“I know.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
Malik looked down the street.
Downtown Cincinnati glowed in the rain like a place made for other people.
Office workers rushed under umbrellas.
Cars hissed past the curb.
A bus pulled away with warm yellow windows, full of faces that never turned toward him.
Nobody looked twice at the skinny Black kid carrying a little girl through the storm.
They never looked twice at Malik.
That was how he had survived.
He knew how to move at the edge of things.
Beside buildings.
Behind restaurants.
Under bridges.
Past cameras without staring at them.
Past security guards without giving them a reason.
He knew which bakeries tossed out bread at night.
Which church basements served soup on Tuesdays.
Which corner stores let him warm up for five minutes, and which ones told him to get moving before he even stepped inside.
He knew hunger like a second language.
But he did not know what to do with a lost child.
Especially one who held onto him like he was the only safe thing left in the city.
He had found her less than an hour earlier behind a small bakery on Jefferson Street.
He had been looking for dinner.
That was the honest truth.
The bakery closed at six.
By six-thirty, the back door opened and somebody usually dropped a black trash bag beside the dumpster.
Most of it was useless.
Wet lettuce.
Coffee grounds.
Napkins stuck to frosting.
But sometimes there was bread wrapped in paper.
Sometimes a day-old muffin.
Once, a whole box of rolls that were only hard on the edges.
Malik waited until the kitchen lights went off.
Then he slipped into the alley.
His backpack hung off one shoulder.
It held everything he owned.
A gray sweatshirt.
A picture of his mother from before she got sick.
A plastic comb missing three teeth.
Two church flyers.
A pencil.
A folded napkin he saved because it was clean.
Clean things mattered when you had almost none.
He lifted the dumpster lid with his sleeve.
Steam and old food smell rushed out.
He turned his face, dug carefully, and found a wrapped turkey sandwich inside a brown bag.
Not from the bakery.
