you baby. Everybody knows that,” Timmy stated matter-of-factly.

Reign squinted. She couldn’t even figure out why the hell there was someone in the parade meant to represent Batman. He wasn’t always the most lovable of public figures. She shrugged and glanced around at the rest of the floats. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as she thought it would be. Of course, it was difficult to see anything when she could barely see over people’s heads. Only five feet tall, she was finding it very difficult to get a clear view.

She began side stepping slowly, searching for a gap in the wall of bodies. Lost in the sounds of cheering and loud music, her eyes stayed locked on what she could see of the street and she failed to realize just how far away she was walking. People paid her no mind. Most of them didn’t even notice her. So she glided along the sidewalk, keeping a fair distance between the walls of people that made up the crowds, and the walls of brick that made up the buildings she passed.

By the time she finally found a decent spot, she had reached the end of the line and the last of the floats was just passing. The sun disappeared, and she looked up to see that she was standing beneath a bridge. She folded her arms across her chest self-consciously as the crowds began to dissipate.

Now that she was out of her gap-searching trance, she took note of the fact that this area of town looked even worse than the place she lived. Shady-looking people were scattered along the pothole-ridden road and crumbling sidewalks. A pack of homeless people sat hunched beneath the bridge, huddled around a bag of God knows what. Many of the surrounding buildings had their windows boarded up with slabs of splintering plywood. Reign shivered. The parade had actually come through even the worst parts of Gotham. That had to say something for the bravery of the new District Attorney.

When an obese man in a white wife beater shoved past her, she shrieked.

“Where am I?” she murmured and backed away from the confused bystanders who were eyeing her with curious interest.

The anticipation and unexplainable restlessness she had felt while leaving her home had since been warped into something far more unpleasant; terror. Pure, unadulterated terror.

Feeling more vulnerable than ever, she stiffly turned to her left and began marching back the way she came. She kept her eyes glued to the sidewalk and tried her hardest to ignore the people who simply brushed past her. Even the local criminals didn’t bother to mug her. And why should they have? She was wearing a simple long-sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of black pants. She had no purse, and the only jewelry she wore was an odd black and white striped feather than hung from a thin leather cord around her neck. There was no reason for them to believe she had anything they wanted.

Just when she thought she recognized a turn up ahead, a somewhat familiar male voice called out behind her.

“Hey lady!”

Her back became more rigid than ever and her pace quickened.

“Lady! Hey, I’m talking to you!”

This is why she always stayed home. ‘Lucky’ didn’t seem to be in Reign McLeod’s dictionary. Unless of course it was preceded by the prefix ‘un’.

She hunched her shoulders and kept her head down; hiding her face behind thick curtains of straight black hair. Footsteps echoed behind her, and before she knew what was happening, she was running. Running from the man, running from this place, running home.

“Hey!”

She nearly leapt into the air when a large hand grabbed her right shoulder.

“Let me go!” she demanded and then whirled around to see the man’s face. “Oh no…”

It was Rick; one of Damian’s few friends. Of course, there’s a difference between friends who stick around for the company, and friends who stick around for fear of what would happen if they ever left.

“I knew it was you. What are you doing here?” he asked accusingly, narrowing his striking blue eyes at her.

“Stop it,” she pleaded, knowing she was dead meat. “I was just getting some air.”

The beautiful weather suddenly lost its aura of welcome. It seemed to mock her now. She could practically hear it. ‘HA! This is what happens when you get your hopes up. This is what happens. Stupid, stupid girl.’

“Air?” Rick scoffed and grabbed hold of her wrist. “I’m taking you back home. He’d kill me if I let you get away.”

“I wasn’t running away!” she argued defiantly, and it was the truth.

“You're a shitty ass liar,” he huffed and continued to drag her in the direction she had already been heading in the first place.

“I’m telling the truth,” she hissed irritably and tried to jerk her wrist free.

Sure, Reign could lie circles around anyone, anytime. But when she was telling the truth and someone didn’t believe her, that’s when she got upset.

His grip tightened as she began to put more effort into her struggle.

“Let me go!” she repeated. “I was going home anyway.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You ass. I’m serious! I was on my way back!”

“I, don’t, believe you,” he responded, enunciating each syllable irritably.

She scowled. So he thought she was running away, eh? Alright, she’d show him ‘running away’.

She fixed her gaze on something in the distance and stood on her tippy toes.

“There you are! Damian!” she called out to no one and waved her free arm in the air. “Help! Over here!”

Rick flinched confusedly and scanned the area. In that instant when his grip loosened, Reign yanked her tiny wrist free from his hand and sprinted in the opposite direction.

“FUCK!” she heard him shout.

She dashed into the shade under the bridge and stepped in a puddle as she passed the congregating hobos. The water soaked both of her pant legs up to the knees, but she barely noticed. She hung a sharp right at the first narrow alley she saw and nearly tripped over a toppled trashcan that looked as though it had been raided; first by rodents, then by man.

She leapt over the putrid garbage and heard Rick cursing with every wheezing breath he took.

“Get back here!” he shouted as though it would actually make her stop running.

A sharp pinching pain began to grow in her stomach, and the cramp quickly spread to both sides. Reign cursed herself for being so out of shape. Then again, it wasn’t her fault. Running for her life down the back alleys of Gotham wasn’t exactly something that sat at the top of her daily ‘To-Do’ list.

She had to lose him. If he caught her, he would take her right back to a soon-to-be very angry Damian. A new burst of determination flushed through her system and she forced herself to move even faster. Rick was gaining on her. She could hear his footsteps growing louder.

A wide alleyway presented itself on her left, and she immediately swung around the corner. If she would have taken the time to see the little red ‘no-exit’ sign at the entrance, she would have known she was running towards a dead end.

By the time she turned the corner, it was too late to turn back. She was so shocked at the lack of escape routes that she nearly stopped running. But when she felt Rick’s fingers graze the back of her shirt, her heart kicked itself back into overdrive.

“Ah!” she squeaked and pushed herself forward.

Dead end or no dead end, there was no turning back.

She saw the rear end of a white van with dark tinted windows parked at the end of the alley. She fixed her gaze on it and paid no mind to the bits of paper and plastic that swirled around her feet in a miniature updraft on the alley floor. The rays of sun that cascaded into the filthy passageway brought to light a very odd contrast between the beauty of the sky and the ugliness of the world around her. Of course, she didn’t have very much time to contemplate how these new surroundings were screwing her over. The dead end was all it took to demolish her hopes of escape.

She felt as though she was running towards nowhere, like a person on a treadmill or a hamster in an exercise wheel. No matter how fast she ran, he was sure to catch her. She was just running. There was nowhere to hide. Unless…

Then, by some incredible fluke, Rick tripped over his own feet and fell to the dirty pavement. She heard his cry of rage as he tumbled down and hit his head. Reign didn’t even look over her shoulder to see if he was out cold. Instead, she had the ridiculous idea that she could make it to the van and hide in there.

She could hide in that white van.

Rick grunted loudly and she heard him pulling himself up off the ground. Reign knew he could easily close the distance between them as soon as he started to run after her again. It was a miracle she had been able to outrun him this far, but she couldn’t expect to maintain that momentum.

More determined and scared than ever, Reign kept her eyes locked on that white metal haven and blocked out everything else around her. If she had just looked up and to the right, she would have seen a fire escape ladder leading to the roof at the end of the alley.

When she finally closed the distance between her and the van, Rick was less than three meters behind her. Without even taking the time to consider which door she should try, she chose the one she reached first; the back door. She grasped the rusting silver handle with a trembling hand and gave it a yank. Her heart soared when she heard that gracious clicking sound and the door eased open.

She clamored inside the back of the van and landed on a collection of bulging burlap sacks that smelled of smoke and rubber. Although she knew there was no way to lock the doors without scampering up to the front, she was suddenly too afraid to move. It was like all of the adrenaline had frozen in her veins once she stopped running.

A loud shout jostled her from her petrified state, and she managed to lift her head to peek through one of the black tinted windows. Rick was standing two feet away from the back of the van where she was hiding, but he wasn’t staring back at her. He was gawking at the roof of the building to his right.

Reign frowned and picked blindly at the loose fibers of the sack she was crouching on.

Was he trying to trick her?

Another shout erupted from somewhere in the air.

She watched as the confusion on his face was replaced by fear, and then he took off running down the alley and away from the van as though it was about to explode. Any traces of pain or fatigue in his body had gone out the window and he looked ready to run a marathon if need be.

Reign sat up straighter, narrowed her eyes, and tilted her head to the side in confusion.

Why was he running away?

It wasn’t until she heard the gunshot that she understood why.