Then you run back to the refrigerator and yank the door wider.
The man inside stares at you in stunned disbelief. “You just saved my life.”
You shrug because the truth is too large to handle head-on. “Maybe.”
His mouth tries for a smile and fails halfway.
“We have to move,” he says.
You nod.
Moving him takes nearly everything you have.
He is weak, half-baked by heat and pain, and each step he takes out of the refrigerator looks stolen from a body that wants to collapse. You duck under his arm and let him lean on your shoulder, though his weight bends you sideways so far you almost laugh at the absurdity of it. A rich man in torn designer clothes limping through a landfill supported by a child who weighs maybe sixty pounds wet. If the world were fair, it would not be possible.
The world has never shown much interest in fairness.
You lead him away from the main paths, down into the maze of older waste where abandoned tires, stripped appliances, and collapsed furniture create narrow passages hidden from easy sight. It is a place children like you know and grown men hate, because footing is treacherous and visibility is bad. To you it is ugly, but legible.
To him it is probably a foreign country.
“What’s your name?” he asks after a minute, voice rough.
“Isabella.”
“I’m Gabriel.”
You file the name away without reaction. Names can matter later. Right now, keeping him conscious matters more.
You bring him to a half-collapsed concrete drainage culvert near the edge of the dump, hidden behind a hill of broken cinder blocks and scrap metal. Kids use it during rainstorms sometimes. Drunks use it at night. This morning it is empty except for dust, a torn blanket, and a graffiti-covered wall that smells less awful than the rest of the landfill, which in your life counts as luxury.
Gabriel sinks against the inner wall with a hiss of pain.
You kneel in front of him and finally get a better look at his injuries. The blood on his sleeve comes from a long cut along his upper arm, not deep enough to kill quickly but bad enough to matter. Two knuckles are split open. There is swelling at his ribs. His left ankle is puffed around the bone.
“You need a doctor,” you say.
He studies your face again with that unnerving full attention. “I need a phone I can trust.”
You almost laugh.
Trust is not something people in your world get retail access to. If you had a phone, it would not be a trusted one. It would be an old cracked thing shared by three families and paid for with borrowed money. But you do know where there is a pay phone still hanging outside a repair shop near the settlement road. Sometimes it works if you kick the lower panel first.
“Can you pay?” you ask bluntly.
Something flickers in his eyes. Not offense. Sad recognition. “Yes.”
“Because the owner won’t care if you’re dying. He’ll care if you’re paying.”
Again that almost-smile. This time it lands. “Understood.”
You tear a strip from the inside hem of your shirt and wrap his arm the way your mother showed you for kitchen cuts, only tighter. He does not stop you. When your fingers brush his watch, you notice it is gone. So is the ring line a married man might have. His pockets are turned out. Whoever dumped him made sure not to leave anything useful.
Except his life.
Maybe they thought the landfill would finish that part for free.
“Why were they looking for you?” you ask.
His gaze slides past your shoulder to the bright slash of daylight outside the culvert. “Because I know something they need buried.”
You snort softly. “Everybody throws buried things here.”
He looks back at you then, and for a second there is something like grief in his expression. “Not everyone survives digging them up.”
You do not know what that means, but before you can ask, your lungs seize hard.
It happens suddenly, as it always does. A sharp narrowing, a band tightening around your chest while the air becomes thick and unreachable. You turn your face away and cough, bending forward with one hand braced on the dirt.
Gabriel straightens despite the pain. “Isabella?”
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