by Gin Price
“I don’t trust those sons of bitches,” he’d said over breakfast. “You’re going to meet me there tonight and look forlorn and pathetic. Tell Surge I said hi and he better have you at the meeting.”
I’d relayed the message to Surge when we first hooked up, hence why he looked slightly panicked now. My pops is a big, white boy trucker, who told whatever guy came ’round the house that he knew places to hide bodies all over the U.S. Maybe I should’ve been embarrassed by his violent imagery, but he probably felt threats were his only way of protecting me from my brother’s friends while he was away delivering car parts and whatnot cross-country.
In truth, he didn’t have to worry. Between Surge and my brothers, no one dared ask me out. I guess most little sisters would hate that kind of blockage, but I could honestly say a boy didn’t exist in my territory I wanted to date. Not that I looked. A boyfriend wasn’t a priority. I had dreams of going to college on a gymnastics scholarship, and after coming in first at Regionals, I was getting closer to that goal.
I figured my win, and the huge deal the media made out of the school I came from, was proof that Pops had nothing to worry about. Still, Surge was right, we had to go. We could run from the cops, but my dad was another story. “Alright, motor on.”
I walked back up the spine of the lion ready to start the freerun flow again, only to hear Surge cluck his tongue in the code we used for incoming security. We’d used it so much lately I was surprised we didn’t have blisters on the roofs of our mouths.
I dismounted from the statue and waved at the sharply dressed library guard who came storming down the steps toward me.
“You almost got close this time, Carl!”
“Quit antagonizing him, LL. Come on.”
Surge grabbed my hand and practically dragged me all the way to City Hall.
We stayed grounded, which made the travel time longer, but Surge refused to freerun so close to police headquarters after our earlier encounter. I couldn’t blame him. I faced a ticket or an arrest for disorderly conduct. Surge was on probation, thanks to the trespassing tickets he’d accumulated over the past two years. If he got busted now, he’d not only be in violation, but they’d probably add every charge they could: malicious destruction of property, failure to yield to pedestrians—breathing. That’s what happens when freedom of expression collides with boundaries.
***
We arrived downtown with a few minutes to spare, but no time to catch our breath as we hurried to the front door.
City Hall is a three-story building, if you included the basement where all the financial offices were. That’s where you went to pay your “idiot tickets,” as Pops called them.
The outside looked like someone had painted the building with mortar and thrown pebbles at it. Most of the pebbles had either lost their shine or fallen off during the years since the building’s birth, which was in 1954, according to the plaque above the main entrance.
Once, City Hall had been a modern and well cared-for establishment. Now, years of neglect and angry, destructive criminals had brought it down. An ongoing theme in the good ole city of Three Rivers.
A couple of cops held the front door open for us. Surge tensed as we passed as if he expected a net to come down on his head.
“Stop looking so shifty,” I scolded as we walked down the corridor. “Cops within a mile radius will home in on that look of guilt.”
“Don’t need a mile when their jail is attached to this building, LL.”
“It’s been an hour and he didn’t get a good look at us. Paranoid much?”
I opened the double doors to the conference room and blinked. The proceedings seemed to be on hold, as the board members talked amongst themselves. The lull made our entrance center-stage. Yippee.
The walls were lined with the general public. Police officers stood at attention at ten-foot intervals to protect and serve—the board members. They eyed us suspiciously as we entered.
“See? I just got mentally written four tickets by those cops for SWB.”
The officers were staring at us hard, but that’s probably in their job description. “SWB?” I asked.
“Standing While Black.”
I laughed a little louder than could be considered good manners, earning me a crooked-finger-beckon from my Pops.
“There are two white cops here and the rest, well, aren’t. You can’t say that,” I said, surfing the bodies toward the seats my father saved for us.
“They’re still paid by Whitey. We’re on the Branfort side, remember?”
I rolled my eyes. Surge was a victimized black man in his own mind, trapped in a diverse community that never did anything racist toward him. He had to invent things to tell his cousins in California.
“You’re late,” Pops growled, looking over my head at Surge.
With a playful slap I chastised him for bullying as I snuck in behind his gigantic body. Despite my father’s dramatics, he really could be described as a big teddy bear. “Sit, Surge. No way am I staying here alone.”
My father shushed me and I sat down without another word.
The board members gathered their tiny brains and melded them together, whispering among themselves until… “We’ve come to a decision.”
“Wait! That’s it? You’ve come to a decision in ten minutes and without hearing what everyone has to say?”
The crowd collectively jostled for a better look at the guy who spoke, mumbling their concerns about his outburst.
“Young man,” a rotund woman barked from the council chairs, trying to be heard over the growing din. “The parents here have spoken eloquently enough for your case. We feel—”
The young man in question stood on his chair and pointed his finger at each board member. “We, the students, are the most affected. We deserve to have a voice.”
Huh, I thought. The guy kind of sounded like my Pops.
I gave him a quick once-over, wondering, probably like everyone else, whether or not he was legitimate or starting trouble on a dare from his friends. He wore his pants baggy but not thug-y and a hoodie with the hood portion pushed back instead of drawn up over his dark hair. But his face, from what I could see from my side view, was the most startling attribute. I couldn’t see if he was hot or anything, but his skin was bright red with anger, like he was really pissed at not being allowed some mic time.
“Could someone please escort this young man out?”
“He has a right to speak,” someone shouted.
“This has dragged on long enough,” someone else countered. And the fighting began.
By then, the local police had their hands on the guy who started the disturbance and jerked him off his chair. I gasped and stood, feeling like I should do something to help him, but what?
“This is bullshit,” the guy yelled.
His gaze searched the crowd for support and landed on…me of all people. I tried to encourage him with a “right-on” smile, but our moment of camaraderie was broken by a mass of bodies as people stood to argue with each other or get a better look at the drama.
A really old, fragile-looking man banged his gavel on the oval table at the back of the room and rose to make an announcement. “Settle down, people. Settle down.”
A cop was whispering into the young guy’s ear while giving him a quick pat down. The other officers were motioning with their hands for everyone to sit and regain control of themselves. There was still grumbling, but the old guy who seemed to be in charge spoke over the noise.
“This outburst does not change the board’s verdict! Due to the city’s current financial crisis, we have no choice but to close both Kennedy and Branfort. The students will move to a central location in Three Rivers, and attend what used to be known as Three Rivers Academy.”
My Pops hates it when I swear, but for once he didn’t say a word as I jumped out of my chair, m
y former confidence in Kennedy’s stability shattered. “That’s fu—!” Of course, he probably couldn’t hear me as total chaos broke out at City Hall.
Three
For weeks all everyone talked about was the school closings and the impending relocation to Three Rivers Academy, which used to be a school for dumb kids.
Well, we were all about to move in, so what did that say about us?
My brother, Warp, said he wasn’t going to a school for ’tards but Pops flicked him in the ear and said something about karma. So I kept my mouth shut.
Warp seemed to lack that ability.
He called an emergency meeting of our parkour group once everyone was home from summer vacation, to complain about the move to a new school and to talk tactics. Tactics for what, I wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t be good.
For twenty minutes he rambled on about which gangs to avoid, based on rumors he heard, and which groups were all talk. I wanted to say “you mean other than this one?” but I knew Warp would see my joke as a challenge and up his presence level in school to prove to me he could be feared.
Pride, in high school, was the seed that destroyed entire groups, Pops said. I was pretty sure he was spot-on, so I decided to keep my snarky comments in check.
The “homework” Warp gave us included scouting the new school and becoming familiar with the surrounding terrain in case we came head-to-head with our rivals from Branfort.
Rivals, he’d said. I rolled my eyes. Branfort used to be just another school in our city. Then two years ago, they somehow became public enemy number one.
Now that we were about to shack-up under the same schoolhouse roof, Warp decided to make war plans, another step toward his goal to turn our extracurricular group into his “gang.”
Unfortunately, the transformation was nearing completion. If I questioned Warp’s instructions, I found no backing except Surge, and we were often outvoted, so to speak. Not that our group had ever been a democracy. There hadn’t been a need when my eldest brother formed it. Everyone was united by the love of freerunning and our focus relied solely on the training. We confronted our fears and developed a peaceful show of harmony between the environment and the human body.
All of those ideals were now lost to Warp’s ambitions. What a waste. My eldest brother Ander’s teachings of respect, honor, and balance didn’t even get a once-over at meetings anymore.
God I missed him and the simpler times.
I’d sometimes fantasize about Ander coming home and thwapping Warp upside the head to put him back in his place, but that wouldn’t happen any time soon. Away at college, he couldn’t afford to take the time off work to come home, and Pops couldn’t afford to bring him in for a visit either, since the care of Warp and I sucked up most of his trucker wages.
I wrote to Ander all the time through email. His school supplied computers and, lucky for me, so did my next-door neighbor. The woman was ninety and had better gear than we did in our house. The computer in Pops’ room had Windows ’93, I think. I didn’t even know they had computers back then.
While Warp mapped out the night’s practice run in the park’s sandbox—complete with crossbones where Branfort students were known to hang—I thought about what I would say in my next email to Ander. “Dear Ander, Warp has gone off his nut. Please advise.”
“LL, you coming?”
Surge, Warp, and four other pairs of eyes were staring impatiently at me. I figured I must’ve missed the inspiring huddle formation at the end of the meeting with a war yelp on three.
“Yeah, sorry.”
Warp gave me his special glare. “If you fall behind because you weren’t listening to the route, we’re not waiting on you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
***
So, of course, I fell behind. Surge doubled back for me and gave me a quick rundown of the night’s path, but I would’ve been content to fly solo. I disliked order anyway.
“What the hell?”
He squinted toward the group in the distance and my gaze followed. Our crew had paused on the ledge of a wall, looking down. My brother wasn’t visible.
Oh God…did he tank? Serious injuries in street improv parkour were expected, but Warp was one big callus. Nothing but a life-threatening injury would slow him down. My heart raced ahead with assumptions and a cold coating of dread poured down my arms. He might be a douche-bag sometimes, but he’d always be my brother.
Oh please, let him be okay. I couldn’t stand losing another piece of my family. After mom, we all held each other up like a house of cards. If one more fell…
The moment we climbed up the wall to join the others, I went from being worried about him to wanting to strangle him. My body shook from the swing between moods. Or maybe it was the suppressed urge to smack the dumb out of him.
Warp stood a few yards away from a writer, a graffiti artist, holding a can of spray paint in each hand. My group had obviously interrupted whatever it was the guy was making, and since my brother took issue with all writers, he couldn’t resist stopping to harass him.
“What are you doing over this way, Branfort? This is Kennedy Country. You’re gooping up our walls with your chicken-scratch.”
“Technically, this is TRA Country, Kennedy. I’m checking out the turf, same as you, I’m guessing.”
I jumped off the brick wall, landing close to my brother and his adversary so I could run a little interference. Looking at the design, I thought it looked cool as hell.
Instead of simply tagging his crew’s name or his own call sign, he was making a masterpiece against a subtle swirling vortex background. Off to one side, beaming sunrays parted billowing clouds, glistening off the central face of a pretty girl with long dark hair and greenish-brown eyes. Below he’d written a name in bubbled letters:
“Heather.”
I hadn’t realized I’d said the name out loud until everyone looked at me, including the writer from Branfort. When our eyes met they held each other like some sappy girly movie at an intro moment.
Wow.
I recognized him right away, too, but pretended I didn’t so I could take a second to check him out at close range. He had hazel eyes and dark-brown hair with a little patch of pure white on the side. Yes, we’d definitely run into each other before, but now that I saw him real good, I knew the school board meeting hadn’t been the first time I’d seen him.
A little over two years ago, he and his family were on the TV begging for a witness to come forward in his sister’s murder. Her name was Heather.
He didn’t have the white patch in his hair back then and he’d grown into his nose, but I knew him to be the awkward little brother on TV.
The guy I saw now was nothing if not Depp-fine. What was his name again? Bran, Bren…? I looked at the small sig in the bottom corner of the piece on the wall. Haze. Huh. I was way off.
Or, like the rest of us, he had a street name. But if someone didn’t pull him and my brother apart, Haze was about to get a new nickname, Native American style: Smear.
“Are you kidding me right now? You stopped the flow to gawk at his artwork?”
“This piece of shit doodling ain’t artwork, and this asshole needs to learn we’re not gonna tolerate amateur vandalism on our blocks.”
“You’re being a jerk, Warp. Can we keep going, please?”
I watched Haze spin the cans in his hands, as calm as if he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of guys who wanted to kick the crap outta him. “You should listen to your girl,” he said.
Warp wrinkled his nose. “That’s my sister.”
“Really?” Haze’s eyes twinkled a little and a corner of his mouth curved. “Good. I saw you at the meeting, right?”
Good? What did he mean good? My stomach squeezed. “Um, yeah.”
His grin seemed to cover his whole face. “It’s real nice to see you aga
in.”
I couldn’t decide if Haze was brave, or utterly special-ed. We were in the midst of a serious turf issue and he was instigating a pickup.
“Don’t look at my sister like that!” Warp growled.
Surge laughed so loud and hard he was doubled over, apparently enjoying Haze’s ballsy-ness. Warp and I glared at him but he only laughed harder. The other members of our group held back their cackling…barely.
“Like what? You got a problem with people thinking your sister’s beautiful? I’d think you’d be used to it.” Haze took a step back probably so he could face me and keep my brother in sight. Or maybe just completely drive Warp nuts by giving me the once-over. “I could create a masterpiece with her face alone. Look at those shiny brown eyes and high cheekbones flushed from running. Or maybe something else?” Again, he smiled the smile that I swear all boys learn in sixth grade: Cute and full of promise. “She’s an artist’s muse.”
Warp took a step and so did I. “Stop,” I said in a voice hopefully low enough to sound authoritative, but neither of them seemed swayed by it.
“And the blue stripe down the side? Rebellious but doesn’t take away from the dark brown perfection that is your hair.”
Artists. Unafraid of words and lethal when using them. If I were the type to swoon, I’d have face-planted right there—even knowing that he’d said what he did to rile my brother.
Surge, at this point, was gonna need a de-fib if he couldn’t catch his breath.
“You think that shit’s funny? You mocking my sister, you fucking fag?” Warp cussed, trying to get Haze’s attention, but the writer’s eyes were set firmly on me, his smile as genuine as though he’d meant every flowery word.
“I like it,” he finished, tracing the side of his own face to indicate my blue strand.
Warp’s right eye twitched and I felt his muscles coil under my hold.
