The Station Girl

Chapter 4

At first, I didn't call him Sir. Actually, I didn't talk to him at all at first. He didn't seem to mind. And when he asked me if I wanted to come inside that day, I shook my head and scurried over to the nearest bench. He didn't follow me over, and I knew he'd gone back inside that small building when I heard the door shut.

I sat on that bench for hours watching the tracks. The whole time I held my bag to my chest, never letting it go. The sun was high in the sky before I did anything but sit there, fidgeting against the heat and the splinters that poked through my dress.

He opened the creaky door and I looked over, instinctively clutching my bag even harder.

"There won't be another train until tonight, dear," he called over to me.

Again, I shook my head. I wasn't sitting there because I was watching for a train. I was sitting there because with Lucy gone, I had no more courage. Had Lucy not been there that night to pull me up into the train cart, I don't think I ever would have gotten on one before I was caught and sent back to them.

A single night had taken me far, far away from them. I was certainly happy that I was gone from them, but now I was all alone. I didn't know if I should stay or if I should run off. However, Lucy had wanted me in this old man's care, and that was all I needed to keep me at the station in those first few days where I didn't know if I should stay or run. If it wasn't for her, I would have run off into the town, left to face an unknown future by myself.

"You haven't had anything to eat. Are you hungry?" I didn't shake my head, but I didn't move either. I certainly was hungry, my stomach's rumbling told me that. But I wasn't going to go into that building or near him to get it. Yet, when he heard the growling of my stomach, he laughed. That he could hear it surprised me.

"Come over then. I have some food in here you can have." For a moment, I stayed on the bench, staring at him. Observing him. Studying him. He was older than even them. He was the oldest person I had ever seen. Would he be different from them? Or would he lock me in his own bad room if I wasn't a good girl, just like them?

I hopped off the bench, my dress dragging off some splinters behind me. They poked into my legs as I slowly walked over to him, but I didn't mind. It kept me from getting too excited at the prospect of food.

A few feet away from him, I stopped. My bag served as my shield, my legs poised to move at the slightest sign of danger. He motioned me in, and when I didn't come any closer or followed him into the building, he sighed and went inside by himself. The next time he came out, it was with a plate with a slice of cheese and some bread in one hand. His other hand had a glass of milk in it, a rare commodity that only the best of kids got from them.

"Are you certain you want to eat out here? It's getting hot, and there's nowhere for you to sit." I pointed back at the bench. I would eat over there. He understood at once. With great reluctance, he nodded his head in acceptance, and I scampered back over to it. He followed behind and placed the things he carried on the bench when he reached it. It was the closest I'd been to him since Lucy had left. I wouldn't get up on the bench and start eating until he'd taken a couple steps away from me.

Still, he never commented on my actions. All he did was smile patiently at me. I don't know what he saw in me that first week I stayed with him. I refused to speak, and I never got too close to him. I never even went inside his building, so he gave me the old storage shed nearby for me to sleep in at night. He couldn't have me catching cold when he was my new caregiver he'd claimed.

That first day, he tried all morning to find someone who could take me in. He called the local orphanages, people he knew, even the police to see if they knew of someone who could take me in. It wasn't until he had given up and resolved to care for me himself that he came out of the building.

He asked me my name while I ate. I shook my head. In that moment, he looked very confused. It wasn't that I didn't know what a name was, but that I didn't have one. Or if I did have one, I had never known it. They never called us by name. It was always by 'you' or 'brat' or some other unfavorable word that they got our attention with. It was a stark comparison to the 'sweeties' and 'dears' they would call us when other people were around.

I didn't explain this to him. I only kept shaking my head at each question he posed. By the time I had finished the small bit of food I had, he'd stopped asking about names. That's when he started to call me Little One. Where he came up with such a nickname, or why he didn't give me an actual name, I can only guess at.

The where, he got from how tall I was. I was shorter than most kids, and I hardly reached past the knees of most adults at that age. The why is a question I have asked myself again and again over the years. The answer I finally came up with is that he wanted me to have the freedom to decide it for myself. To choose my own name and to love to be known by a name that I'd never had a chance to hate is a privilege he wanted a poor and lonely girl to have for herself.

At least, that's what I guessed at. Now, I'll never know why he never gave me a real name. I didn't ponder the lack of a name at first. After all, I was used to having no name. It wasn't until some years later that I even bothered to think about it, and by then, I had grown so used to be called Little One that for him to call me anything but that was a strange idea.

When he walked away from me with the empty plate and glass, I stayed where I was. To pass the time, I pulled out my little picture book. Its edges were worn thin from how much I'd flipped through it, but the pictures inside it were still as bright as the day I'd gotten it. There were words in it that I couldn't read, but I didn't care. That I could look at the pictures of trains was enough to satisfy me.

Through all the haze of uncertainty and indecision I felt that day, there was one thing I was sure of.

Whatever was going to happen to me wasn't going to happen until I had a chance to look at a real train in broad daylight.

*****

A/N: You know, there was something I was planning on saying here. Until I reread the chapter for any changes I wanted to make, and realized that what I wanted to comment on isn't until the next chapter XD Ah, oh well. I'll just have to wait until Friday to say what I wanted to say! Hope you've enjoyed the story so far!