The creep lay flat on the street, faceup. He twitched, stilled, twitched again. They’d stuck the creep with something that dropped him like a rock.
Every time he moved, I swear my eye flinched.
Two people in something like white moon suits hovered, taking measurements, writing on clipboards. People in navy jackets with yellow CDC lettering were erecting a tent around them.
Gabbi and I stood on the corner opposite the house of the woman and her trash can. The last direct rays of light turned the surrounding roofs a golden brown. The aroma of someone’s backyard grill said a family was eating burgers like nothing had happened. A yellow line of tape hung between us and gawkers with their phones out recording every move. I kept our phone away. I wasn’t like them, no matter how much I wanted to post about this. I wanted to help people who needed it, not enjoy someone’s bad luck.
We were inside the taped circle. I very much wanted not to be. Officer Hanley had been nice to us before—sure he messed with our camps and kicked us off corners and out of squats, but he saved us even though we were street roaches.
Now he hovered feet away to make sure we couldn’t leave.
I touched my eye and then forced my hand down. If I rubbed it anymore I was paranoid I’d break the skin.
Someone was going to call CPS. They’d act like they were doing it for my own good. They’d send me to a home, or ranch, or juvie. They’d tell me what to do, when to do it, how to do it—and have enough power to force me. I knew this. They had taken me in once. I had tried to kill myself.
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I said.
“No kidding,” Gabbi said.
I was glad she had her courage back because at the moment I was like a little kid scared of the dark. I couldn’t handle being trapped. She couldn’t handle anything to do with her parents. We each had our traumas and tried to respect them.
I thought about how to get back to the van. I texted Ano a cryptic message about not coming after us. No sense them getting caught up in all this. They were at a nearby park, in a spot nestled among some old oaks we had claimed that day from the pervs that went to shag off together in the great outdoors. Otherwise the van was our home when we weren’t at the library, the gym, the mall, or dreaming about owning our own piece of land one day.
The phone showed the second post had gone live. I was glad the information was getting out. I didn’t know how to even begin to explain this situation, but I would find a way. I returned the phone to Gabbi’s pocket.
A moon suit approached Officer Hanley. He motioned us over.
Moon suit held up a hand when we came within a few feet. “That’s far enough.” A woman’s voice.
Her suit reeked of new rubber and plastic. This close, the clear plastic shield seemed to shrink her mouth and enlarge her eyes. Her glasses underneath were orange and made her blue eyes look like they were rimmed in fire. Her hair was stuck to her forehead, curled with pomade and pins.
“I am Dr. Ferrad. Please, understand time is of the essence. Were you scratched or bitten or otherwise injured?”
I didn’t answer and so Gabbi remained silent too.
Office Hanley took a step forward but she held up her hand.
She raked her eyes over my legs, my bare collarbone, my arms, my face. Her face seemed larger than life behind the shield. She was the astronaut and we were the alien species she was deciding how to dissect.
Where the blood had landed on me felt like a neon sign. She must see it. She must know. And then she would take me away and they would never let me go.
Her eyes stopped on my arm. My arm of scars, naming all my dead street friends. The freshest was months old. A series of raised, whitish lines.
She passed by my eye like there was nothing special about it.
I released a long, slow breath.
She held up a finger, pointing at something on Gabbi’s arm. “There."
It was a scratch. Long dried. “That’s from this morning,” I said. “The creep didn’t do it.” Gabbi had caught her arm on a jagged piece of metal. Standard stuff for us.
“Take them in,” Dr. Ferrad said to Officer Hanley.
“It’s not my fault,” Gabbi said. “It’s not from him.”
Gabbi stepped back. Officer Hanley stepped forward. Dr. Ferrad set down the clipboard. The noise from the gawkers increased.
A groan rose above all the noise, then someone screamed.
The tent was only half up. The creep was sitting and had buried a pen into the arm of a white suit.
Dr. Ferrad yelled for Officer Hanley to watch the two of us before racing away.
Officer Hanley rested a hand on his holstered gun. “Stay where you are.”
It seemed like all the navy jackets and uniforms had gotten sucked into the middle of the circle. Gawkers pressed into the yellow tape, holding up their phones, lights bright and blinding.
Energy rippled through the crowd. There were more screams, but this time from the crowd. A woman with a bloody face lurched into the tape and fell into Officer Hanley’s arms.
People scattered.
I tugged on Gabbi’s arm. “Time to go.”
We ran.
Officer Hanley yelled our names, but the crowd hid us. People were pushing, tripping, screaming. Phones smashed to the ground. A shot fired, and then another, and another. Weird, muffled shots that sounded like whatever they’d dropped the creep with.
We sprinted across two lawns. A man wearing a red lumberjack kind of shirt appeared. I ran into him and lost my balance. He grabbed at me, his hands a dirty red. A metallic smell washed over me, making me want to wretch. His breath stank like something had died in there.
I punched the heel of my hand into the flesh of his neck. He curled his fingers into my clothing, pulling me closer. His face was crazy, cranked, like an axe murderer out of a movie.
My threadbare spanging shirt ripped. I fell onto the ground. He loomed over me like a demon shadow. A scream lodged in my throat. I scrambled up, scraping my palms, my knees. A fingernail peeled back, the pain striking up my arm like lightning.
Gabbi bowled into his side, knocking him over, but he sprung right back up.
We ran down the block. Our shoes slapped against the asphalt, our breaths turned ragged. My heart pumped a million times a second.
I looked back over my shoulder. Mr. Axe Murderer was running too, as if our sprint had only made him lock onto us like a predator giving chase. This guy was cranked just like the creep, but he sure didn’t have a limp to hold him back.
Gabbi huffed behind me, but didn't cover the growls from the man running us down as if we were the last people on earth.
“What do we do?” Gabbi yelled.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t have an answer. She would do what I said as soon the words were out. For all her toughness and could-care-less act, there was no one in the group I trusted more than I trusted Gabbi, except maybe Leaf. But Gabbi was never any good with plans. She’d do something stupid, say something stupid. This was up to me to figure out, I just needed to come up with something, fast.
“Split up!” I yelled finally. “If he follows you, take the long way back to the van. If he follows me, get to Spencer and say it’s like the station in Texas.”
“What?” Gabbi’s panicky voice cut off the end of the word.
“Just do it.” I veered right. “Now!”
Gabbi followed me for a step, twisted, and sprinted in the other direction.
I waited to see who Mr. Axe Murderer would follow.
A few blocks away, it was still chaos, but it seemed like part of a television show. Screams, sirens, shots. All white noise to this meth head. A chill went up my spine. Meth heads were the worst. The most aggro. One guy had knocked out all of this other guy’s teeth while we’d been train bound once in the Midwest.
Please let him just be a meth head.
He swiveled between me and Gabbi’s disappearing form.
If he was going to follow anyone, it was going to me. I shouted and waved my hands around.
As if on cue, he tilted his head, sniffed, and then locked onto me.
A hiccup caught in my throat. This guy was going to catch me and eat me, and I would never see the others again or get to buy Jimmy his birthday present.
I willed my legs to work. I needed one of Gabbi’s scathing remarks to belittle me into action. It was his teeth that finally made me move. His mouth hung open, showing off a bloody grin and split lip. The idea that he might eat me didn’t seem so silly.
I ran for a gap behind the closest strip mall and raced around a pair of light blue dumpsters, toward a rusting gate that was always left unlocked. I’d pop through that into an empty lot cracked with weeds and broken glass. It backed up to the park. Gabbi would make it to the others. They’d be ready with our smileys. I just needed to bring him—
Someone had locked the gate.
Sweat poured down my back. The stench of cat piss flooded my nostrils.
A brand new, shiny padlock linked the two sagging sides together. It looked like a toy—unweathered, undented.
A grunt and snuffle sounded behind me.
I wished for Ano. I had lied. There was no one I trusted more than him, or the steel that entered into his eyes when he moved to stop someone from hurting somebody else—or take revenge on someone for having hurt somebody else. No one.
I whirled around.
Mr. Axe Murderer stretched out his hands like some sort of monster in a movie.
“You really need some new moves.”
He stumbled as if my voice had tripped some sort of humanity switch. His throat produced a low growl of words too garbled to understand. If they were words at all. This guy was definitely on meth. Some new formula that really took it up a notch. I ignored the little voice in my head that asked—then what were the moon suits for?
“You don’t have to do this.”
He ground his teeth, making popping noises.
I scanned the dumpster, the gate, the lock, the broken glass and rat droppings, the few sticks of wood, scattered and splintered. There was only one way out.
I threw myself at the fence. It sagged and bent me back toward the ground. I pressed myself against the wire, which cut into my flesh, and started climbing.
Hands grabbed me around the ankles and pulled my feet off the fence. I hung stretched in the air, my fingers the only part keeping me from dropping. I kicked and twisted and fell back with a whoosh that knocked my breath away.
My feet found new toeholds. I reached the top bar, folded myself over, took a breath. I would flip over and drop to the ground and leave the creep behind.
The fence shook, almost throwing me off. A coin fell from my pocket, pinging the metal. The creep’s face bobbed into view. He was climbing the fence. Crap.
I flipped like the top was a monkey bar and I was twelve years old showing my underwear off to the high school boys.
I dropped hard on my feet and pain shot up my shins. The rest of the coins spilled into the air, glinting copper and silver before disappearing in the weeds.
The creep dropped to the ground with a thump.
Shivers seized my muscles in spite of the heat.
There was something seriously wrong with this dude and it wasn’t meth.
I raced through the broken glass and weeds, hopping over the low stone border that separated the lot from the park. Oak trees dotted the open field. The dirt was rock hard, the grass yellow and short from fire hazard mowing.
I leapt onto the dirt trail that bikers and pedestrians and horses used during the daylight hours. The sirens that had disappeared returned. I chanced a backward glance.
A flash from a cigarette lighter caught my eye. A figure stepped from the trees. Dark hair, almost black, trimmed and styled to look a little wild. A dark jean-colored shirt that almost matched his hair. Movie star lips and piercing eyes that hid everything inside.
Ano.
Gabbi had gotten to them in time. They were waiting. They were ready.
Ano looked past me. His eyes widened. He sprinted in my direction.
Something tripped my ankle. My leg twisted, lost traction. I slapped the ground like a fly swatter. My chin burst into waves of pain. Pain flared in my calf. Stars exploded before my eyes, but did not fully hide how the creep’s mouth had latched onto my bare leg.
I punched the creep in the nose even before I could think. I had practice with that, waking up to someone on top of me and needing to react fast. I punched until his nose cracked like a stick. He de-latched. I slammed both hands against his ears. I dug a thumb into one eye and hooked my other thumb in his nose and pulled until the skin broke. Bile burned my throat, but I used my anger to push it down.
Then Ano came swinging his smiley.
A second later, the creep was unconscious next to me. There was now a gash along his temple and across his ear. Blood smeared his face like clown makeup, but it wasn’t my blood—I didn’t think it was my blood. I didn’t want it to be my blood.
Sirens grew louder. Police cars and a dark van screeched to a halt at the park’s edge.
Something grabbed my shoulders. I yelped.
“Let’s go,” Ano said over the impossibly loud sirens. “Get up. Get up.”
“I can’t,” I said. “My ankle’s twisted.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You don’t have any idea how bad it is or isn’t!"
Ano hooked his arms under me and lifted. “Come on.” He pulled me into the bushes.
We crouched behind an oak tree in the bushes. Here in the brush it was dark and cool. The smell of blood was replaced by the smell of dried grass, sweet and papery. I felt my leg. There were dents. My fingers came away wet with blood and my entire leg felt like it was burning.
Yards away was the open field I had just run through, a winding trail, and an unconscious monster. Sirens turned off. Three navy jackets jumped out of the van. Two police officers set out rifles with scopes, a third came out with a dog.
Two horses trotted from the trees. The riders stared at the officers, not realizing how close Mr. Axe Murderer was. One horse spooked and reared up. The rider slipped onto the ground. The horse sprinted away. The other rider stopped her horse from bolting and veered back to her friend.
“Stop right there!” A man’s voice said through a bullhorn. “Do not leave the area!”
Mr. Axe Murderer sat up and saw the woman on the ground. He went for her.
There was a crack, like a car backfiring.
His head exploded into red mist, spraying her face, neck, arms, shirt.
The mist cleared. People shouted from far away. The second horse bolted for the trees, the rider holding on to the mane.
“We are officers from California’s Center for Disease Control. Remain where you are! We are here to help.”
The horse did not slow. Another shot took it down, the thin, spindly legs twisting into the air, the woman disappearing underneath.
Ocean waves pounded in my ears. They weren’t supposed to be using real bullets. They were supposed to be worried about the blood.
The navy jackets approached the field. The woods glowed orange and pink from the sunset, casting everything in this disturbing warm glow—as if instead of blood and guts and gore, people were meeting up for a picnic.
“Mary!” Ano whispered fiercely in my ear. “You’re not helping!”
I came back as if from a dream and thought, this must be what shock feels like. I let go of his wrist. My fingernails had dug into his skin and drawn blood. I put my feet back under me.
Ano passed me, jumping around and then ahead of me so that I could follow. We twisted along the winding trail for another hundred yards, deep into the darkening woodland, deep into the tall, dry grasses no one had bothered to mow because it was too far in to care about. The grasses scratched against each other and against us, making noise louder than the shouts behind us. I ignored the pain in my leg.
Ano veered at a downed tree. We burst into a small cleared area. On this side of the park, ranch houses and acres of horse property rimmed the border. Holdovers from before this place had become big enough to be called a city.
Our van was there and Jimmy was in the passenger seat, waving. Leaf held open the van door.
Once inside, it took long seconds for my eyes to adjust.
Everyone was there. Gabbi and Ricker in the back with me, Ano and Leaf and Jimmy. Spencer sat in the driver’s seat. He was so tall his brown hair brushed the ceiling sometimes. People thought he was in his twenties even though he was only nineteen. He’d left home at fourteen, not because anything was really wrong at home but because he’d gotten tired of the shouting.
“Burn some rubber,” Leaf said. “But be careful, that left back tire has a thin tread.” Leaf could have been a football player if he’d stayed in school. He had the build and the looks, with his wide-set eyes, curly, messy, light brown hair, a cleft chin. He always scrunched his nose when he smiled.
“I remember.” Spencer gunned the engine, rocking the cab.
I lifted myself onto a bench seat and the others did likewise. I took in a deep, slow breath. Hints of the lavender-scented shampoo we all used from the fitness center filled my nose. So did our sweat from spending a hot summer day on the street. None of us ever seemed completely able to wash it off.
It all smelled like home.
Jimmy turned around and stared at me. “Are you okay?”
“Happy birthday, Jimmy,” I said, grinning, but the look on his face told me it must have come out as more of a grimace.
Ricker laughed. Leaf smiled. I couldn’t see Gabbi’s face but I suspected she would be frowning. Spencer didn’t smile either. I didn’t look for Ano’s expression in case I burst into tears.
I pulled out a fistful of bills from my pocket. No coins were left. An oncoming car’s headlights lit up the faces of my friends. “Hot showers, anyone?”
“Yes, please,” Gabbi said.
Ano broke open the first aid kit we kept stashed under the front seat. Leaf rummaged through the clothes cabinet.
At the next light, Ano set himself up on the floor of the van and began to look me over. The disinfectant stung, but I gritted my teeth. He handled my ankle like it was fragile glass that might shatter. Too late, I wanted to tell him. I’d already been shattered and put myself back together. But that really could have described any of us.
He dabbed a rag at the bite.
“Pour the whole bottle on it,” I said to Ano, wishing I could use it on my eye too.
Leaf pulled out an oversized lavender sweatshirt and a pair of threadbare, royal purple sweat pants and tossed them to me.
“Gee, thanks.”
Leaf ignored my sarcasm. “What happened after you and Gabbi split up?”
I explained about Mr. Axe Murderer and the lock. “How does it look?” I said.
“You’ll live,” Ano said.
“Unless I’m infected with whatever that creep had,” I said quietly.
He rested a hand on my bare knee and I lost myself in the dark pools of his eyes.
“You’ll be fine,” Gabbi interjected.
I smiled, the moment interrupted. Her grimace only deepened because she knew I was faking it for her sake. She wasn’t stupid, just sometimes seemed that way because she was so stubborn.
“We should take her to the emergency room,” Ricker said, always the practical one. He wanted to get off the street and maybe become a bus driver one day. He thought maybe he’d like helping people travel around.
“If we take her,” Spencer said, “Then they’ll take her. She’ll be deep in the system and might never come back out.”
Ricker pressed his lips together in a grim line. The chug of the engine changed to a low whine as Spencer turned into a parking lot. Spencer knew more about the system than any of us. He was the only one who had finished high school so far, on account of his being locked up and forced to do it. If you really wanted to get Spencer mad, you asked him about school.
“What do you want to do?” Ano said.
Everyone seemed to wait for my answer. I didn’t know what the right answer was, only what I wanted most at that moment. “I just want to take a shower.”
The van stopped. “We’re here,” Spencer said.
Through the front windshield, the fitness club sign glowed red against the pink sky. Inside there were hot showers, running water, real bathrooms available at any time of day. No one could kick us out as long as we paid our dues. We’d started the contract through a gift debit card Spencer had picked up at the liquor store. As long as we kept it on file, we could pay cash on the account.
Leaf pulled out an envelope from the clothes cabinet. He held out his hand for the dollars in mine.
“I usually pay. He expects me to pay,” I said.
“He’s going to have to take a rain-check,” Ano said, because everyone knew how I paid our dues when we were short sometimes.
I looked over my bloody clothes and gave over the green.
Leaf jumped out. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
Ano closed the door and held up the purple clothes. “Put this over what you’re wearing. We can’t get you inside looking like that.” He grabbed a rag and a gallon milk jug we stored water in. He soaked the rag and then started scrubbing at my face.
“Ow,” I said.
“You look like you murdered someone,” Ano said.
“I know,” I said. “Kind of feels like it.”
“How would you know?” Ano said.
“May I never know.”
Ano worked away at my forehead, then my neck.
“Gabbi,” I said. “Do you have the phone?”
She pulled it out and handed it to me. I opened the message app and began typing.
“What are you doing,” Ano said quietly.
“I don’t know how to put what’s happening right now in words, but there’s a lot of other stuff I have to say.”
“You can do it later. We should be focused on cleaning up and leaving town.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know how to explain that there was this sinking feeling inside me. It said I probably didn’t have much time left. Street kids felt that way a lot. I had felt that way before and I was still alive. But this seemed different somehow.
“If I don’t get this out there now. I feel like, I don’t know, I feel like it’s going to drain out of my brain and I’ll never remember it.”
He shook his head, his dark eyes disappearing in the growing shadows. “You always remember when it matters.”
I stopped, then reached for his hand and held it. “Maybe not this time.” In spite of the heat, he shivered.
“Stop it, Mary,” Gabbi said. “Don’t talk like that.”
“All right, Gabbi. Sorry.” I swallowed around a lump forming in my throat. “So…you and me, we should go spanging again tomorrow, don’t you think? We’ve got to take advantage of our lucky streak while it lasts.”
“Oh shut up,” she said, but there was a smile in her words.
To be honest, I felt a hint of a smile on my lips because this was the part I liked best—lifting people’s spirits when things were really crappy. “There was this one dude today,” I said, “he got all up in our business when he saw the phone, but we set him straight.”
“You almost pushed him into the street!” Gabbi said.
“You would have, if I hadn’t done it,” I said.
“Yeah, thanks, but no, I wouldn’t have.”
“You would have if he’d been picking on me,” I said.
“But he went for Gabbi,” Ano said. “And you didn’t let him.”
“She just stood up,” Gabbi said, standing up and reenacting the scene, “and he was like head and shoulders taller than her, but he wouldn’t stop messing with us, so she got up between me and him, and it doesn’t even matter that he’s all red in the face and about to call the cops. She pushed him twice until he got a clue.” Gabbi laughed. “He pretty much ran down the block after that.”
“See,” Ano said, caressing the back of my hand with his thumb. “You remember what to do when it counts.”
The quick adrenaline rush of the retelling drifted away. “Yeah. I guess so.”
I finished the blog post while he finished scraping my face with the rag. There was a lot more I had planned to say, but I couldn’t remember it at the moment. I saved it as a draft so I could finish it later. I hoped Ano was right—that this time was like all the others and I’d figure out a way to survive it.
I tapped the button and returned the phone to Gabbi’s care. I realized Jimmy hadn’t said a word for a long time. “Jimmy? Are you okay?”
A sniffling sound came from his direction.
“It’s going to be okay, Jimmy,” I said.
Spencer looked away. So did Ricker, Ano, Gabbi. No one wanted to make him feel bad for crying. We all cried sometimes. We all did our best to hide it.
The metal rollers screeched as the door opened. Leaf stood in semi-shadow, the sign lights casting an eerie neon line around his body. He was only fifteen, but had been a throwaway for two years. One day he told his mom he was gay and she told him never to come back.
The parking lot was empty, the sky now a dull imitation of its earlier colors. Leaf looked at Spencer and something passed between them that none of us could read. They did that sometimes. They’d been together for awhile now.
“We’re good.”
Steam filled the bathroom with curtains of damp air. The tile was slippery, cold, welcoming. Female voices bounced off the ceramic walls and created a sort of chaotic foundation of noise that soothed me. Gabbi and I stepped into different stalls, having left the boys to their side of the bathrooms.
I blasted the shower on full and let the lavender shampoo and hot water wash away the sweat, the blood, the dirt. The pain of the heat mixed with the pain in my leg. The wound was fiery, red, puckered. But it was my eye that burned like a black widow bite, the poison creeping through my skin and muscles, entering my blood stream, poisoning my system along the way. The leg bite had only added insult to injury. I told myself if I wasn’t feeling better in two hours I would make them dump me at the closest hospital.
The water drummed on my back like the rhythm of a train on the tracks. Hopping a train was always a rush. Like when you get your first tattoo. That kind of rush. It’s like the best movie screen. You just sit there and maybe you’re high or drunk, or not, it doesn’t matter. You see these places, these dark forests and blue-black nights and stars and mountains and there is no other way to see them.
The water cut off with a whine and a trickle.
I dried myself off with a towel, scrubbing my skin until it flushed red, breathing in the clean scent of the cotton. Blood trickled in two rivulets down either side of my ankle. The flesh had swelled enough I thought the bite would stop bleeding soon.
I tied a strip of cloth tight around my calf and dressed in the purple outfit I was still stuck with.
Our phone rested on the bench next to Gabbi’s clothes. I sat down with it and texted out everything I could think of about how to run away and keep from making my same mistakes. The post felt jumbled, unconnected, but I felt better when it was all down.
I decided to make it go live, right then. Just in case.
The app’s progress bar moved, then stalled. I stared at it, willing the bar to move just a little more, but there wasn’t enough signal. An error message popped up and said it would try again every five minutes until it completed the connection. That would have to do.
I locked the phone and waited for Gabbi and thought about what to do next.
We were all together now, we had been together, watching out for each other for years. We could rely on one another to get out of scrapes and mistakes and danger. We had plans to get off the streets and then we’d be safe for good and no one would stop us. We’d get out of town and then visit some random med clinic. I’d tell them a homeless guy had bitten me and they would pump me so full of antibiotics I’d have the runs for weeks.
End of infection. End of a crazy story I would then write about for days, but only as fiction. Otherwise no one would believe it.
Four women entered the bathroom, their voices sharp and loud and full of derision. One of the women looked at me, just looked at me. She wore yoga pants and a tight-fitting tank top, black on bottom, bright pink on top. Her face said she knew I didn’t belong there. Two of the women dropped used towels on the tile floor and kept walking. The pitch of their voices slapped the walls and then my ears. My head flared with pain and red washed over my vision.
She spoke even though her mouth didn’t open. She looked right at me and said, “You’re a whore and your mother is a whore and no wonder your stepdad beat you. Leave now while you still have the chance.”
I curled my fists and a low growl crept into my throat. How dare she. I paid my dues. We paid and we didn’t come in here acting like we owned the place, acting like we could do whatever we wanted, dropping towels on the ground for someone else to pick up.
“Mary?”
I whirled, readying a punch.
Gabbi’s eyes widened and she raised her hands to block a blow. Her hair rested in wet tendrils around her shoulders, dampening her shirt.
But I would never hit her.
Conversation stopped. The silence deafened me.
I realized the woman hadn’t said a word to me. I’d imagined it, but it had seemed so real.
I opened my hands and forced my arms to my sides. The sound of shower water filled the space.
Gabbi glared at the women. They looked away. “Come on. Let’s go.”
We went from the shower stalls to the locker area. Side by side, like I hadn’t been about to attack her. The women laughed at something, probably us.
“Did they ask for your ID, too?” One of the women said, her words almost lost in the way it slapped around the tile.
We both froze.
“Right after class. They aren’t letting anyone out until they check your ID.”
“Did they say who they’re looking for? What would they be doing here?”
“Lots of weird stuff in the news these days. I’m just glad I got my mother-in-law to take the kids for an hour. I can’t bother to keep up with much else.”
Gabbi grabbed my sleeve. I walked to the bathroom entrance and looked out. The cool air conditioning was a shock after the humidity of the bathroom. The suits had arrived. One currently waited outside rooms opposite from us. Two more moved around treadmills and weight benches, pausing to look at faces and then moving on.
“How did they know we were here?” I said.
“Does it matter?” Gabbi said.
We shrunk into the shadow of the bathroom entrance. I pressed myself into the stone wall and looked back into the women’s bathroom, and then out to the men hunting for us. “I’ll get the boys.”
“Mary,” Gabbi hissed.
I slipped across the open space separating the two sides. The humidity hit me like a wet blanket. A young guy sat on the bench, toweling his hair, another small white towel around his waist. He looked up and raised an eyebrow at me.
I smiled and said, “Sorry, just looking for my friends.”
“It’s all right.” He smiled back.
“Spencer!” I shouted loud enough for them to hear but not loud enough to draw attention from outside. “Food’s getting cold!” Which was our fancy secret code for it was time to get the hell out.
The boys tumbled out of the shower area in various states of dress and wetness, but done up enough to go in public. Ano looked good dressed in loose pants and bare chest that showed off his tan and dozens of white scars.
I didn’t say anything, just forced a smile at Spencer’s look so he would know we were in real trouble.
Leaf grabbed a pile of stuff from the bench and headed past me out of the bathroom. I turned to walk alongside him.
“Bad?” he said.
“Not good,” I said.
“How’s the leg?”
“Not so good either.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. For a moment, a half breath, a millisecond, this spark lit up inside of me, it told me to hurt him because he wasn’t allowed to touch me without asking, and I would teach him a lesson so that he would never, ever touch anyone again.
Bile stung my throat. I pushed myself away and walked into the center of the main workout space, veering for one of the suits.
Leaf was the kindest, gentlest, most brotherly person of all the people I had ever, ever known. He would never hurt me, he was only offering the comfort I had often sought out from him. What was wrong with me?
My stomach twisted. Pain flared in my calf. I stumbled, knee touching the cushioned floor. I looked up and locked stares with one of the suits.
“Hey.” He stretched out his arm. “Stay where you are.” He pulled out a phone and spoke into it.
The two other suits turned like robots. I felt their gaze on me, evaluating me, undressing me. I would make them pay. I would—
“Mary!” Gabbi hissed. She grabbed me on one side, and suddenly Ano was there and he lifted me off the ground.
The fire alarm went off. The ringing covered the dance music. A strobe light flashed. People streamed from the rooms, the treadmills, the pools. The women rushed out of the bathroom.
The suits yelled and waved their hands and pushed people aside, but no one heard them over the alarm. Their pushing only made people freak out more.
A family of five ran for the front doors, two women followed, and the chaos grew and bottlenecked at the people-counter. The suits tried to stop the tide. An older man must have been shouting because his face turned purple.
Finally the suits stood back and opened the door. The alarm continued its piercing tone. A middle-aged woman slapped her hands over her ears. Two teenagers tried their headphones.
Gabbi and Ano helped me hop over the people-counter next to a bodybuilder still slick with sweat and oil. The suits couldn’t see us.
A dark van and cop car, sirens and lights off, were parked next to our van. The doors were open, shadows were inside. One of them stepped outside, into the parking lot light. Officer Hanley. Even in the chaos, he saw us, shouted, pointed. The other uniforms jumped out.
Ano said, “Around then. Quick.”
It seemed like everyone inside the gym was now outside. People milling around, phones out, asking others what was happening. I waited for the groan and growl of a monster to start up. It was too close to what Gabbi and I had just been through. Crowds were bad news.
Spencer pushed people away and made a path. We rounded the corner. The crowd closed behind us, creating an obstacle course for the uniforms. The alarm faded into a dull ringing.
Leaf took the lead, making us run behind the dumpsters, through an alleyway, out back behind a grocery store we scored leftover fruit from on Wednesdays.
We continued silently on foot. Leaf stopped at the next block, a strip mall where people only ordered dinner for take out, never dine in. The greasy smells drifting out of the Chinese hole-in-the-wall made my stomach rumble with hunger and a sudden queasiness. I hadn't eaten since early that morning. A cash advance place had closed for the night, though the entire inside was still lit up and the sign glowed a nauseous green.
“I did it,” Jimmy said. “I pulled the fire alarm. I did just like you said, Spencer. I really did it.” His voice raised in pitch.
Ano let go of me and I was suddenly drifting. The building, the lights, the trees, the people, it all wavered, just a little bit. Jimmy shouldn’t be talking so loud. He was going to get us found. We were a bunch of teenagers who looked like they’d just run away from a bunch of trouble. He needed to shut up.
“Mary, what are you doing?” Ano’s voice came from far away. All I could see was Jimmy’s pinched, young face. Flushed from the run, from the showers, from the pride of pulling the alarm that had kept me from turning myself over to the uniforms and saving them all. It was his fault.
“Get away, Mary, just back off!” Ano jumped between me and Jimmy.
I stopped. I didn’t understand why I had stopped. Why had I been moving? Why were my hands in the air, my fingers curled into claws?
I stood there, swaying on my feet, trying to figure this out. It was ME, I was the one who jumped between oogles and trouble. I was the one, not him, not anyone else. Why was he standing there, looking at me like that?