by JJ Strong
“And you didn’t see where Hickson went after that?”
“I don’t really even know him.”
Finally the partner spoke up, reading from his pad: “You witnessed Cullen Hickson near Main Street on Friday, October 4, at two o’clock in the afternoon. That’s correct?”
A sound emerged from me that was no discernible word, a smudge of a thought, and then, resetting, I tried again. “Yeah,” I told him.
“Yes,” Esposito corrected.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean . . . yes.”
There was a silent pause. The officers leaned back in their chairs, seeming to communicate through some sort of telepathy. Then they both stood.
They each gripped my hand in a devastating shake and then did the same to my father. Dad walked them to the front door, where Esposito thanked him for his time and apologized for interrupting our Sunday night. He said in so many words that there was nothing to worry about. That I was a good kid. But that Dad should get a handle on the company I was keeping. Especially now, I heard him say. Especially these days. From my seat in the kitchen I couldn’t make out the words Dad mumbled in reply.
Dad came back to the kitchen, and there was a minute of him standing at the sink in silence. Then finally he said, “You have homework to do.”
“Why did that guy call you Chuck?”
“That’s what they used to call me in high school.”
“He went to St. John’s?”
Dad nodded. “His uncle is NYPD. I know the Espositos very well. Were you with this Hickson kid last weekend?”
I thought about all the clients who saw my dad as someone to confide in. A person they told things to. Things they would never admit to anyone else in a million years. What did they see in him that I couldn’t see?
“No,” I lied. “He’s Bri’s friend. I only met him like once.”
“Brielle?”
It wasn’t exactly a nice move, shifting the lens onto her like that, but I didn’t think about it too much. That’s just what brothers and sisters do. “She’s been hanging out with him, I guess.”
“Did he steal a car?
“How would I know?”
Dad eyed the linoleum at his feet. “You don’t get many breaks in life. Could have been any number of cops to show up tonight.”
“I know.”
“I hope you do.”
“Will you tell Mom?” I asked.
“Of course,” Dad said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s not feeling well right now, Ray. You know that.”
“Okay.”
What I wanted to say was I know. Of course I knew she wasn’t feeling well, and that’s exactly the reason I didn’t want Dad to tell her. Because if she heard about it, she’d want to get close to me and hug me and comfort me, and I couldn’t stand much more of that. It was like she was trying to squeeze me into being happy. And she wasn’t even doing it for me. She had so closely attached her own well-being to mine, convincing herself that if I was okay—with all the hugs and hair caresses and “I love you, honey”s she could muster—then the same would be true for her. So whenever she asked me how school was, or how I was feeling, or if I had a good day, I’d always tell her, “Everything’s great, Mom. Just great.” I’d smile. I’d be happy. And she’d smile, exhaling quietly, convinced.
But two cops arriving at our house to confront me about a stolen car was obviously the exact opposite of “great.”
I hung around the kitchen for another moment thinking about all this, wondering what Dad would say if I unloaded it on him, but when I looked up he was going through the mail, so I left.
The next morning at school, I ripped the Crucifixion of St. Peter out of my theology book and taped to the inside door of my locker. I was staring at St. Peter’s upside down face, wondering what Cullen might do if he knew what I’d told the cops, when Amir stopped at my locker and nodded at the painting.
“What is that?” he asked.
I explained, and he stared at it some more, nodding a little. “Why is it there?”
I couldn’t really explain why I liked the painting. All I knew was that I wanted it to be in a place where I could look at it many times a day. Because looking at it felt good in a way that I didn’t care about figuring out. So what I said to Amir was “Probably for the same reason you wanted to steal that car.”
Amir’s head twitched one way and then the other, and he looked at me real seriously. “Shut up about that,” he said.
“Right. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I get what you mean.”
I was relieved to hear him say this, but the feeling fled as soon as Nick O’Dwyer showed up and, in the span of maybe thirty seconds, looked at the photo, said that “Osama” and I worshipped the devil, called me “Ray-Gay,” which was his new brilliant nickname for me, then corkscrewed a finger into a bruise on my neck that he’d caused a few days ago. When he did, Amir slapped his hand away. Nick pushed Amir against the locker, and Amir pushed back, saying, “What the fuck is your problem?” My face went hot because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do—call for help? Throw a punch? Run away? Nick was much bigger than Amir and would have easily kicked his ass if given the chance, but as it was, they pushed each other only a few times before Mr. Fanning stepped out of his classroom and stepped between them.
“All right, cut it out and get to class,” he said.
“I’m just trying to get to my locker,” Nick protested. “Shadid was trying to plant a bomb in there.”
“Get what you need and get to class, Mr. O’Dwyer.”
Nick fiddled with his lock. Amir and I walked away. Mr. Fanning called to us as we went: “And please tuck your shirt back in, Mr. Shadid.”
When we made it to the stairwell, Amir glanced back at Nick and muttered, “I hate that fucking asshole.”
I watched him in awe. How the hell did he just fight back like that? What in the world made him think it would work out in his favor? He tucked in his shirt and adjusted the blazer, which was at least two sizes too big—a hand-me-down from his brother Malik, whose name was scribbled on the inside pocket—and made Amir look even smaller than he actually was.
“Anyway,” he said. “What’re you doing after school?”
“Oh,” I said. “Actually I’m hanging out with Cullen again.”
He nodded and, like I’d invited him along—or like he didn’t care whether I’d invited him or not—said, “Cool. See you then.”
* * *
I met Cullen in the parking lot after school, dressed in sweats and sneakers like he asked me to be. He sat on the hood of his Buick, eyes in a book. He still wore his school uniform, but the shirt—a wrinkled black button-down that he wore every single day—had been untucked, and the tie—also wrinkled, also black, also worn every single day—had been loosened around the neck in a way that made him look really cool—just like the first day I’d met him in the woods. I stood next to him, waiting. Fumbled my hands over themselves. He stroked his mustache with the back of his ugly, greasy thumb.
“Say something,” he said.
“What?”
He snapped the book shut. “Don’t stand there waiting for people to see you, all meek and whatever. Walk up and say something. Hopefully something smart, but really any fucking thing will do. Say, ‘Hey, Cullen.’ Say, ‘Hello.’ Say, ‘What up, homes?’ Say, ‘Hey, asshole, what the fuck are you doing? I told you I never wanted to see your face in this place again.’ Got it?”
“Got it.”
“You been talking to somebody?”
Amir approached from across the lot, also in his shirt and tie.
“Huh?”
It was a gray December day. I hopped in place to keep warm.
“Esposito come talk to you?”
“Who?”
“No,” I said. Again I found myself fighting against that stupid quivering in my breath, made that much harder to control by the cold.
“I hope you lied to them better than you’re lying to me.”
Amir stepped in, fist-bumped Cullen, and said, “What’s up, motherfucker?” It sounded silly in Amir’s high voice, but somehow he sold it, refusing to search Cullen’s eyes to see whether Cullen had thought it was cool or dumb, like I would’ve done.
“See that?” Cullen slapped me across the shoulder. “That is how one arrives.”
Cullen’s eyes always seemed plugged into something that lit them up, powered with a spark that might explode at any time, in any one person’s direction.
“I know the cops showed.” The eyes were on me now—almost but not quite twitching. “What’d you tell ’em?”
“They just asked me if I was downtown.”
“And?”
“I told them yes.”
“And what else?”
“That was it.”
“Didn’t ask about me? Or Amir?”
“My coach saw me when we were in the alley. That’s all.”
“He saw me too,” Cullen said.
“How do you know that?”
“Least that’s what Esposito told me when he showed up at my house. After he came to your house.”
“Oh.”
“And so he asked you if you were with me? Yeah?”
I shrugged.
“Look me in the eye, Ray.”
“The guy saw you and me together. What was I supposed to do?”
“You say you never fucking met me! You have no idea what they’re talking about. That you weren’t downtown at all. That this coach of yours or whoever must have been mistaken. How hard is that? How does that guy even know you or me from any other of the dozen kids hanging around downtown on a Saturday?”
Guys peppered the school lot, some lounging by their cars and some peeling off to freedom. The football team walked out of the locker room in groups of two or three, sometimes a loner, all making a lazy trek up the hill to practice, helmets hanging from their fingers, laces untied, ducking into shoulder pads and shoving cups in their pants.
Cullen ran a hand across his chin. Amir wouldn’t look at me or Cullen.
I reached into the pocket of my sweatpants and produced a crumpled stack of bills.
“What’s that?” Cullen asked.
It was fifty of the sixty dollars I had to my name, saved from a summer spent mowing lawns. I shoved it into Cullen’s hand.
He flipped through the bills. “This isn’t even enough.”
“I’ll get more.”
In one quick motion Cullen buried the money in his pocket and produced the keys to his Buick. “Be back here tomorrow.”
“What about today?”
“I can’t think about it now, because I’m too distracted by wanting to murder you. If I’m here tomorrow, we’ll keep going with this stupid thing of yours. If not, forget it.”
“Fuck that! Decide now!”
Cullen turned on me. He laughed.
“Decide now,” I said again, quieter this time.
Cullen looked to Amir, who nodded at him. Again he ran his hand over his face, never able to think clearly without some visible sign of it. “I’m not the fall guy here, Ray.”
“I know.”
“You can’t just immediately put the blame on me the minute things go bad.”
“I know!”
“Because it’ll work and I’ll be fucked. People will believe you. Not me. And I know you know exactly what I mean. You know or you wouldn’t have said what you said to those cops.”
I didn’t say anything. Amir was chewing on his nails. I could feel Cullen’s eyes on me, but I didn’t dare look at him.
“Look, are we gonna do something cool today or not?” Amir tightened the straps of his backpack. “If not, I gotta catch the bus.”
Cullen spit into the leaves and cleared his throat. A long moment passed while he stewed, trying to decide what to do. Finally, he announced, very formally, like he was speaking to a large audience, “Listen up. Today is the first day of Ray O’Dell’s training. The game is this: cops and robbers. Just like when we were little: I run, you chase me. It’s not over until you catch me, no matter what happens. Ready, go.”
And then, just like that, he dropped into a dead sprint across the lot, shouldering me out of the way as he went. Amir turned to me for the briefest moment—shock, thrill, fear, daring—and off we went.
We darted through the rows of cars, down the steep hill of the driveway at the south end of the lot and into the streets of South Orange, after Cullen. The cold air bit at my throat. Cullen plodded along in his black shoes, and Amir raced behind him, his short legs wheeling along beneath him, the back of his blazer flying up behind him like a cape.
We ran out to South Orange Avenue—a two-lane road that wound to the top of South Mountain Reservation. It was no place for runners. Cars whipped their way up and down the hill, negotiating one curve after another, switching lanes like crazy, sometimes dipping into the shoulder just to get their bearings before steering back onto the main road.
Amid all of this, we ran uphill. Cullen’s pace was steady, but mine was a mess of dry heaves and flailing arms. There was no hope of catching him. I tripped along the last inch of pavement before the grass. Cars screamed through the wind. Some honked. I was already so winded that I feared I would lose my balance and tumble into the road. I worried that maybe this was Cullen’s plan all along. That he was pissed enough about the cop stuff to do something like that.
Someone hurled a McDonald’s soda cup at us. Cullen swiped at it with his cast, knocking it to the pavement so it splashed on my ankles. He kept running, head down, but Amir was pissed. He picked up the cup and ran into the road to hurl it at the car, which of course was already hundreds of feet away. Amir shouted, “Motherfuckers!” and held up two middle fingers, stepping back onto the shoulder just as another car sped uphill and whipped past him.
Just before the top of the hill, we steered away from the road. Amir and I followed Cullen blindly into the woods—no trail, no markings. We clomped through mud and stone. We dodged trees—bare trunks with patches of moss at their bottoms. Sticks snapped and cut at my ankles. Cullen was too fast. Too strong. I grabbed the damp branch of an oak tree, caught in a fit of coughing.
“Don’t stop,” came Cullen’s voice. He moved through the forest—a dark figure taking superhuman leaps through the bush.
I stumbled forward, anxious not to lose him, coughed again, and then finally I couldn’t take it anymore and stopped to vomit—a disgusting, burning release onto a bed of long-dead leaves.
“Don’t stop,” came the voice.
I wiped my chin on my sleeve and kept moving through the dry heaves, trying not to lose Amir and Cullen among the trees. They were mostly silhouettes now, ghosts dancing through the forest. I spat as I went after them. It wasn’t at all like the running we’d done with the cops at our heels. Nothing to laugh about today.
I caught up to them at the base of a tall rock face, which, to my complete distress, Cullen started to climb, just as Amir was about to catch him. Cullen grinned at me while clinging to the rock, a few feet off the ground. “Don’t stop!”
I pushed my hands into my thighs, my knees gave out, and then I was sitting in the dirt, watching Cullen move up the rock. I bent over and closed my eyes. I spat into the leaves. I couldn’t go any farther.
“Hey.”
It was Amir’s voice this time, soft and high-pitched. He’d turned back, and he now stood above me, offering a hand, which I weakly swatted away.
“Come on,” he said. “We have to get him.”
He took my hand and pulled me up. We jogged to the base of the r
ock, which felt so cold I didn’t even want to touch it. My legs shook like crazy as I climbed, pausing to find good holds in the stone, one last push upward, and then another, and then one more, following Amir. At the top I tossed myself onto the plateau, facedown, wanting to die. I breathed. It was all I could do. One breath, and then another, and then another. Each one a miracle.
“He’s trapped,” Amir said.
I flipped myself over. Looked at the flat rock—Cullen was indeed trapped. Three sides of the rock dropped straight back to the ground, and the fourth was a steep, slippery slope of mud and roots that was impossible to climb. Cullen stood against this wall. He nodded behind Amir and me and said, “Check it out.”
Amir and I turned around. In front of us, sweeping all the way downhill, was the entire world—trees, fences, houses, yards, churches, highways, streetlights. And beyond the trees, beyond the hill, beyond forever, was the skyline. It was faded from this distance and soft around its edges, flickering like a bunch of weak candles, but there it was—no mistaking it. From left to right: George Washington Bridge, Empire State Building, Wall Street. In spring, twin searchlights had shone in tribute, but by December they were gone, and now you couldn’t tell where the towers were supposed to be.
I heard a shuffling before Amir shouted, “Oh shit!” and I turned just in time to find Cullen sprinting straight at me, about to leap off the rock face. “Stop him!” Amir screamed. And without thinking about it, I dove for Cullen.
His shoulder speared me in the chest. I wrapped my arms around him as we soared off the rock. We fell quickly. The ground met us with an excruciating, full-body punch.
Cullen rolled away from me, half-moaning and half-laughing. “Aww,” he said. “Aww, shit.”
I took a moment to catch my breath, then rose and wiped myself off. My shoulder throbbed, and my head felt woozy. Amir shouted from the top of the rock, “Game over, motherfucker!”
Cullen lifted a hand toward me, and I helped him up. He shook his head, smiling. “Come on. I want to see that view again.”
He limped toward the rock face, and up we climbed.
* * *
The three of us sat with our muddy khakis hanging off the edge of the rock. Amir and Cullen recounted their favorite moments of the chase, laughing in disbelief that any of that had truly just happened, but soon we all grew quiet and just watched the skyline, thinking our own thoughts, breathing our own air.
