YoungBloods

Chicago, 1910 It was cold the morning they left him. Snow clung to the edges of the cracked sidewalk like it didn’t want to melt, same as the boy holding the hand of the social worker who couldn’t look him in the eyes. Devon James Spencer—just four years old—stood on the steps of St. Augustine's Orphanage in a thin coat, secondhand shoes, and a silence that said more than any sob ever could. He didn’t cry. He’d done that already—back when he found his mama facedown on the mattress, lips blue, eyes wide open but seeing nothing. Now he just stared, unmoving, as the big brown doors shut behind him. Welcome home. Inside, the air smelled like bleach, boiled potatoes, and loneliness. The other kids stared. Some whispered. One of the older boys snickered. “Another charity rat,” he muttered. Devon didn’t flinch. He’d already learned what silence could do. It made people uncomfortable. Made them wonder what you were thinking. He never told anyone about his mama. Not how he shook her, begged her to wake up. Not how he sat beside her for hours until someone from the building came banging on the door. He kept it buried, like a weapon tucked inside the chest. The nuns tried to be kind. Sister Eileen gave him a blanket that first night, tucked him into a cot that smelled like mildew. But kindness was rationed here. Everything was. Food. Warmth. Mercy. Especially mercy. By the time he was six, Devon had learned the rules. Rule one: Never show fear. Rule two: Hit first, hit hard. Rule three: Trust no one. He got in fights. A lot of them. The other boys didn’t like how quiet he was, how he didn’t laugh when they laughed or cry when he bled. They’d try to knock him down. He got bruises. Black eyes. Split lips. But he never stayed down. Sister Agatha said he had a devil’s fire in him. He took it as a compliment. He never got adopted. He watched other kids get new clothes, new names, new parents. He never even got a second look. Maybe it was the skin. Maybe it was the scowl. Maybe people could just see the storm inside him and wanted no part of it. So, on his seventh birthday, he left. He slipped out during chapel, wearing three shirts under his coat and a bag of stolen bread. He didn’t look back. The streets were a different kind of war. The alleys of South Side were cold and sharp, filled with men who would beat a child for half a nickel and cops who saw his skin before they saw his face. He slept in crates, behind dumpsters, under porches. He stole apples, bread, matches. He fought off rats and drunks. He learned how to run when to hide, and where to disappear. And he was always hungry. Starvation clawed at him like an animal—his ribs poked out beneath his coat, his fingers stiff from cold. Still, he survived. But not without scars. It was a Tuesday when he slipped up. He tried to snatch a wallet off a man’s belt outside a butcher shop. He was quick—faster than most grown men could react—but the man turned too fast, grabbing Devon by the collar and shouting, “Thief!” Devon twisted free, bolting into the street, weaving through horses and honking cars, heart hammering. People yelled. A whistle blew behind him. Cops. He turned a corner too sharp, slipped on ice, and crashed into something soft but solid. “Hey!” a voice said. A small pair of hands helped him up before he even realized what happened. He looked up, wide-eyed, ready to run—but froze. She was his age. Maybe a little younger. Pale skin like milk, blonde hair tucked under a velvet beret, and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. “Are you okay?” she asked, brushing snow off his coat like they were old friends. He blinked. She was real. Then a shout echoed down the alley. “There he is!” Cops. He panicked, backing away. But the girl grabbed his hand. “Quick,” she whispered. “This way.” She pulled him behind a gate, into a garden behind a tall iron fence. He followed without thinking, breath ragged, heart pounding. She tucked him between hedges, crouching beside him. The cops thundered past. Devon didn’t speak for a moment. Neither did she. Finally, he said, “Why’d you help me?” She shrugged, eyes still watching the street. “’Cause you looked scared. And they looked mean.” He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t even know me.” She smiled. “So?” That’s when he noticed—her dress was new, her boots polished. A rich girl. Everything he wasn’t. He stared at her, this little white girl who didn’t seem afraid of anything. “What’s your name?” She grinned. “Aurelia. But you can call me Lia.” Devon’s voice was low, wary. “DJ.” They shook on it. That day, something shifted. In a city built on blood and silence, he found the first person who looked at him like he mattered. And he never forgot it. After that snowy day in the alley, Devon and Aurelia were never apart. Each afternoon after school, Aurelia would find DJ waiting for her across the street, sitting on the fire hydrant with his hands in his pockets like he belonged there. She’d wave, and he’d nod, that same unreadable expression on his face—but his eyes always softened when he saw her. They became a pair: the poor Black boy from the streets and the wealthy white girl with ink-stained fingers and a smile that could warm brick walls. No one understood it. Everyone tried to tear it down. But they didn’t care. Aurelia taught him how to read under the old oak tree behind her estate, the one with the crooked roots and the hollow trunk they used to stash snacks and notes. She’d bring books from her mother’s old collection—tattered fairytales, dusty novels, newspapers—and they’d sit in the grass, her voice calm and patient, guiding him through every word, every line. “You’re smarter than you think,” she’d whisper when he got frustrated. “I ain’t smart,” DJ would mutter. “You’re just not practiced. There’s a difference.” He hated how much he loved that about her. Aurelia lived in a grand house near the lakeshore, white pillars and green shutters, too big for how empty it felt. Her father was always busy, always gone, working some “big client” deal that made her shoulders tense whenever she mentioned it. But the house wasn’t empty—not truly. Letty, the housekeeper, was a Black woman who’d worked for the Wentworths since Aurelia was born. Tall, strong, with deep brown eyes and a voice like gospel, she didn’t trust DJ at first. But she saw the way he looked at Aurelia, the way he walked on the side closest to the street like a man twice his age, protective by instinct. Eventually, Letty softened. Her daughter, Maybelle, was the same age as Aurelia—spirited, sharp-tongued, and just as headstrong. She became DJ’s second friend. The three of them—Lia, Maybelle, and DJ—formed a strange little trio. They played in the back garden, made up stories, climbed trees, and dared each other to sneak into the parlor after dark. They were laughter in a world that didn’t give kids like them much to smile about. On stormy nights, DJ would tap softly on Aurelia’s window. She never asked why—she always let him in. He’d crawl through the frame soaked and shivering, thunder rumbling through the walls. She’d pull the covers back and he’d slide in beside her, cold feet brushing hers. They’d lie still under the blankets, his heart racing like the storm outside. Sometimes they’d whisper. Sometimes she’d just hold him, her arms wrapped around his chest. “I hate thunder,” he admitted once, his voice nearly a breath. “I know,” she whispered back, tucking her chin on his shoulder. “But I don’t.” “Why?” “Because it brings you to me.” He didn’t say anything. But he never forgot those words. DJ never let anyone touch Aurelia. Once, a boy pushed her during recess. DJ waited until the school bell rang, then knocked the kid’s teeth loose behind the church. Another time, a teenager tried to grab her ribbon on the street. DJ split his eyebrow open with a brick. He didn’t care about rules. He cared about her. And Aurelia? She loved him more fiercely each day. But she never told him. Maybe she didn’t have to. It was in the way she looked at him when he wasn’t paying attention, the way she fixed his collar or held his hand just a little too long. It was a quiet love, pure and aching. Then, everything changed. DJ was thirteen, waiting outside Aurelia’s school when he saw two men in long coats arguing at the end of the block. One pulled a pistol. The other tried to run. A shot rang out. The man crumpled. Blood on snow. DJ ducked behind a parked car, heart in his throat. A woman screamed. Footsteps pounded. Police arrived seconds later. DJ stayed hidden until one spotted him. “Hey! You there! Come here!” They dragged him to the body, questioned him hard. Threats. Shouts. But he said nothing. Not a word. He’d learned early: loyalty kept you alive. Two nights later, a man in a gray suit approached him in the alley. “You got guts, kid,” the man said, lighting a cigarette. “You didn’t sing. We noticed that.” DJ didn’t reply. He just waited. “You want food in your belly? Roof over your head? You work for us now.” That’s how it started. The Mafia didn’t coddle. They tested him. Hard. He ran messages at first. Kept watch during dice games. Learned which streets were friendly, which ones weren’t. They fed him, clothed him, taught him respect—but never love. Only Lia had given him that. Still, he stayed. By the time he was fourteen, he was delivering packages with no return addresses and carrying a knife he knew how to use. The older men called him the quiet one. Efficient. Precise. Cold. But when his work was done, he always returned to her. Aurelia. The only softness he let himself have. And she saw the change in him. His shoulders stronger. His face more serious. His eyes a little colder. But not with her. Never with her. She’d touch his cheek and whisper, “You don’t scare me, DJ.” And he’d whisper back, “That’s ‘cause you’re the only one who sees me.” Then came the day everything broke. He was fifteen. The boss called him into the backroom of a cigar lounge on Roosevelt and 9th. “You’ve got promise, Spencer,” the man said, eyes narrowed. “New York needs young blood. You’re going.” “New York?” DJ asked, stunned. “You leave tomorrow.” He didn’t sleep that night. The next day, he went to Aurelia’s window one last time. She was already crying when she opened it. “You can’t go,” she whispered. “Please… take me with you.” “I can’t,” he said, voice tight. “It’s not safe for you.” “DJ—” “I’ll come back for you. I swear it.” Then, for the first time, he kissed her. Soft. Warm. Honest. It was a kiss that made promises without words. And then he was gone.