Three Rules for Staying Alive
Chapter 06 - Three Rules for Staying Alive
The old bakery smelled of dust, yeast, and rainwater.
Mara and Noah crawled through the flour tunnel and emerged behind a collapsed oven. For the next hour they moved through back streets until Mara led him to an abandoned greenhouse on the roof of a tenement.
The glass panes were broken, but the brick walls blocked the wind.
“This was mine once,” Mara said.
Noah looked around at the dead planters. “You owned it?”
“I slept here.”
“Oh.”
She spread newspapers beneath a wooden table and gave him the least damaged blanket. He watched her fold her coat into a pillow.
“You’re not sleeping?”
“I will.”
“That means no.”
Mara sat across from him.
“Three rules,” she said. “First, never sleep with both shoes off.”
“Why?”
“If you have to run, one shoe is better than none.”
He nodded solemnly.
“Second, always know two exits.”
Noah pointed to the stairwell and then to a broken pane opening onto the neighboring roof.
“Good. Third, if someone offers help, ask what it costs.”
Noah considered this. “What does your help cost?”
The question pierced her.
“Nothing.”
“Then your rule is wrong.”
Mara looked at the dark city beyond the glass. “Maybe I’m trying to learn a new one.”
He reached into his pocket and produced half a grilled-cheese sandwich wrapped in a napkin. “We can split it.”
She wanted to refuse. Pride was one of the few things poverty allowed her to own. But Noah was watching carefully, and she understood that accepting could be a kindness too.
They ate in silence.
Later, he asked about the day he was born.
Mara told him it rained so hard the hospital windows looked underwater. She told him he had ten perfect fingers and a furious little cry. She told him she had hummed an old song her own mother used to sing.
Noah asked her to hum it.
Mara’s voice broke on the second line.
He joined anyway, inventing words where he did not know them. His version involved a fox stealing pancakes from the moon. Mara laughed so suddenly that she covered her mouth.
Noah smiled. “Dad says you laughed like a door flying open.”
The warmth vanished.
“He talked about me?”
“Only once. He was asleep.”
Mara stared at him.
Noah explained that Daniel sometimes fell asleep in the library after drinking. One night, Noah heard him say Mara’s name and apologize to an empty chair. The next morning, Daniel denied remembering.
“He kept your picture in his watch,” Noah said. “Uncle Grant took it after Grandmother died.”
Mara lay awake long after Noah’s breathing softened.
She had spent seven years surviving on anger because anger asked less of her than hope. If Daniel had known, she could hate him cleanly. If he had not known, the truth became messier. He had failed to search hard enough. He had believed documents over love. But perhaps he had also been trapped inside a better-decorated prison.
Near dawn, Noah began to shiver.
Mara pulled him against her beneath the blanket.
Half asleep, he whispered, “Mom?”
She froze.
He did not repeat it.
May you like
Mara wrapped both arms around him and looked through the broken roof at the first pale line of morning.
For the first time in seven years, she was terrified of living long enough to lose something again.
