“Yo, street rat! Come here.”
The small teen looked over. While his real name was Rob, everyone who ever met him called him Ratty or Street Rat. Small dark eyes, a small frame and a tendency to dart from place to place gave the overall impression that he was a bit like a rodent. He started to back away from the much larger boy.
“No, tttthanks anyway. The last ttttime, I nearly got cccaught in the ccccat door.”
The larger boy, Leo, caught up with Ratty and grabbed his collar. “You better come when I call. You don’t come, you’ll get hurt. Understand me?” Leo was 16 and the leader of the street kids. He claimed the best of the clothes any of them found, most of the money from anything anyone sold and most of the food at the end of the day. He was backed by Owen and Geoff, two of the biggest bullies that Ratty had ever met.
Ratty nodded. The bigger kids ruled the streets, he was too small to come out ahead in a fight. “I’m here. What did you want?”
“Geoff there, he spotted an open window that’s just your size. So you know what to do, don’t you?” smirked Leo.
Ratty shook from head to toe. He hated being sent into strange homes to steal anything precious he found. “Are you ssure? Dddddid sssssomeone ccccheck if it’s empty?”
Leo shook Ratty. “Don’t back talk me. Do you want me to take you back to the orphanage and leave you tied up outside the door? Do you?”
“Nnno. Please, not that.” Ratty still remembered the horror of the local orphanage clearly. All the kids at the orphanage were put to work as soon as they could walk on their own. They spent their days sorting through laundry, washing clothes, making repairs. A lot of the older boys were adopted by mine bosses to work within the smaller tunnels and the girls would become cheap servants for city dwellers. Because of his small size, Ratty would be working in a mine within a few days of being left at the orphanage.
“Geoff and Owen, help our little friend. Drop him in that window so he doesn’t have to climb through,” Leo said, chuckling unpleasantly. Leo kept holding Ratty’s collar until the other two boys had an arm each. They started to drag Ratty across the road.
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