As time went on Chloe honed this skill. However, as her eye grew keen, her heart grew hard. The coldness of the streets became a part of her. She found herself becoming less reviled by petty theft and harassment. Above all, a deep seated resentment grew in her. She resented the fact that some could sleep in beds and eat three meals a day while she had to scratch out an existence in the slums of her once beautiful town. Not too long ago she had a comfortable life, and through no fault of her own she lost it while others who treated her like dirt lived just fine! None of it was fair!

This slowly became her attitude without her even realizing it. So when the boy asked her to “get” something for him she did not object.

“Do ya see that?” he said, pointing to a truck parked on the side of the street. Chloe nodded. “All this time we’ve been going for small stuff, but it’s time we thought ‘bigger.’”

Chloe noticed that the truck was of the kind used by the government to bring relief supplies into the town. She had seen them on occasion, but they did not come very often. It made sense why the town took so long to recover, with so little support coming from outside.

The driver stepped out and opened the hood to check the engine, leaving the rear completely unguarded. Anyone passing by could see the boxes piled high inside the bed of the truck. “That big box over there, looks expensive, don’t it?” the boy said pointing to a box near the top of the stack. Chloe couldn’t see why the boy thought it so important. Yes it was slightly larger and did stick out from the rest, but otherwise was just a cardboard box. Nevertheless, Chloe listened as the boy told her what to do.

“I want you to get it for me. Meet me by the alley behind the market square,” he said, pointing to one of the larger buildings in the area, “and give it to me. I know someone who we can sell it to.” If we pull this off, we’ll be rich!”

Just the thought of having something again tempted Chloe enough to move without hesitation. Once the boy gave a signal, she walked casually towards the truck, eying the driver the whole time. As soon as she was close she sidled next to the wall of one of the buildings. With the driver’s back turned she quickened her pace. As soon as he would turn around, though, she would drop to the ground and freeze.

What she did not know was that the driver was a wary fellow who had ample experience with war-torn areas. Between cursing and wondering just where he would find a new radiator, he eyed the small child moving toward his truck and went around to check the back, a fact both Chloe and the boy took note of. Subconsciously, she decided to stay back and watch as the driver looked into the truck bed, scratched his head, and went back to look at the engine, hoping for the right opportunity to strike.

But it never came. To Chloe’s horror, he walked to the back again and pulled out the very package they were after.

Chloe could only watch as he placed it in front of the door of what looked to be a run-down tenement house. She started running fast enough to catch up, but not so fast as to look suspicious. Once she was only a couple of buildings away she stopped, waiting for the right moment when the man would turn his back and walk away…

Creeping ever closer, Chloe glanced around her, snatched the package, and sprinted to the alley across the street. The driver was ready, though, and as he glanced once more over his shoulder he saw Chloe running with the package he had just set down. It didn’t take a split second for him to scream for the police, which Chloe heard all too well.

Uh-oh, she thought. I messed up big time. She ran as fast as she could into the alley and around behind the building. Peeking out from around the corner she could see two police officers in their black uniforms already speaking to the driver. One of them looked at her.

Her feet immediately started off without her even thinking about it. Weaving through the ramshackle alleyways of old buildings she searched for the boy. When she finally arrived at the collection of market stands and old window shops called “market square” she became increasingly desperate in her search. In front of her were the crowds of the impoverished and behind her the police getting ever closer. But the boy was nowhere to be found.

Chloe made a split second decision to simply run. She continued weaving among the alleyways, gutters, and construction zones of the town. But the package grew heavy in her arms. Eventually the buildings grew smaller and less crowded. And the boxed-in brown gave way to open sky and sun. Running out of breath she hid behind a house. She didn’t hear any police, so she decided to relax and catch her breath. After determining that the police were no longer after her, she took one look at the package and out of curiosity ripped it open.

Flour. In the package were two boxes of baking flour. That was it.

Furious, Chloe threw one box after the other as far as she could, bursting them open and spraying its contents in a cloud of white dust.

“Worthless!” she screamed to herself. Absolutely worthless! All of this effort over some stupid flour. That boy was a fool. I should have never trusted him.

Then a thought occurred to her. The boy had been using her the whole time. The one whom she had trusted for weeks on end, whom she thought genuinely cared for, did not care.

A sudden fury overcame her. Did anyone care? What kind of world was this? The words of the boy came to mind. “You gotta look out for your own kind ‘cuz no one’s gonna help you.”

These words echoed in her head again and again, until it became a sort of mantra for her.

No one’s going to help you.

As she thought these words her fury fell to a slow burn. I hate him.

The words popped into her mind and she accepted them readily. I hate him, I hate this town, and I hate this whole world!

If nobody cares about me, she thought, then I don’t care about anybody. If people only look out for themselves, then I will do the same.

Having quite forgotten about any of the police, storeowners, or street children, Chloe stood up and started walking down the rows of houses. She continued walking, and while the houses grew smaller, her heart grew harder.

Eventually the closely crowded neighborhoods gave way to sparsely spaced farm huts. Chloe noticed the vastness of the open sky contrasting with the cracked dry ground. As far as the eye could see sprawled a windswept plain with tufts of yellowish grass clumped together, only broken by a small dirt road strewn along the ground.

Chloe continued to stare out into the horizon until the earth and sky blended together into an empty gray. Suddenly she remembered why she did not initially leave the town. This was the area known to many as the Badlands. Chloe had only seen it from the window of a bus when traveling out of town. It had seemed safe and confined then. Now it was empty, soulless, and ready to swallow her up.

The burning hot soil broke her concentration. Desperately she looked for some shade to stand in, but there was none to be found.

So she walked. She walked not only to keep her feet from burning on the coal-like rocks but also because she had nowhere else to go. It seemed an eternity as she trudged down the path. Occasionally a tuft of dust from a faraway vehicle or distant silhouette of a house caught her eye, but there was little else to see. Eventually she turned around to see how far she had gone from the town. Behind her lay a thin dark line from the outermost buildings blurring together.

It all looked so small. Just a scratch in a vast arid grassland. That town had been Chloe’s whole world.

She would keep doing this whenever it occurred to her to do so. Eventually the town faded into the horizon altogether and all she could see were the Artabanian Badlands.

An uneasy feeling found its way to her stomach as the road took her further from familiar territory and into the unknown.

As the afternoon wore on and became evening, two other matters presented themselves. Climate being what it was there, the rainy season of a month ago had ended, and the clouds began to dry up. As a result, the sun now dominated the sky with its intense heat. Chloe, having had nothing to drink for hours, started to notice the sandpaper feeling of her tongue and burning tips of her ears.

It was not a pleasant feeling. She immediately tried to find water, but to no avail. Any puddles that may have remained from the rainy season had long since evaporated. So she tried to find some underneath the rocks, with modest success. After a solid two hours of searching she found enough water not to quench her thirst, but to stave off dehydration at least.

But another, more subtle problem crept up with time. With neither clouds nor moisture to block the sun, the only thing protecting Chloe’s pale skin were the ragged clothes on her back and thin coat of dirt on her skin. As she continued to walk, she found it increasingly painful. She bent down to scratch an itch on her leg, only to flinch back in pain from her own touch. Then she looked at her arm and noticed through the dust that it was beet red from sunburn.

That was right. She wasn’t supposed to be out in the sun this long. When her parents were alive they had always carried an umbrella whenever they went outside. Even in the market square she had stuck to the shade of the eves and awnings. Out here there was nothing to stop her from frying to a crisp.