“You okay?” The words fill my mouth and take longer to say than they should.
He tries to shake my hand loose, but I pull him closer. “I heard you got nabbed by the cops.”
He licks his swollen lip. His eyes shift back and forth; he blurts something then stops.
The music is wicked intense—Oreo is smokin’ the heavy beats. I dance Darcy over to the turntables, and he disappears while I kiss Oreo. She looks so hot with her headphones on, her smile lighting up the place. All those other girls, those fancy rich girls, they can fuck off. Oreo kisses me back, and I can’t wait to be alone with her. The floorboards bounce back up against my shoes. I move to the middle of the throng, strangers dancing close. We crush together, apart, together, for hours, it seems, world without end. Oreo spins fast breaks, stutters the vinyl, teases metal classics into her electronic weirdness, then lets the drum and bass kick heavy and dark. I am smiling. I’m really having fun. Even if all these people don’t know me, even if they don’t know who we are, everybody’s having an awesome time together in our house. It’s a brilliant party.
I don’t even notice them at first, the sirens blend so beautifully. The spinning red lights reflect off skin: faces, closed eyes, bare bellies. Then the snare drum pops over our heads, so much like gunfire. I’m dancing slowly, swaying, my eyes are open, taking it all in. My arms outstretched, I’m in the middle of all those hot bodies, sucking up the sounds, the pictures. It is some sick dance video: Cricket’s arms up flailing, a raised stick, his face contorting.
Tall Eddie sees over the whole crowd, he yells something to me—I don’t hear him, but we talk with our eyes; he’s freaking out. I don’t understand. He pushes Ray-Ray through the people, tosses him toward the open kitchen window. Ray-Ray is up on the ledge. He looks back at Eddie, then he jumps, his long white hair streaking after him. Eddie. Someone hits Eddie on the shoulder with a long stick. Eddie turns, ready to throw a punch but instead his body pulsates with electricity, he sails backwards, limbs flailing, his eyes roll to white. I’m staring, surprised at his funny dance. Who came dressed up like that? I think. Who came in a uniform?
Two Ton throws his beer in the uniform’s face and dives out the same window as Ray-Ray, the one near our rain barrel. He’s gone. People stare. Uniforms—there’s more than one—move through the crowd, and bodies part like water. There’s pushing and shoving and the sticks come out: bodies jerk and twitch. Feet shoot out from underneath, they kick and slide to the killer music. Kids push me, step on me. I’m swarmed, can’t move. Suddenly, people fall down in front of me.
I see Digit’s back; he’s still eating the rest of that cake in the corner, he’s licking icing off that butcher knife, and men are yelling at him. He turns, slowly, knife raised, and there’s a loud pop, a sound that cracks over top of the music, and Digit’s head snaps backwards; there’s a dark spot spreading across his chest. The knife goes flying and his body lands by the sink. He convulses, red spurts streak the walls and broken window behind him. Kids scream. A girl beside me vomits. There’s that pig we hate. The King is standing over there, gun still raised, the smell of it burning my nostrils. The King turns and stares at me. He sees me see.
I need Oreo. She’s shaking those dreads, cueing up something new. I yell, but her headphones block me. She’s zoned. The King is behind her. She has no idea. I run. My heels catch in a pile of clothes. I wave my arms as I fall—I’m frantic. Then Oreo sees me, sees my terror, and so does the King. I’m trapped by the couch, trying to kick off those shoes. They both watch me flail, one behind the other. The King smiles as his stick lands on Oreo’s temple. Pain flashes across her face, I feel it. Oreo’s mouth goes slack; she crumples out of sight. I roar. The pretty inside light that only Oreo brings me flares up and out; it burns to black and is gone.
The King gives a hand signal. Someone cuts the generator: music stops, lights go out. Ghosts of kids are screaming, grabbing their stuff, and running in the blue black. They move fast, but not fast enough. The back door is blocked. Headlights beam through the windows, red lights spin. A line of cops grab and handcuff kids when they push their way out. Kids are freaking. Their silhouettes pile out the windows then scramble right back in; they’re getting beaten out there, they’re getting tased.
Meanwhile, kids trample me. I crawl toward the last place I saw Oreo, calling her name, trying to protect myself. High-heeled shoes snap my wrist, Docs smash my face. I curl up underneath the turntables—no Oreo. Shoes stampede on all sides; they stomp past me in a blur. But one polished pair stops right in front. Big black cop shoes, with hemmed blue pants. I know exactly whose they are, too.
Shaker Baker
Nothing.
That’s all there is at first.
I’m dead, I think. Finally.
Then the pain kicks in: the rolling ache in my head builds to stabbing points in each eye socket. My stomach twists and bloats with gas. The crazy-making itch starts up again, like worms chewing through sub-layers of skin, skin that holds my bones and bruises all together. I massage my jaw; it’s sore from clenching my teeth. I clear my throat and hork out chemical-flavoured post-nasal drip.
Okay. I sigh. So I’m alive.
Wherever I am in the world, I’m also lying on the floor between a wall and an old couch. Actually, I’m halfway inside the back of the couch. Hiding from the cops. The fabric is torn away. I can see the wood frame, springs above me, little bugs crawling around, the stuffing pulled out of cushions and neatly piled up in tiny rolled balls of fluff. A pyramid of fluff balls, all the same size, all carefully stacked and counted. That was me, last night, tweaked, fiddling with that stuffing for hours, right after taking my transistor radio apart and lining up the pieces along the baseboard, biggest to smallest, darkest to lightest. Wires and plastic parts, dials and buttons, the coded flat metal pieces all glare at me. What the hell was I thinking?
I pat the chest pocket of my cotton shirt. I can feel the baggies in there, should be two of them left, with clear chunks of beautiful Vancouver meth—an eighth of an ounce, at least. I wiggle my toes. Packets of other stuff I picked up during the raid are hidden in my shoes. My stash.
I pull myself out from behind the couch slowly. My stick legs drag behind, heavy and numb, like they’re somebody else’s. Sunlight blasts through open windows. It’s squinty bright and way too quiet. Morning. I’m in the Factory, alright, even if it’s unrecognizable. I know the smells: sawdust and sheet metal, spilled beer, dirty laundry, rotting bags of dumpstered food. Over top it all is the hot stench of pig shit from the slaughterhouse next door.
I remember Ferret twirling me around last night at the party, trying to get me on the dance floor. She always stood up for me. Cricket and Oreo, even Digit—a hell of a nice boy—knew better than to trust a basehead like me. How could I dance? Me, tweaked, knowing the cops were right outside, knowing I brought them to the doorstep. Desperate to find Sly before the raid. My stomach cramps just thinking about it. I freeze, hold my gut. My ass puckers, but I don’t shit myself. The cramp loosens, the pain rolls away again. I scratch my scabby arms. I pick at my lips.
“Ferret? Anybody?” My voice is a screechy mess.
No one answers. Pigeons purr in the loft. Water drips steadily. Outside, a truck downshifts. Its brakes squeal, just like the pigs it carries. I hear it chug up the long gravel drive.
My legs tingle pins and needles. I limp along the dirty floor, past Oreo’s smashed turntable, all that broken vinyl. There’s glass from the side windows everywhere. Boards hang by rusty nails where the other pigs, the cops, bashed them with sticks. There’s yellow tape across the doors, the windows. I lean against a fallen speaker, pick up a half empty beer. It’s warm, but there’s no cigarette floating inside. I rinse my mouth and spit on the floor. The chemical taste doesn’t go away, but at least I’m not as dry. My hands shake when I set the bottle back down. I need water.
The Factory is a big old mess. Shelves collapsed in a heap when one cop took an axe to them. That wa
s terrible; the loud whacks, the looks on all those kids’ faces. Clothes, art, photographs—everything they had, pulled from the broken shelves, thrown into piles on the floor. The big room reeks like piss, and I remember seeing one cop whip it out and spray the piles. An axe blade trail leads along the food cupboards, across the makeshift kitchen counter, up the blood-splattered wall. Blood. I shudder. The shooting. I pick my lips some more. I stare at the floor, at the stains, for an hour or maybe only a minute—it’s hard to tell.
Water.
I lick my bumpy dry lips. Water trickles out of a chopped-up pipe; it drips down and runs along the slanted floor, all the way over to the far side of the long room. A tiny man-made lake ripples with each new drop. I tilt my head back underneath the pipe and fill my mouth. It tastes weird, cool but tinny, a bit like earth. It reminds me that I have to pee.
Sly, I think miserably. What happened to Sly? I never saw him last night, not on the dance floor—as if he’d dance. Not in the bathroom lineup, not outside in the dark field, or upstairs in the make-out loft. Maybe he stayed at the Professor’s. Maybe he was still mad at me for taking off, for scoring and leaving. Maybe. After the cops burst in, the place was an effing zoo. Kids screaming, pushing, cops yelling, giving out the beats, handcuffs snapping shut. The best part was everyone dropping their stash.
Time for a wake-up call. I jiggle from one foot to the other. My bladder presses. A snort will get the brain cells working.
I touch my chest pocket; want to save the meth, but maybe a toot of that rich-kid coke …
Outside, a car door slams shut. Then another. That snaps me awake. There’s a digital bleep and radio static. Deep-down man voices. Gravel crunches under their heavy boots. I don’t have time to climb to the loft, and there’s nothing left to hide behind, so I scramble back to the couch and stuff my aching body behind it, though I can’t crawl right inside it, back into the filth.
“Whew,” one guy says as the door creaks open. “Stinks.” He laughs nervously. His radio chirps. “So, what’re we looking for exactly? The girl’s probably long gone by now.”
“Leftovers.” This voice is lower than the other, hollow and mean like an ulcer. Constable Earl King. I listen to his deliberate steps as he walks through the Factory. They stop.
Air catches in my chest. I try to slow up my breathing, but I can’t. I’m panting. My hands and feet run cold. There’s no stopping it, hot piss soaks my jean shorts, pools under my bare leg. It runs along the downward slant of the old floor. It runs underneath the whole length of the couch. I can taste the sick at the back of my throat, but I swallow it down.
One pair of feet walks around the place. One stands still.
“What a mess,” the other guy says. “God, don’t these kids bathe?” He stomps his foot and sighs loudly. “Piss. Stinks like piss.”
The King grunts. The King is climbing the loft ladder. I can tell by the sounds of his heavy steps on each creaking rung, by the ladder bouncing against the wall when he moves, by the way his deep voice echoes longer in the big room. He says, “Rats, roaches, pigeons, and street kids. City’s full of vermin.”
“Yep. We got our hands full.” The second man sounds farther away. Maybe still near the entrance, or in the kitchen. He drops something, it clatters to the ground. It rolls and rolls all the way over to the couch. “Shit,” he says. He walks slowly. His steps get louder; I feel each one through the floor boards. He stops. Leather creaks, and his knee pops when he bends down.
I feel his hand on my sneaker. He tugs hard, then drops it with a gasp. I hear him drag the couch away from the wall. “What the—”
There’s no use pretending. I open my eyes. I waggle my fingers at him.
He’s blond with pink cheeks and looks tall, especially because I’m sprawled down on the floor. The red stripe runs all the way up the outer seam of his dark pants. It’s the nicer one, Officer P. Anderson, the King’s partner. He inspects his fingers, the ones that touched my shoe, for cooties.
“Well, well,” he says. “Not our girl. It’s the informant.”
I clear my throat. No words come out. I try to compose myself. I sit up, my back straight against the cement wall, like a debutante.
The King’s voice booms from the upper loft. “So we got our redhead back.”
My skin prickles.
The King climbs down the creaky ladder while he talks. “Darcy Jones. Good tip last night. We got a lot more than we expected.”
I remember them beating their way through the party, having a field day.
“An unlawful gathering in a dangerous location—trespassing, drug trafficking, underage drinking, weapons …” He lists them off on his big fingers.
Officer Anderson says, “I think this was a meth lab. Don’t you, Earl?”
No way, I think. I’d have never left this place if they were cooking crystal.
I say, “The only thing they baked here was lentils. Tofu.”
Anderson laughs meanly. “Darcy doesn’t understand.”
“Nobody likes a meth lab in their neighbourhood, Darcy,” says the King. He speaks slowly, loudly, like I’m a retard. “People don’t care what we do to them, as long as we get rid of them. So, for our purposes, this dump was a meth lab. Got it?”
My brain is hardly working. I’m still stuck thinking that they actually had a meth lab and were holding out on me. Effing vegans.
The King says, “We sent some scumbags back to jail last night. Hopefully their bitch lawyers won’t spring them too soon.”
“Oh, and the hospital,” says Officer Anderson. “Right? Sent that kid to the ICU.”
“Won’t be walking out any time soon,” says the King. “You came through for us, Darcy.” His deep voice sounds almost proud of me.
I smile, but I’m not sure if I should.
“I didn’t think you would, to be honest,” says Anderson. His hands are fists on his hips. I’m staring at his belt buckle, a silver rectangle like a little doorframe leading nowhere nice.
“Didn’t find your girl-boy, though,” says the King. “Too bad. I wanted to get a closer look at that freak.”
Sly. A guilt pang twists my guts. I told him about Sly being trans. How he is a boy born into the wrong girl body. “He wasn’t here last night,” I say, my voice cracking.
The King is right beside Anderson now. Two big men—one pale with pink cheeks, one dark with a big veiny nose—a wall of blue.
Anderson says, “Who would have thought so much could go down on Fairy Mountain?” He chuckles.
The King says, “Hmmph.” Then he says, “Get up. What’s in your pockets?”
I get up slowly. There’s a wet stain on my jean shorts. I pull my front pockets inside out – nothing. I turn around and wiggle my hips slowly, to show him there’s nothing back there either.
“Did you piss yourself?” The King looks disgusted. “Clean up. I still need you for a couple more jobs today, Darcy.”
I clear my throat to talk. “But you said we’d be even if I told you about the party.” My hidden foil packets are burning holes right through me. I got a crack attack coming on. I can make do with a joint to calm my nerves if I have to, but seriously? I need a bump, a line of coke, or a hit of something speedy, just to get back in the game.
He says, “Shut the fuck up.” His hit sends me flat against the wall. Whush. All the things bumping around in my head fly clean out of there. “You’re never gonna be even, got that? You do what I say, when I say it. You know what happens if you don’t play? You’re done. Permanently. ”
Photos of that boy he killed, him all cut up and beaten, that pretty hustler we don’t see around anymore, bolt through my brain like lightning. I don’t say anything. I don’t cry. It’s like that hit sends me back to myself, wakes me up and gets my brain working again, almost as good as a chemical.
I know all about hitting, I think. Oh, yes.
I pick up the first piece of clothing I find, a button-down shirt someone left on the arm of the couch, and shove
my arms into the sleeves, pulling it over my T-shirt. I sidle behind the couch, away from them, and smooth the fabric over the pocket that holds my goods.
Anderson says, “We need you to find someone, Darcy. Someone who was at the party.”
“Emily Stuart.” The King pronounces it loud and sharp, so the last name sounds like a spit.
I say, “I don’t know anyone named that.” I cough. I’m looking for pants in all the stuff left behind by the party kids.
“Oh, yes you do. She was living here.” Anderson steps toward me and waves papers in my face. “Having her welfare delivered to the drop-in centre.”
“I already told you who lives here—Cricket, Oreo, Digit, and Ferret.” And me. “That’s it. There’s no Emily No One.” I root through a pile of clothes. There’s a silver scarf, a light jacket, a pair of giant white sunglasses.
Anderson checks something on his paper. “James David Smith, a.k.a. Cricket, the fag with the blue hair. Got him. Oreo Ahkwa-blah-blah-kwe—are they serious? More like Lesbo Broken Nose.” He laughs meanly. “Digit is André Savoie, the kid on life support. Emily Stuart, missing in action.”
“What do you mean life support?” I put the sunglasses on top of my head and drape the scarf over my shoulder. I can tell it looks good, even without a mirror.
The King grabs my arm and nearly rips it out of the socket. “Listen, you little fuck. She’s a skinny dyke with dirty blue dreads. She was wearing fishnets and a skirt. Ring any bells?”
“Oh, that’s Ferret. Why didn’t you say so?”
The King drops my arm. I shake it out.
“That hurt,” I say. Now I know. The King reminds me of someone—one of my long-ago dads. It’s so familiar, all of it.
Officer Anderson scribbles in his notes. “Stuart, also known as Ferret.”
“The best thing about these little cunts,” says the King, “is they’re like rats in a trap. They’ll chew off their own legs to escape, never mind what they’ll do to each other.”
The Dirt Chronicles Page 11
