by Gwynn White
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 lift
ed 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.
