Winter Smoke

TW: kidnapping mention

It had stopped snowing hours ago, but the temperature wasn't going to let it melt any time soon. As Tom trudged through the city blocks and elevated alleyways, he wished he'd added an extra layer under his Boy Scout uniform. Ma always told him to layer up before going out. She said he'd get frostbite just from walking down the street if he didn't. But he never listened and neither did Ford, so what did it matter? He hadn't lost a limb, yet.

"Stop over here," said Ford as he ducked into an alley between brownstones.

Tom followed him. "Did you hear her?"

"Huh?" Ford pulled out a pack of cigarettes- another bad habit Ma said would kill them.

"Sarah," said Tom. "Did you hear her?"

He put his forehead against one of the low windows there, but the curtains were pulled shut on the other side.

"Quit snooping," snapped Ford. "I didn't hear nothing."

"Then why'd we stop?"

Ford was now trying to light a flame against the wind and Tom wanted nothing more than to slap the lighter out of his hand. They had a job to do, for God's sake.

"Smoke break."

"Really? Right now?"

Ford finally caught a flame and lit up. He took an obscenely long drag. Honestly, in that moment, everything about him was obscene. What kind of an Eagle Scout smoked on duty and in their uniform?

"S'not like we're gonna find her now."

Tom crossed his arms. He told himself it was because he was fed up and not because he was freezing. "We're going to get her home before Christmas."

Ford quirked an eyebrow at him.

"We are! Or, we would if you didn't keep slacking off."

Ford was unphased.

Tom went on, "Don't you even feel a little bit guilty? I mean, you saw her mom. Don't you feel bad about it? Don't you think she deserves to have Sarah home for Christmas?"

"It doesn't matter what she deserves. The girl's probably dead already. I don't see why I have to waste my winter break looking for a body."

"Don't say that!" Tom stamped his foot in the snow. "We have to get her home before Christmas. We have to."

Ford kept smoking.

"Listen, Tommy," he said in that patronizing older brother voice he only brought out when he was in front of his friends or seconds away from sucker punching Tom into next week, "if the girl's already dead, then one cigarette isn't gonna slow her corpse down from rotting. And if she's still alive, then odds are another ten minutes won't kill her."

Tom turned away. He fixed his eyes on the brick wall and bit down on his cheek in an attempt to stop his teeth from chattering.

"Whatever," he finally said. "Can we at least keep walking? It's too cold to just stand around."

"Not if you're smoking." Ford's voice was getting gravelly from all the smoke he inhaled on the daily. If he kept going at the rate he was, the change would likely become permanent. Tom couldn't stand that thought.

"What if another Scout walks by and sees us slacking off?"

Every Scout in the city was out looking for Sarah Irving. She had gone missing a week ago and it'd sparked a citywide campaign. The Scouts would bring her home to her single mother in time for Christmas, and for the first time in her very short life there would be a pile of presents under the tree all for her. Every family Tom knew had donated something wrapped up in the girly-est paper they could find. Even Ma had gone out and bought her a nice doll.

"I'll tell 'em you started having a fit, so we stopped for some air."

Tom shook his head. "I'll tell them the truth and watch you get demoted."

Tom wasn't even sure you could demote an Eagle Scout, but he wanted it more than anything.

Ford snapped his fingers and caught Tom's eyes. "You say one word about me and I'll go out and find the guy who took Sarah and I'll hand you over to him. You hear me?"

Tom swallowed. An unpleasant thought occurred to him; there was a real person out there who had taken Sarah. That seemed pretty obvious now, but Tom had never actually put all that much thought into how Sarah had gone missing. It felt unreal that there was someone in the city he was walking in who'd taken a little girl from her mother. He said all this to Ford.

Ford took a long drag. "It's a big city."

True. The chances of him running into the kidnapper were slim, which was both comforting and disheartening.

"There's probably a hundred guys like that here."

Oh. That was not what he wanted to hear.

"Maybe one of 'em will walk by right now and take you. Maybe it'll be the one who took the girl. Then you could finally say you found her before Christmas and-"

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop talking about her like she's some kind of joke. She's real, Ford. She has a name. She went to the same school we used to. She has a Ma who gets as worried as ours does and she has a pet dog and she was just like us and she's not home and she fucking should be!"

Ford looked pissed. No, more than pissed. He looked like he was going to murder Tom right there in that alley, but Tom didn't care anymore.

"Would you take a smoke break if it was me missing instead of her?"

Ford stubbed his cigarette out on the brick wall and dropped it in the snow. "I'm going home. Follow me or don't. I don't care."

That was just plain cruel. Ford knew Tom had to follow him. He wasn't allowed to be out alone anymore. Not since Sarah.

But there were only two days left until Christmas. They had to keep looking. They had to.

Ford walked away.

Tom looked down at the cigarette stub then at his freezing red hands. With a pain in his chest, he followed Ford.

Sarah didn't come home for Christmas. Tom cried under his bed all day the twenty-sixth when there was no happy headline in the local paper. Ford gave him all his Christmas candy.

When they finally found Sarah Irving, she was long dead and the headline read, "Missing Girl's Remains Found in Basement." Tom threw up before he could finish the article. Ford took his pack of cigarettes and tossed it out into the street. He never smoked again and his voice never turned to gravel.