Messed Up Fairytale.

The teenager’s eyes fluttered open at a stinging sensation on her arm. A groan of pain slipped from her lips as the stinging came back. Her eyes looked to find the source of the irritating pain and she saw the man who had saved her in that alley, Elliot. He was dabbing a cotton ball on the scrapes that littered the skin of her arm and in his other hand was a brown bottle which Charlotte guessed held hydrogen peroxide. He wet another cotton ball with it and continued dabbing at the scrapes.

“So, you’re awake,” Elliot said, his voice soft and calming. A small smile curved his lips as he glanced at her face for a moment before continuing to clean her cuts and scrapes. “You got pretty banged up back there, but I have a feeling you’ll live,” he said, still with that warm voice.

“Where am I?” Charlotte asked, she could feel a soft bed beneath her and the lamp Elliot had on to work on Charlotte’s arm lit up some of the room she was in and she knew it was not her home. The abandoned subway platform she lived in didn’t have paintings on the wall and expensive looking furniture. Charlotte tried to sit up, she pushed herself up with the arm Elliot wasn’t holding and slowly tried to sit up. The pain in her stomach from being repeatedly punched and kicked there was immense and her head felt like it had been split in two from the head ache she had. Elliot helped her sit up, “you should really get some more sleep,” he said, his tone worried. His tone made the young girl pause, she had never been worried over, not once in the past six years. Suddenly the man sitting in a chair beside her reminded her of her father, how he would pull out the first aid kit and fix up her knee after she had fallen off of her bike for the first time. How he had put a band-aid over the small sore and kissed it better. Charlotte sensed the tears coming and she pushed the memory to the back of her head, “I’m fine” she lied, not looking at Elliot. Elliot gave her a skeptical look but didn’t say anything on the subject.

“What were you doing in that part of town?” Elliot asked, breaking the silence after ten minutes. He had stopped spreading ointment over the cuts on her arm, which, Charlotte assumed, had come from being kicked across the cement ground. He was now finishing up with wrapping gauze around her upper arm.

“I got lost going back home” she lied, not making eye contact with Elliot. She didn’t want him figuring out she was a homeless orphan because then he would just try and take her back to the orphanage thinking he was doing the right thing for her.

“Where do you live?” He asked, “Perhaps I could give you a ride home?”

“I’m not sure what street I live on,” Charlotte made up, “I-I’m new to Chicago, I mean, me and my family just moved her so...” she trailed off, not sure what to come up with next.

“Well, we could go to the police station and have them search your name in their database. Then we could get your address,” Charlotte nearly had a heart attack at the thought of going to the police station after her little stunt at the convenience store today. All they’d do would probably be help her with finding a cell in juvi.

“I don’t want to do that” she said, not sure what else to say.

Elliot sighed, “you don’t want to go to the hospital, you don’t want to go to the police,” the young girls eyes glanced at him for a moment, sensing the suspicion in his voice. “Your backpack has only another set of dirty clothes, some loose change, and a flashlight. Not such typical items for a teenager to carry around.” Yep, there was certainly quite a bit of suspicion in his voice. Elliot was quiet for a moment. “You haven’t just moved here with your family have you?” His eyes caught hers and she knew he was coming to the right conclusion. “You’re an orphan.”

A rush of fear fueled her adrenaline. She had to get out of here, get away from him. He was going to send her back to the orphanage or worse, the police. Charlotte tried to roll off the bed but Elliot was to quick, he grabbed her arm and kept her on the bed. She tried to free her arm from his grip but it was too strong. “Let me go!” She demanded. He let her tire herself out until she collapsed back on the bed, her breathing heavy and pained.

“Now, would you just calm down before you hurt yourself even more?” Elliot said, slightly exasperated. “I’m not ditching you with the Police and I’m not going to hand you over to an orphanage. Alright? I promise”

Charlotte calmed down, her body ached even more now that she had put it through that wild escape attempt. “Then please let me go so I can go back to my life,” she said, keeping her voice calm and composed.

“So this can happen again?” He said, gesturing at her weakened and beaten state. “Just stay here until you’ve gotten better, I can’t with good conscious let you go out into the streets at night when you can barely sit up.”

“How can I trust you?” Charlotte asked.

“Because I know what an orphanage is like, so I know why you don’t want to end up in one,”his words made Charlotte’s eyes widen slightly. “So please, you’re more than welcome to stay here.”

Charlotte wanted to ask about how he knew what being in an orphanage was like but she held back. “Well, I mean, if its no trouble?” Charlotte said quietly, fidgeting with her hands in her lap.

“Its no trouble at all,” his words were welcoming, and once more Charlotte saw her father sitting beside her with that same smile. She blinked the image away and nodded.

“Thank you, for everything,” she said, trying to pull off a smile herself but it just came out as a quick twitch of her lips.

“Now get some sleep, its nearly two in the morning,” Elliot said, getting up from the wooden chair he had pulled up next to the bed Charlotte was lying on. She just nodded and sank into the blankets of the bed, her eyes staying open until Elliot left.

She still had no clue as to whether or not she was making a big mistake.