by Sheela Chari
The Saturday night before he disappeared, Randall slipped his Jordans on and went out the fire escape to meet with his crew. But when I tried to follow him like I always did, he stopped me.
“I can’t have you tripping on your face and getting hurt,” he said, standing on the fire escape, while I was at the window.
“I don’t do that,” I said, insulted.
“Your feet are too big. That makes you a clown. Stay home, clown.”
“But you need me. How else will you climb back up?”
“I’ve got my brothers,” he said.
When he said that, it stabbed me inside my chest. “I’m your brother.”
“You’re a clown.”
I tried to think of something to say that would stop him from leaving without me. “What’s in the duffel bag?” I asked. I was talking about the blue canvas bag Randall kept locked and hidden under his bed, which he went through at night when he thought I was asleep. I knew the duffel bag had belonged to our pop. And our pop was dead.
“None of your business,” Randall said. “Go back to sleep, Petey.” Then he leaped down to the sidewalk below.
I watched him. Then I thought, why do I always have to listen to him? So I didn’t. I went out the window the way he did. The metal rungs of the fire escape were bumpy with rust under my hands. At the end of the steps, I jumped. I hit the ground hard, like I always did, scuffing up my knees. But so far I’d never broken my legs.
Ten minutes later, Randall reached the train station, with me twenty paces away. I hid behind a trash can. Up ahead I saw all the guys—Skinny, MaxD, Nike, and the two Points, dressed in dark clothes with scarves around their faces. There was no moon, and barely any light except from the platform. The guys had a small convo and got to it. I heard the sound of spraying.
Over the summer, I’d watched Randall paint. First he was Speed. Then he was Mighty, the name everyone now called him. He always used orange, and his letters filled up the sides of empty parking lots, bus yards, and the Saw Mill Parkway. But now at the end of a long, hot summer, his crew had finally hit the train station. I heard Randall say it was where they could reach the most people. But I didn’t get who they wanted to reach, or what they were trying to say.
Whenever Randall went out with his crew, the next morning he acted like nothing happened. The spray paint was gone, the duffel bag out of sight, and he was a just a regular kid. But this night it all came to an end. Maybe they didn’t have an ear for it, but from where I crouched behind the trash can, I heard it loud and clear.
The platform walls were no good for them, not big enough or bad enough. Which was why the crew had jumped down next to the tracks, near the third rail with all those warning signs blazing everywhere about DANGER and DEATH BY ELECTROCUTION. If that wasn’t enough to give you the creeps, now there was the Train of Death rounding the bend.
Randall was spraying big strokes of orange when I first started yelling. Soon as I did, Skinny, MaxD, Nike, and the two Points looked up. They saw me jumping up and down, and then they themselves heard the Train of Death. That got them going, and they leaped over the third rail, hoisting themselves onto the platform next to me. But what was Randall the crazy fool doing?
My brother was putting the finishing touches on a new tag: Om. It was a word I’d never seen. Randall glanced at us, then at a rat that ran past him, wobbling along the third rail like it was running for its life. Randall must have heard the train, but he looked and looked at the rat like all the answers lay in that stupid rodent. Meanwhile, we could see the lights of the train.
What in the world was Randall waiting for?
“Jump the rail, man,” everyone was yelling at him.
Randall’s face was a sea of concentration, and I could feel myself straining, as if I was willing him with every bone in my body to jump. Then I caught my breath as he did. Not over the third rail, but on top of it, both feet planted at the same time, balancing on the rubber soles of his Air Jordans. Then he leaped again, flying through the air and landing squarely on the platform, fully extended while the train rushed by behind him.
What had my brother done? He had landed on the third rail and lived to tell about it.
The crew piled on him, rocked him back and forth, messed his hair, laughing and cursing.
MaxD said, “Mighty, you lifted that tag from somewhere.”
Nike said, “Aw, give it a rest, Max.”
MaxD shifted his weight. “In fact, I know you lifted that tag.”
Nike stared MaxD down. “Did you hear me? Give it a rest. Didn’t you see Mighty fly?”
“It was the fakes that made him fly,” one of the Points said.
And that’s when my brother punched me, even though I hadn’t said a word. “Don’t ever follow me again,” he said. But his punch didn’t hurt. He looked downright sad, like somebody died.
Randall wouldn’t talk on the way home. On the fire escape, I felt his strong, slippery grasp as I pulled him up and he crashed into me on the metal landing. He frowned. “With your clown feet, there’s no way you’d clear that rail.”
“What are you talking about? I wasn’t down there with you.”
“Still,” he said darkly.
“You didn’t clear that rail. You stood on it. You and the rat. How’d you do it? Tell me.”
I waited for him to explain the magic. I had on the same Jordans.
“Everyone knows rubber soles can do that, even fakes, so long as you don’t ground yourself. But don’t you try it, Petey. Don’t you ever go down with that crew.” Then he looked me square in the eye and said, “Promise?”
Randall never made me promise anything. Promises weren’t what we did. But I promised anyway. There was no chance I was going anywhere with those losers. I didn’t need them. But I knew Randall needed me, no matter what he thought. Crew or no crew.
The next morning, Randall was gone. So were his clothes, wallet, and 120 bucks from the candy jar in the kitchen. On Ma’s bed he’d left a note: Don’t find me. The only thing that wasn’t gone was the duffel bag. That he left under my bed, and I don’t know why. Maybe as a secret message to me.
When Ma read her note, she stormed out from her bedroom. “When did you last see him?” she demanded. That’s when I broke down. Swearing, she dragged me to the train station, where we stood with the other commuters, staring at the two letters my brother had left on the wall: Om. Only now across the blazing orange of Randall’s tag, someone had added, in black paint, three straight lines going up and down like an angry bear slash.
Ma’s eyes flashed with fear. But I couldn’t tell who she was afraid for, my brother or us. She looked around like somebody might be watching. “Come on, Petey,” she whispered. “Come quick.”
“What about Randall?” I whimpered.
She looked at me. “He’ll be back, don’t worry. Unless . . .” She stopped.
“What, Ma?” I whispered. “Will the cops catch him?”
She shook her head, as if she was thinking of something much worse. We hurried away, and I wondered who could be worse than the cops.
Now it was Saturday again. A whole week had gone by, and we hadn’t talked about the black lines, and I hadn’t told Ma about the duffel bag. I hadn’t told her about Randall’s shoes either, about those rubber soles saving him from dying on the third rail. I didn’t think she’d understand that kind of magic. But I did. I knew that magic was powerful and true. It made me suppose, no matter who was after us, that if I kept wearing my Jordans, Randall would come back, like we were two magnets being pulled together by the charge of our shoes. Of course, what I didn’t know was which direction the magic would go. Shoes don’t tell you where they’re taking you. But they have a path, and you have to follow it. I just hoped that path would lead me to him.
In all the movies I’ve seen, as soon as you hand it over to the strange man, whatever it is, you’re toast. That’s when your body gets thrown off the bridge. So I said the first thing that came to me: “I don’t know w
hat you’re talking about.” Good one. Never mind the necklace hanging around your neck.
“Let’s not play games.” The man rubbed his craggy chin. “You’ve heard of the Fencers?”
Fencers? The only ones I knew were on the girls’ fencing team at Mercy College. They wore masks and used long, bendy swords. But somehow I didn’t think that’s what he meant.
He went on. “Well, they’re a mean crew. You don’t want them thinking you got this necklace. You don’t want to be that kid.”
He was right on one count. I didn’t want a “mean crew,” with bendy swords or otherwise, thinking about me. But what he said didn’t ring true. I remembered how angry he’d been with his mom. He was the one who wanted the necklace, not the Fencers, whoever they were. “It’s just a finders necklace,” I blurted.
He looked surprised. “I don’t know what my mama told you, but she had no right selling it.” He took a step toward me, and he was a mixture of sweat and that hard smell men have who work outside all day, which my dad the math teacher didn’t. And okay, that’s when I lost it. I could see faint spots, and worse, tears welled in my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to cry in front of him.
Just then, the bathroom door opened again. My heart leaped. But it wasn’t my mom or Ana. It was a woman carrying a small, white dog. The dog started barking and the man fell back in surprise. That was all I needed. I bolted past him.
At the front, my parents were checking the receipt while Cheetah and Ana were looking at her phone. Ana looked up at me. “What took you so long?”
“Yeah,” Cheetah said. “We thought someone was bothering you.”
“What?” Ana said. “No, we didn’t.”
“There was a line.” I grabbed Ana’s arm. “We’ll meet you at Spice,” I said over my shoulder.
“Wait,” Cheetah called after us, but I didn’t stop.
Outside, I dragged Ana down the sidewalk. “What’s going on?” she yelled.
Without stopping, I told her what had happened in the bathroom.
“Oh my God, what if he’s still after you? Maybe we should return the necklace.”
“Of course not!” I tucked the pendant inside my shirt. There was no way I was going back.
By then we came to a footbridge that went over the train station. Spice was on the other side. Halfway across, Ana stopped me. I was going to say let’s not stop, but then I saw what she was pointing at. There it was in bright orange, standing out from the mess of other graffiti along the train tracks.
“No way,” I said.
“It’s like Om is following you,” Ana said. She clicked a picture of it with her phone.
Only this time it wasn’t a symbol. It was the word Om spray-painted on the station wall. Not only that—there were three black lines painted over it, like someone was cancelling it out. For some reason this made me think of Craggy Face. I turned around, half expecting him to be there. Instead, someone else was on the footbridge. It was a boy with dark curly hair who looked kind of Indian but not. Our eyes met before I turned away.
“Let’s go,” I said uneasily to Ana. “We’ve been here too long.”
At Spice, my family joined us and we ordered our usual tandoori pizza. Every time the front door opened, I tensed, thinking it was Craggy, but so far, nothing.
“Myla, you’ve barely touched your plate,” Mom said.
I’d eaten the paneer cheese off my pizza slices, but I was too nervous to eat anything else.
“All that running ahead of us made her tired,” Dad said, winking at me.
“Right.” What else was I supposed to say? I stood up. “I’m getting some napkins.”
As I was pulling them out from the dispenser, the door opened. My stomach clenched but it wasn’t Craggy. It was the curly-haired boy from the footbridge.
“I’m here for takeout,” he said to the man behind the counter. “Last name Wilson.”
I expected him to be surprised to see me, too, but he didn’t notice me at all. Instead he kept looking out the window. Curious, I watched him. His hair was a mass of dark curls, black like the licorice Ana gets from her grandparents at Christmas. I frowned. I felt I’d had that thought before.
The man brought out his order. “One tandoori pizza with a side order of naan bread.”
“Thanks,” the boy said, leaving some bills on the counter and hurrying out the door.
“Hey,” the man called after him. He looked at me. “He forgot his naan.”
“I’ll take it to him,” I said suddenly. But when I opened the door, the boy was turning down a street. I hesitated. I had better things to do than chase after a strange boy with a bag of naan. Still, he’d made me curious. Was he Indian? Why hadn’t he noticed me? And why was he in such a hurry?
I got to the corner. Halfway down the alley, I saw him, surrounded by a group of teenage guys. One of them pushed him against the wall, almost toppling the pizza box. I saw something black across the teenage guy’s arm like a spider. It was a tattoo. “Where’s Mighty?” he hissed.
The curly-haired boy cowered behind his box. “I told you, I don’t know.”
The tattooed guy leaned in. “I guess that’s why I wear rings.” He made his hand into a fist.
Why he wore rings? My brain tried to understand, and then I saw it. The studded fist pulled back and shot forward and the boy fell back. Then he was spilling bright red from his mouth.
I felt myself go weak in the knees. One of them said something and they all saw me, the short Indian girl at the end of the street. I trembled. What would happen now? Would the guy with the tattoo come after me? But before I could say anything, they ran off like cockroaches in all directions, leaving the curly-haired boy behind. He stood in the middle of the alley staring at me, his mouth bleeding as he grasped the pizza box in his hands.
I held up the bag. “You forgot your naan,” I said stupidly. But it wasn’t like I could ask, who were those guys that wanted to beat the daylights out of you?
He ran up and snatched the bag. “Mind your own business!” he cried, and he was gone.
Back at the restaurant, I slid into the table, pale and trembling, but no one seemed to notice. Cheetah and Ana were doing a word search on the back of a menu.
“Where’s the napkins?” Cheetah wanted to know. “I got sauce on my shirt.”
“Get them yourself,” I growled. It was all I could do to stop from shaking. Was the boy seriously hurt? Would he be okay? At the same time, I felt a wild elation. Somehow I’d managed to stop a terrible thing from happening. Me. But something told me it wasn’t over yet.
Outside, I was the first to reach the Subaru. A flyer was tucked under the windshield wipers.
“I hate those,” Mom said. “We’re never going to get a car wash here.”
I pulled the paper off the glass. As I read it, I felt the blood receding from my face. I looked up and down the avenue. How had he done it? How had he picked out my car from the sea of other cars on St. Vincent Ave? I thought of the boy bleeding over his pizza box. And now this.
“What is it?” Cheetah wanted to know, hovering around me like a bee.
I pushed him away. “Nothing,” I said, crumpling up the paper. “Car wash, like Mom said.” Ana gave me a searching look but said nothing. It was only when we were driving away from St. Vincent Ave that I handed the crumpled sheet to her. I didn’t need to read it again to remember the words inside: I’ll find you in Dobbs Ferry.
The pizza box from Spice was still on the kitchen counter where I’d left it at lunch. I couldn’t get the blood off, so I scratched away that part of the cardboard. My mouth had stopped bleeding. Luckily, none of my teeth got knocked out, just a cut and some swelling. Even so, I could barely eat. When I did, a picture of those guys came into my head like a bad painting. I’d never seen them before. They didn’t hang at the basketball courts or the train yards at night. But they knew who my brother was, they’d called him Mighty. It was him they wanted, but it was me they beat up until that girl came alo
ng.
What chilled me, though, was the leader. Forget his stupid rings. It was the tat on his arm. Three lines like the ones painted over Randall’s tag. Those lines meant something—a gang, an ID, or else . . . a warning.
On top of that, a few days ago Ma announced we were moving. Just like that, no warning. “Our lease ends this month and my friend is renting her house to us for cheap,” she said. And that’s when I heard we were moving to Dobbs Ferry.
When she told me, a cold knotty feeling started in my stomach. “How will Randall know where we are?” It was a week since he’d left, and no word from him. I kept thinking he’d climb in through the window, wearing his dark blue hoodie, even though he had left it behind on his bed. I’d been wearing it almost every day, and it still smelled like him, like the shampoo he uses plus something that’s plain and simple Randall, like sneakers and dirt and sweat.
“He’s a grown-up, Petey,” Ma said. “He’s got our phone number and e-mail.”
But it’s not like Randall e-mailed. All I could imagine was him coming back to an empty apartment, or finding someone else here instead of us.
Ma saw my face. “Don’t worry. We’ve moved enough times, he’ll know we just moved again. I won’t stop looking for him. I promise.” Her lower lip trembled. “And maybe one of these days, we won’t have to move anymore.”
“Have to?” I repeated. But if Ma heard me, she didn’t respond. I watched her gather the pizza box to throw away in the kitchen. There was so much more I wanted to ask, like if she didn’t want to move, then why did we have to, when we were used to Yonkers, and Randall knew where we were. But I could tell from her face that I wouldn’t get anything more out of her. Whatever discussion we were having, it was over.
Soon there were boxes and boxes in the apartment. Ma couldn’t get them packed fast enough. One had her wedding dress. Another had her doll set from India, and our photo albums. All my things fit inside two boxes, including the duffel bag, which was still locked, and who knew where that key was. At the end of the week, the apartment didn’t look like ours anymore, just empty walls and long scratches down the wooden floor. The only things left were Randall’s Michael Jordan and New York City posters. I couldn’t take them down just yet.
