by JJ Strong
Cullen yanked on the doors to no effect except to startle a group of winter sparrows nesting in the eaves three stories overhead. I watched the birds boomerang an arch across the low-slung sky and then flit back into their hooded nests. Cullen tromped through the debris and pried a concrete slab out of its hold in the dirt. The building’s windows were paneled with what looked like wrought iron but must have been something much weaker because when Cullen wound up and heaved his concrete block at the glass, the crashing blow left a gap where both the obliterated glass and its paneling had just been.
“Want to try?” Cullen glowed with a sense of destructive wonder. He bent to hoist up another giant rock and then shuffled it over to me.
“Bend your knees,” he said.
I did, and he shifted it into my hands.
“Got it?”
“Yeah.”
But I didn’t have it and almost shattered my toes by dropping it before Cullen stepped back in and secured the other side of the block. My back ached, and my fingers threatened to gave way.
“We’ll do it together,” he said. “On three.”
“I can’t hold it!”
“Three!”
We swung the slab back once and then tossed it through the window, blowing open a fresh gap in the pane. The sound of the punctured glass and the rock hitting the floor—one initial crack and then a rolling pitter-patter—struck my nerves with a sparkling switch. I told Cullen to find me one I could throw myself.
We heaved one block after another into the window that rose twice as tall as us and stretched just as wide. We worked at it with such fervor that our faces blushed. We mocked the winter cold with sweat on our foreheads. We cried out against the world with every toss, and the cracking glass echoed our anger back to us. We screamed out demented versions of “Jingle Bells” and “O Holy Night” while we flung rusted lengths of pipe and discarded wrenches at the window, working until only a stubborn few shards and wiry splinters of paneling clung to the corners. When we finally stepped through the breach and into the warehouse, we navigated clumsily over the piles of rock and concrete we had created.
The floor of the gutted interior was checkered with blocks of light from glass ceiling panels. Piping webbed the upper reaches in what was once some mad map of water and electricity. Cullen held his leather jacket in one arm. He snuck his other arm around my waist and fit his hand in the back pocket of my jeans. The place smelled like metal and mold.
“What do you think they did in here?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. Built things. Shipped things. Received things.”
We stopped walking. He leveraged my waist around to face him, and we kissed. We were still warm from our rock tossing, but I felt the cold tip of his nose against my cheek.
Cullen laid his jacket down on a square of sunlight, spreading it out in what was, under the circumstances, a welcoming patch of protected ground. He took my coat from me and laid it out on top of his. Then he unbuttoned his flannel shirt, slipped it off, and laid it smoothly over the coats. I stretched my sweatshirt over my head, then a gray tank top, and added them to the pile. He flipped off a stained white undershirt, and we both shimmied out of our jeans with a few nervous chuckles. The cottony pile grew at our feet.
He moved against me, one hand tracing over the surface of my bra and the other scratching the skin of my back. I tugged his boxers down and touched and then squeezed him there. He led me down onto the pile of clothes, lips touching lips, neck, breasts, navel, thighs.
I tried to focus on Cullen—the sensation of him, the reality of his being here with me, doing this thing. I wanted to look into his eyes, smell him, synch my breathing up with his, feel his weight on top of me and the weight of the world underneath me. I wanted to get closer to him than I’d ever been to anyone else ever before. But it was too difficult, the moment too momentous. All I could think was: This is sex. Screwing. Humping. Fucking. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to feel?
The simplest thing changed all that. His hand—a tender hand, and gentle—cupped at my neck, thumb near my ear, fingers tickling at my hairline. Something about that hand there brought me out of myself and nearer to him. His eyes met mine.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I breathed.
He exhaled and put his face close to mine, the warm skin of his cheek settling against my shoulder.
When it was over, the cold bit at us while he breathed naked atop me, our clothes newly spoiled. We dressed awkwardly. Cullen made a joke. We wandered our way outside and back to the house through the outer stretches of Jersey City. He held my hand—a gesture that grounded me, a defender against my own invading armies of doubt. I couldn’t help but wonder how many girls he’d done this with and for how many it had been their first time. Had he learned to hold their hand through some early missteps? Or had he just known all along?
“What time is it?” he asked.
I showed him my watch: eleven A.M.
He nodded and looked off. Calculating. Planning.
I felt lonely and hugged his arm. The oily smell of his leather jacket was almost overwhelming. I’d never been to Europe or any place like that, but being at the waterfront at dawn felt a lot like what it must feel like to walk the streets of Rome or Athens, only instead of walking through the history of civilization with millions of other tourists, we had it all to ourselves. The ruins and the ghosts and the silence. Far off, all alone in the middle of an empty field, there was an enormous clock with COLGATE written under it. There was an inescapable feeling that shades of life watched us from behind these empty warehouses, abandoned project buildings, closed storefronts—a lost society of men and women pausing from their toil to eye us, thinking, There goes that future we’re building in here . . . and I couldn’t help but wonder what they thought about that.
The place was so quiet, we heard Ray’s running footsteps before we saw him turn the corner. When he did appear, his face projected a look I’d never seen before, on him or anyone else, and yet I could identify it immediately: It was the look of a boy who was running, literally, for his life.
Ray
I DIDN’T PLAN ON RUNNING when whoever was going to come for me—the cops, Amir, or anyone else—finally came. I wanted to let whatever was going to happen to me happen, so during that night in the castle I sat awake a lot, shivering badly and hoping the end would come already. I didn’t want to fight, and I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to live anymore, and so I hoped the one who came would be Amir and that he’d end it for me himself—much cleaner than some dumb ordeal with cops and lawyers and judges and parents. Amir was capable of it, wasn’t he? Maybe he’d show up in the night, sneak through the house real quiet, and strangle me or cut my throat or bash my head in. That would be fine, I thought. Because if God was an illusion, then so was Heaven. And when I died, I’d be nothing. And if you were nothing before, and you’d be nothing after, then the part in the middle was just a fantasy—a long, pointless car ride between two places that don’t exist.
While Bri and Cullen were gone that morning in Jersey City, I grabbed a piece of broken glass from a heap of debris in a second-floor room. I stared at its pointed edge for what felt like hours. Sometimes I’d set the sharp edge against my gut, clench my teeth, and close my eyes, but I couldn’t put even the slightest bit of pressure on the glass. One time I acted the whole thing out. I held the glass out in front of me and pretended to jab myself in the throat, falling back from the imaginary stabbing, trying to hold together my torn-apart neck, coughing up blood, moaning and crying and stumbling around the room like some Bugs Bunny death scene, tripping on piles of wood and broken pieces of roof, until I landed on my butt in the corner and died, my feet stuck out in front of me and my arms hanging at my sides. The whole thing made me feel better in a funny way. At least for a little while. Then I remembered that part from The Catcher in the Rye when he pr
etends to be shot in the stomach and stumbles around his room, and I felt like an idiot. I couldn’t even come up with my own weird way of doing things.
Eventually the reality that I was afraid of doing it wrong—that I’d have to live without a voice box or something horrifying like that—set in and made me feel doubly bad about all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t.
I dropped the glass at my feet and went on with my waiting. I spent most of the morning pacing the floors, flipping through Tolstoy’s Confession, which I’d been carrying around in my back pocket since Christmas morning, and ducking into rooms where everything reminded me of death. I eyed the dead cat nailed to the wall in one room, studied the satanic verses scribbled above our makeshift fireplace, imaging all the maniacs who’d been in this awful place before us and all the awful acts they’d performed.
I read the “Eleven Satanic Rules of Earth” written in red across the wall of the house. Some of them were pretty straight, even moral. #9: Do not harm little children. #10: Do not kill nonhumans unless you are attacked for your food. This one made me think about the cat and how nobody could follow their own rules, not even satanists. #7: Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained. I thought about satanists in the same way I thought about Christians—did they really believe? Could they? Was there really any difference between worshipping the devil or God? Could you worship anything and let that count as faith? The sun? The stars? A car? A gun? Yourself?
Tolstoy said, “Where there is life, there is faith.”
He said, “Without faith it is impossible to live.”
He said, “Faith is a knowledge of the meaning of life, the consequence of which is that man does not kill himself, but lives.”
Well, I must have had some faith of some sort, even if I couldn’t put words to it, because I hadn’t been able to use that glass on myself, and when it came time to run, I ran.
I was standing next to the little fire pit at the top of the stairs when a fluttering caught my eye and I looked up to see snow sifting through the hole in the roof. It came from an invisible sky—low and gray and smothering. I moved to a room at the front of the house. The windows were boarded up, but there was one missing slot in the center frame, and I peeked through the gap to see the snow. You could spot Roman at a hundred yards—he was all elbows and knees and a giant head and nose, making his way across the street toward the house.
I didn’t think much of it at first. It made sense that Cullen would call Roman. He was already very much a part of this. But then, from the passenger side of Roman’s old pickup, I saw Amir looking up at the house. He looked right at the window, and for a moment I was sure that he saw me but I just as quickly thought that it was impossible. I was too far away, and only my eyes and nose were showing through the narrow slot. At first, he didn’t move or blink or do anything at all—just stared at the top story of the house, where my eyes were exposed. Then he stepped out of the car, holding in plain sight that same gun he’d had yesterday.
I thought maybe I was making this happen. Like Amir kept showing up because I was invoking him out of my dreams in some confused, hallucinogenic fever. Giving birth to him in a series of manic fits. If I could just get a grip on my thoughts, I might make him disappear as quickly as he’d arrived.
I raced through the hall to the stairs, grabbing at the wooden knob of the post at the stairs’ edge as I ran, hoping to wheel myself around on its pivot, but the rotted wood gave way. I crashed down the staircase in a painful tumble, until I managed to throw out a leg as a kickstand that popped right through a soft spot in the wood. The wood clamped against my shin like a bear trap.
The front door moaned open, followed by the sounds of Amir and Roman hurrying across the sawdust of the house’s bottom floor. I kicked at the step with my free leg, splintering and cracking through the stair to free my foot, screaming, “Fuck, come on!” and then, when I was free, I hurried to the back of the house, where there was a big floor-to-ceiling window with many missing slats of lumber.
I slipped through some loose pieces of wood and out into the crazy winter storm. I ducked through a bunch of leafless bushes and onto the sidewalk. The whipping snow hurt my cheeks.
I needed to find Cullen.
Cullen
THE THING YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND about Amir is that he knew Ray better than any of us. Sometimes two people can meet and instantly understand all the most important truths about each other without ever talking about them. It probably doesn’t happen often. But it happens. I thought that’s what happened with Brielle and me, but who knows, maybe I was wrong.
After Ray had fled the convenience store that night, Amir looked up from his brother, who was squirming out from under a rack of groceries, and said to me, “Told you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said.
“I told you he’d see through it. He’s smarter than you think.”
Malik stood, and I noticed his hand—a deep gash across the palm. He wiped blood onto his shirt—a white shirt, already covered in blood across his stomach.
“You okay?” I said.
He nodded. “Glass cut me pretty good.”
Amir handed a fistful of napkins to his brother, who sponged at the blood. I looked at Malik’s shirt, then outside to where my car had just been before Brielle peeled off with Ray, then back to Malik, then back to the door, then back to Malik. The red mess of his shirt.
I laughed when I figured it out.
“What?” Amir said.
“Ray’s smart,” I said. “But not that smart.”
I was content to walk right over to the O’Dells’ that night and break the news to Ray. Maybe I would’ve had a little fun with him, let him have one or two good freak-out moments before I told him that he had not, in fact, shot Malik, let alone killed him. But I wasn’t imagining anything like what Amir came up with later that night.
Malik called the cops and reported a robbery. We had to empty the register of a few handfuls of cash, which I felt bad about, but Malik said he’d figure out a way to get it back to his uncle, the store’s owner. The cops showed up and took witness statements. I hung out in the back alley until they were gone. No need to have my name on the report, even as a witness. Malik and Amir told the cops he was a big guy—maybe six foot three, 250 pounds—dressed in a New York Jets sweat suit, and driving a blue minivan. He crazy, they said. On drugs probably. Came in shouting, tossing over shelves, and shooting at stuff while he demanded the cash. Amir told me the cops were pissed about the security camera malfunctioning, but they seemed to buy the story. Why wouldn’t they? Amir and Malik’s uncle showed up to assess the damage and, yes, go a little nuts over the security camera thing, but not to the extent that he wasn’t, most of all, relieved to find his nephews mostly unharmed. Finally, Amir and Malik’s parents appeared and took Malik to the ER for stitches. Amir and I stayed behind to help his uncle clean up the store.
All of this took forever. By the time we were ready to leave, it was almost five in the morning, but Amir and I were still wired from the wildness of the night, so we stopped at a diner on the way home.
“He wants something better than what we gave him,” Amir said. “So let’s give it to him.”
“It’s pretty fucked up,” I said. “Letting him think he shot someone.”
“But that’s exactly what he wants—something fucked up! He wants to go through this, like, totally insane experience, right? And you tried to give it to him, but you played it too safe.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Admit it. You did. We have to go deeper. Ray needs it. He deserves it.”
I won’t lie; the gun stuff freaked me out. Things could have turned out a lot worse than they did in that store. But what freaked me out even more was that Amir, rather t
han showing any signs of being spooked like I was, seemed energized by it all.
“He said he wanted a vision.” One of his legs bobbed frantically, shaking the table. His fingers tapped on his water glass. “This is exactly the type of thing that can help him see whatever he wants to see. I think . . . oh man. I just think we can really do something that’s just totally insane and awesome. You know? I mean . . . imagine the look on his face when he sees Malik!”
“Malik? You’re gonna keep him involved?”
“Well, yeah. It won’t work without the big reveal.”
I took a bite of my breakfast sandwich, thinking.
“What is it?” Amir said.
“I don’t know. He’s your brother. I don’t even really know the guy. But you really think he’ll go along with that? After tonight?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Just like that?”
“How do you think I convinced him to do this tonight?”
“Beats me.”
“He used to beat me up all the time when we were little. Wanted to look cool in front of his friends. Now that he’s grown up he feels bad about it.”
He was talking fast, forking eggs into his mouth, chewing on toast, gulping juice. He wasn’t looking at me—his manic eyes darted all over the place.
“See this?” He pointed to a scar that sliced diagonally across his eyebrow.
“Yeah.”
“He pushed me off a skateboard when I was twelve, and I gashed my head on the curb. Got eighteen stitches. So, yeah, whatever. You know what? I won’t even tell him the whole plan. I’ll just ask him to stand in some place at a certain time and wait for Ray. He’ll be cool with it. Trust me.”
