Giving up on breaking the plastic band, she yanked her sleeves as far down as she could and held her notebook so that her wrist was covered. She stepped into an elevator filled with young-looking interns and a few visitors, her heart pounding. Look calm, she ordered herself. You aren’t doing anything wrong, aren’t going anywhere you shouldn’t. You were just here visiting. Time to go.
And then she was out. Onto the street. Into real air.
Lindsay kept her head down as she hurried toward the nearest subway. As she hurtled down the steps, she realized she had no money. She stopped on the landing, surrounded by kids of all ages; school must have just let out.
“Hey,” she said to a short boy. “Do me a huge favor and swipe me in?”
The boy looked at her blankly.
“I forgot my card,” Lindsay said.
The boy shrugged. “Whatever.”
They waited until there was a mass of kids blocking the token booth guy and together they slipped through the turnstile.
“Thanks,” Lindsay said. She decided it was safest to go to the very end of the platform, attract the least attention. Studying the map, she traced the connections, memorized the route at her fingertip.
Tanya will believe me, Lindsay told herself. Even if I don’t quite believe it myself.
Lindsay wondered where they’d look first, how soon they’d call her mother. Tanya’s could be the first place her mother would check, though Melanie knew that Lindsay hadn’t seen Tanya since the move, so maybe not.
Lindsay emerged from the subway and relaxed in the familiar surroundings of the video store on the corner, the newsstand with the huge selection of candy in the middle of the block. It seemed strange to Lindsay that her old neighborhood could be so completely the same while her world had so completely changed.
She walked the five blocks to Tanya’s building, a tidy brownstone. She charged up the steps and pushed the buzzer for Tanya’s apartment. She crossed her fingers for luck and waited, staring through the etched glass windows in the front door.
A few minutes later, Tanya clomped down the stairs. Her dark eyes widened when she saw Lindsay, and she grinned as she yanked open the door.
“Lindz! Awesome!” Tanya grabbed Lindsay in a bear hug. Tanya towered over Lindsay, and she was a bit on the chunky side. The weight difference nearly toppled them down the stoop. Giggling, Tanya re-balanced them. “Come on in!”
Lindsay followed her friend up the stairs.
“I can’t believe it’s been so long. It totally sucks. Why didn’t you call me? I’m so glad I was home!”
Tanya’s chatter filled the hallway, filled the hollow in Lindsay’s chest.
They tromped into Tanya’s familiar bedroom. Tanya plopped on the bed. “What’s been going on?” she asked. “Didn’t Melanie tell you I called? Are you so busy you can’t call me back?”
How can I tell her? Fear flash-flooded into Lindsay. Turning away from Tanya, she focused on the calendar hanging on the wall, each space filled with scribbled notes about activities, project deadlines, after-school events. Life.
“Lindz?”
“I—something horrible has been happening,” she said toward the wall. “Only it might not be as horrible as I thought. I need you to listen to everything, okay? Because if I stop, I won’t be able to start again.”
Lindsay heard Tanya get up from the bed and stepped away before her friend could embrace her. “No. Don’t. I won’t be able—” A sob, hot and itchy, fought to get out. Lindsay crossed her arms over her chest, trying to stop it, but it was too big. Leaning her head against the wall, she cried and cried.
She wiped her face with her fingers, and as she raised her arm to use her sleeve to wipe her nose, a box of tissues appeared.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the box from Tanya. “Oh, man.” She shakily sat down in the desk chair. “Tanya, I’m in so much trouble.”
“With Melanie?”
“With the whole world.”
“Not with me,” Tanya said. “So it can’t be the whole world.”
Lindsay snorted. “You may not say that after you hear…after you find out….”
Tanya knelt beside the chair. “Okay, now you have to look at me.”
Reluctantly Lindsay forced herself to meet Tanya’s serious, nearly black eyes.
“If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I will be mad at you. Because it’s like you don’t trust me.”
Lindsay nodded and looked down. “I was in the hospital. I ran away.”
Tanya rocked back on her heels. “Are you sick?”
“I’m pretty sure I’m not.” Lindsay pulled out a fresh tissue. “I was there because…because…I kind of freaked out.” She swallowed hard, calculating how much force was required to push her voice through the lump in her throat without it turning into a scream. “I’ve been hearing this voice.”
“What?” Tanya settled onto the floor cross-legged. “Like in the movies? Like…crazy people hear voices?”
Lindsay nodded. She stared at the tissue, crumpling it.
Tanya blew a puff of air. “But you’re not crazy!”
“I—I don’t know. I did some research, and it all seemed to add up to me being nuts.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? And Melanie never said a word.”
“I think she’s embarrassed. She’s mostly relieved that I’m not her problem anymore. That I’m the screwed-up one, not her and the Husband.”
“But Lindsay. This voice thing. That’s something serious, isn’t it?”
“They told me in the hospital that it’s a symptom of schizophrenia.”
Now Tanya let out a little whistle. “So that’s what you have?”
“At first I thought that was the only possible answer, but now I’m not so sure.”
“So what do you think?”
Lindsay took out another tissue and started tearing tiny holes in it. “Okay. This is going to sound even crazier. But I think the voice is real. I think someone really is talking to me.”
Worry made furrows appear on Tanya’s smooth, dark forehead.
Lindsay threw up her hands and stood. The shredded tissue fluttered to the floor. “I know! That’s probably what every schizo says.”
“Well, do you have evidence?”
Lindsay smiled. Thank goodness for geeks. “Yes. The meds didn’t stop the voice—and they definitely stopped the voices other kids heard. And what Lucy said—”
“Lucy?”
“That’s her name. Well, Lucy doesn’t say what the typical aural hallucination says. In group everyone described the horrible things the voices said, told them to do. She mostly asked me questions. Or talked about her life. And I only hear her in certain places.”
Tanya sat back down on the bed, making tiny nodding motions.
“But Lindsay, what could the explanation possibly be?”
“Just go with me on this, okay? I think it’s possible that somehow I’m talking to the past. To a girl our age, who goes to a lot of the same places I do. Only she’s living in the New York City of 1882.”
Tanya’s mouth dropped open. Then, eyes sparkling with excitement, she said, “Awesome!”
Fourteen
Lindsay felt better than she had in ages, despite the fact that she was sitting in a closet again. The door opened and a nervous Tanya ushered her out. “I’m a terrible liar,” Tanya said.
“You didn’t lie,” Lindsay reminded her. “It’s not like your mom asked about me.”
“No,” Tanya admitted, “but I’ve never kept a big secret from her before. Actually,” she added, “I’ve never kept a little secret from her either. God, I’m such a dork.”
“Well, you’re going to have to learn how to lie pretty fast,” Lindsay warned.
“Are you sure you can’t talk to your mom?” Tanya asked.
“No way.” Lindsay hadn’t told Tanya much about what had been going on at home, only that it had been hard ever since they moved in with the Husband. Confessing to hearing the voic
e had been hard enough. “And you can’t tell your mom either. She’ll just call Melanie.”
“Okay,” Tanya mumbled.
“Swear,” Lindsay insisted.
“Swear. On our future Phi Beta Kappa keys.”
“So where should I meet up with you?”
They had already worked out that Tanya would go into Manhattan and get stuff out of Lindsay’s school locker—most importantly, her ATM card. That would give her access to her camp-counseling money, which she would seriously need.
“I wish it wasn’t Glory’s day to clean,” Tanya fretted. “Otherwise you could just lay low here. What are you going to do?”
“I shouldn’t hang around in this neighborhood,” Lindsay said, thinking aloud. “Too many people will know me. Somewhere near my new school but not too near…”
“Isn’t there a park in the East Village?” Tanya suggested. “That would be an easy walk from your school, and probably no one would notice kids hanging out there.”
“You are as brilliant as your IQ suggests,” Lindsay said. They linked pinkies, just like they did when they were twelve. “It’s a plan.”
Lindsay felt herself grow smaller as she trundled down the subway stairs. The exhilaration she had felt knowing that she wasn’t crazy and that she was no longer alone in this nightmare diminished the deeper underground she went.
What was she going to do all day? Was she going to get into trouble for not being in school? Up until now, Lindsay, like Tanya, had been a goody-two-shoes dweeb. Now she was on the lam, a runaway.
What do kids do when they cut class? Lindsay wondered. The subway car emptied out some, and most of the kids her age exited. The good thing was no one paid attention to her. They read, they dozed, they listened to iPods, they came, they went, but they didn’t make eye contact.
She tucked her notebook under her arm and shoved her hands into Tanya’s jacket, which was huge on her. She reassured herself by feeling the sandwich and twenty-dollar bill there and the lightness of her wrist now that she had cut off the bracelet.
Melanie is going to freak when she hears I booked out of the hospital.
Lindsay jerked her head sharply to the window, not wanting the tears that suddenly appeared in her eyes to fall. Melanie probably just wouldn’t care. Or notice. Now she and the Husband can live heinously ever after without having to worry about me.
Lindsay spent most of the morning riding all the subway lines she’d never heard of—it took her several trains to get from the Q she was on to the mysterious M and then the G train. She couldn’t quite figure out how to hook up with the Z, so she finally wound up on the L train. Wanting a Coke to go with her sandwich, she got out on Fourteenth Street and First Avenue—near the park where she and Tanya had agreed to meet.
She slumped along the street, not wanting to attract attention. The clock in the deli showed it was only about one o’clock—Tanya wouldn’t be out of school for two hours, and then she’d still have to take the subway from Brooklyn.
When Lindsay got to Tompkins Square Park, she saw that it was bigger than she thought, and she worried Tanya wouldn’t be able to find her. I guess I’ll just have to start patrolling at three thirty and keep my eyes open.
There was a playground full of little kids and their supremely hip moms. She moved away from those benches; it might occur to a mom type that she was supposed to be in school.
She passed chess players, an eclectic mix of hunched men with thick Eastern European accents, young black guys with do-rags and lightning-quick moves, and one middle aged professor type playing against himself. On the benches along the periphery were more moms with strollers, some tattooed and smoking, some looking as conventional as Tanya’s mother. Even farther in were random people on benches reading or listening to headphones. A couple on a blanket in a grassy section lay twined together. Their CD player was blasting. A skinny Hispanic boy perched atop the back of a bench holding forth for an audience of two other boys, both wearing skintight jeans and muscle shirts despite the chill in the air.
“Yo, Flip,” one of the boys said. “Can you spot me some?”
The boy on the back of the bench shook his head. “Sorry. I was hoping to get something off you.”
Lindsay kept moving, wondering if the boys were talking about drugs or money. She glanced up and realized she was back where she had started, at the playground. She turned and did the walk in reverse.
The skinny boy was now alone on the bench. The couple had stopped making out and were sharing a soda. She walked by a guitar player she’d heard but hadn’t seen before. A dog walker passed her, then another mom with a stroller.
How much longer?
A man leaned against one of the black wrought-iron railings that ran along the perimeter of the grassy sections. Lindsay noticed he was wearing a watch.
“Excuse me,” she said, crossing to the man. “Can you tell me what time it is?”
The man smiled slowly at her, looked her up and down. “Sure thing, sweetie.” He made an exaggerated gesture to look at his watch. “Right now is good.”
“What?” Lindsay asked. “I asked you the time.”
“I saw you cruising through,” he continued. “Are you sure you just wanted to ask me what time it is?”
“Yeah, positive. So what time is it?”
“How much time do I get for, say, twenty bucks?”
Lindsay’s mouth dropped open. He thinks I’m a hooker! She started laughing.
“Glad the talk of cash lightened your mood, doll.” He grabbed her arm.
Startled, Lindsay let out a shriek and shook off his hand. “Get away from me.”
Up close she could smell the alcohol—cheap rum, she thought.
“Leave her alone, perv.” A blond teenage girl appeared behind the man. A younger black girl stood beside her. Lindsay was pretty sure that these two actually were hookers, with their tight short skirts, heavy makeup, and seriously tough stances.
The man snorted a laugh. “Whoa. Now, you two are much more my type. I’ll double the price if you both come with me.”
The black girl looked up at the taller blonde. The blonde seemed to be considering it, then spat. Literally. “Back off, perv,” she snarled. “You are too gross for words.”
“Listen, bitch…” the man began threateningly.
“Ooh, I’m so scared,” the blonde said in a fake high voice, and the black girl giggled. “You do know that a john soliciting is just as illegal as the pro, right? Oh, and we are underage. How ’bout we call some nice friendly officers to make you back off?”
The girls strode right past the man and up to Lindsay. “Come on,” the black girl said, “let’s get out of here.”
Lindsay obediently fell into step with them, wondering what on earth was going to happen next.
Fifteen
“So Mitch was totally into me,” Flip bragged. “Totally dissed that loser Kyle and told me we could definitely hook up later tonight at the Dregs.” He took a long drag from a lipstick-tinged cigarette. “Haley, you would have so loved to see Kyle’s face.”
He handed the cigarette to the tall blond girl, Haley. “About time Kyle’s smug ass got whipped down.” She inhaled deeply on the cigarette and then handed it to the black girl, Blair, who puffed on it quickly, then gave it back to Flip. So far, Blair hadn’t said a word other than an initial “hey.”
“Can you get us into the Dregs?” Haley asked.
Flip looked at Haley, then at Blair and at Lindsay. “All of you?”
“Not me,” Lindsay said hastily. She knew she would never fit in at a place called the Dregs. These kids were as different from Lindsay as a distant species. She listened, fascinated by their incomprehensible speech; she watched, intrigued by their jittery gestures, their dramatic poses.
Flip cuddled up to Haley, kissing her neck, which was weird to Lindsay because he was so clearly gay. “Get us some Baileys, pretty please,” he murmured.
“No dinero,” Haley said. She cast a glance at Lin
dsay. “You got any money?”
The bills and coins left over from buying a soda felt heavy in Lindsay’s pocket. Should she offer to buy them their booze? Haley had bailed her out of a pretty tense situation and then introduced her to her friends. They might be on the freaky side, but they were being nice to her, and besides, they knew a lot more about ditching school, not getting caught, and hiding out than she did.
Tanya’s going to come with my ATM card, she thought. I’ll have plenty of money then.
She pulled out the ten-dollar bill. “I don’t know if this is enough.”
Haley grinned. “It’s a start.”
Flip clapped. “Oh, thank God!” He grabbed Lindsay’s hand and kissed it. “I mean, thank goddess. Don’t mean to be sexist.”
Blair giggled and picked at a scab on her elbow. Lindsay noticed a number of ragged scars on her scrawny arm. Haley’s skin was rough and flaky, and her dirty blond hair tangled and matted, but Lindsay’s overall impression was that the girl would be considered hot, particularly with her tight clothes and all that makeup.
Flip dropped back onto the park bench and spread his arms, studying Lindsay. “We should do a makeover on you, girl. You aren’t taking full advantage of your assets.”
Lindsay couldn’t tell if he’d insulted or complimented her.
“That perv dude thought her assets were just fine,” Haley said.
“Hey,” Blair said. She jerked her head toward a policeman walking along the perimeter of the park.
“Time to move,” Haley said. She slung her arm over Blair’s shoulders. Flip stood and composed himself. Uncertain, Lindsay walked with them, wondering if the cop was going to stop them, search them. Were they circulating her photo? Did the kids have drugs on them? Her heart thudded hard and she kept her eyes on the ground as she heard blood throbbing in her ears.
“Now that the yuppies have taken over the neighborhood,” Haley explained, “the park is safer, but we have to move around more.”
“We need to not be loi-ter-ing,” Flip added, drawing out the word dramatically. “But I’d rather hang in the park than on the pier. That scene is so tired.”
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