Us Kids Know

by JJ Strong

  The trains passed. The place went black again. Footsteps came at me. I didn’t move. Again the ground shook, and here came the shriek of another train. The light made Amir into a shadow. He ran at me, leaping over tracks.

  Like the last two, this train came in quickly. Too quickly. At first it was a distant light—just the idea of a thing, not even the thing itself—and then it was real and deadly and right on top of us. Amir looked up from running with a face that I thought was a smile, like he had something funny he’d been waiting to tell me for a long time. Like he still wasn’t afraid. Like he was having a great time playing this game where no one could ever get hurt, not even when you crashed a car into the woods at seventy miles per hour. Not even when you played with a loaded gun. Not even underground, in a subway tunnel. And I smiled back at him. Because I already knew what he wanted to tell me.

  He had the gun in one hand, and he came at me so fast. Out of control. His shoulder was lowered, and his arms were held out like he wanted to tackle me. Or hug me. He tripped. Lost his balance. Arms flailing, he almost recovered, but then didn’t. He tumbled across one track, and his momentum took him all the way into the next one.

  When the train hit him, it didn’t make any sound at all.

  PART TWO

  Brielle

  AMIR’S MEMORIAL SERVICE was held on a clear, sunny January day. Ray did not attend, nor did Cullen. I pleaded with Ray, but he was resolute about staying home. The service itself was devastating, and I did not stay very long. There were tears and screams and total emotional breakdowns everywhere you looked. Nobody bothered to be polite. There was not much in the way of composure or self-possessed, quiet suffering like you might have found at an O’Dell memorial service—like I remember at my grandfather’s funeral. I thought about going to talk to Amir’s brother, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Malik looked so angry at the world, and at himself, that I feared how he’d react to someone else who was a part of the ridiculous plan that got his brother killed. I understood then why Cullen didn’t go, and I understood too that, no matter how much any of us may have wanted to, we would never be able to make this right for Malik or any other member of Amir’s family.

  I knew Amir primarily through watching Ray interact with him, but I really liked him. I knew what he meant to Ray. And it wasn’t only because I knew he’d regret it someday that I urged Ray to attend the service, but also because I was afraid of leaving him alone. I knew what he was capable of. He proved that to me with the subway tunnel stunt, yes, but even more so right afterward.

  * * *

  When Amir jumped onto the track after Ray, Cullen and I raced aboveground to the next station. By the time we arrived, a team of EMTs, firemen, and police were already hurrying down the steps, closing off the entrance. Of course a stunt like this, I thought, in a city under twenty-four-hour surveillance, wouldn’t last more than ten seconds without a swift and brutal response from the authorities. I was waiting for Ray to be led out of the subway in cuffs, already planning his defense for the events of Christmas Eve, working out a way to scapegoat Cullen for the whole thing, when a handsome, quiet-eyed young guy came walking down the sidewalk, shielding his face from the snow, and nodded a greeting at Cullen.

  “This is Brielle,” Cullen said.

  The guy lifted his face briefly to greet me, and I knew instantly who he was.

  “Brielle, this is Malik,” Cullen confirmed.

  Malik had a small bandage wrapped around his hand but other than that did not appear to be injured at all—no signs of a gunshot recovery.

  “I got out of there,” he said, nodding to the subway stairs. “Before the cops came.”

  “I’m sure everything’s fine,” Cullen said.

  I shook with a wet shiver and moved under the too-short awning of a Duane Reade. Except for a few hurried travelers pausing briefly at the yellow tape strung across the station stairs, nobody noticed or gave more than a cursory thought to the firemen standing guard beside their truck while some mysterious tragedy played out underground. This relentless movement of the city made me sick. The three of us stood in a row with pocketed hands and waterlogged feet.

  I still didn’t know what the whole scheme had been, and I didn’t have a full sense of Cullen’s role in it, but I knew enough to understand it was a dumb idea that had been taken too far. I also knew I was just as complicit in its conclusion as everyone else.

  Even pressed against the glass as we were, people brushed against us as they marched into the pressing storm. The city resisted our stillness. Bullied our waiting. The storm briefly died down, and the wind let up. Oversized flakes sunk down so slowly it seemed like they would keep falling and falling and never touch down. I closed my eyes and inexplicably saw summer. A sort of childhood I’d never really had, with lakes and docks and bare feet. I pictured that image of Mom and me at the beach. Snowflakes touched down on my cheeks and eyelids, and I let the summer daydream dissolve to feel the quick touches of cold and then the melt slipping down my chin. It would be nice, I thought, to come apart like a cloud. To watch as a thousand million specks of Brielle drifted away to some other place. It would be just the right amount of hurt: a scattershot of quick, burning pinpricks, minuscule flecks of skin, muscle, tissue, and bone, each one a unique marvel of biological intricacy, plucked by gravity from the whole and snared by the wind.

  I looked to see if Cullen was watching me, but he was not. Despite it all, and against all good reason, I wanted him close to me. To touch him and smell him. I wanted to reach out and take his hand in mine, but the space between us felt impossibly far.

  Two police climbed out of the station, untacked the yellow tape, and stood somberly at the steps. It was another two minutes—agonizing minutes during which I imagined all sorts of calamity and terror—before a team of EMTs appeared, carrying a gurney on which was strapped a faceless bundle of person. Instinctively, ready to shatter with mourning, I stepped toward them, but Cullen caught my arm. I looked where he looked—across the street, catty-corner to us. Even with the snow and the crowd, which was gathering now around the ambulance where the body was being deposited, I could make out Ray’s figure—thin and slouched with a windblown flop of hair.

  Malik saw him too. And Cullen saw Malik seeing him. Cullen pushed me away from the scene. Malik let out a harsh, piercing cry—like a small boy who’s broken his wrist badly—and scrambled to the ambulance, shoving people out of his way, pedestrian and police officer alike. I looked again for Ray, but he was gone, and Cullen was pulling me in the opposite direction. I fought against him, but he tugged me harshly, and I went with him because I didn’t know any better, because I was in a total, mindless panic, and because I didn’t want to listen to that noise coming from Malik anymore.

  Our best bet was that Ray would retreat to the castle. When we’d first arrived in Jersey City, Cullen made both Ray and me swear that if we ever got split up, for whatever reason, until further notice we were to meet at the castle. Ray didn’t have a MetroCard, and I was pretty sure he didn’t have any cash or even the wherewithal to jump a turnstile, but it was our only hope. As soon as you lost someone in a city like this, they were gone. There was no sense in wandering the streets looking for them.

  Once we stepped off the PATH back in New Jersey, Cullen pulled me by the arm the whole way to the castle. If he hadn’t, I might have collapsed in the nearest snowdrift and curled up to let the storm bury me. On the steps of the house, I suddenly found my strength and erupted at Cullen, who couldn’t meet my gaze as I screamed at him.

  “You did this!” I told him. “You! You! You!”

  I was just getting warmed up, but at that very instant Ray appeared through the bushes—he must have ridden on the same train as us. He moved past us and into the house, ignoring our questions about what had happened and was that really Amir on the gurney and had anyone followed him here. We chased him inside, where he plodded up the stairs, head droop
ed, on a mission. I tried to position myself in front of him, but he only squirmed away and moved into a bedroom on the second story, where he picked a piece of broken glass off the floor. He went right for it like he knew it was it there.

  At the sight of the glass, Cullen and I paused at the threshold. I saw in Ray’s eyes what he meant to do with it, and I guess Cullen did too.

  Cullen held a hand out to Ray. “Ray,” he said. “Listen to me.”

  Ray smiled at Cullen in the most awful way. His head was tilted down like his neck was broken—the head of a discarded puppet—and he gazed at Cullen through possessed eyes. He raised the glass. Cullen shouted. I took two desperate steps toward Ray. Ray went to jam the glass into his throat, but Cullen dove at him, tackling him, sending the glass piece across the floor. Ray fought against Cullen, the two of them kicking and squirming on the ground. I grabbed the glass and tossed it into the hallway.

  “Stop,” Cullen shouted. “Stop!”

  Ray kicked and slapped at Cullen, trying to bite his shoulder as they wrestled.

  “Ray, stop! Stop it!”

  Cullen fought his way on top of Ray, pinning his arms to the ground. He screamed so loudly it made me dizzy. “RAY! CALM THE FUCK DOWN! RIGHT NOW!”

  The world tilted. My lungs tensed. Ray seethed under Cullen’s grip—a trapped beast. Cullen held him until Ray stopped fighting. It took a long time. Ray screamed and kicked and spat and thumped his head against the floor, until finally he just lay there breathing heavily.

  “Let me go,” he mumbled.

  “You gonna do anything stupid?”

  “Just let me go.” He said it so sadly that Cullen released his grip on Ray’s wrists and moved off him. Ray didn’t move. He just laid there, his arms outspread on the floor.

  Cullen explained it all. He told us about Christmas Eve. Explained that Ray’s sprint through the subway was meant to serve as a rite of passage and that Ray was supposed to find Malik—a living, breathing second chance—waiting on the platform on the other side, and be forever redeemed. He made sure to emphasize that this last part—the tunnel run—was Amir’s idea. Amir wanted to be there with Ray when he made it through.

  “Ray,” I said. “Are you okay?” It was such an obvious, pointless question, but it was all I could think of to say.

  He watched the ceiling. Did not move. Didn’t even blink.

  “What about Amir?” Cullen said.

  Ray said just one word, but we knew what it meant. He barely parted his lips to let it come through.

  “Crushed,” he said.

  God, did we know what it meant. And for as much as Ray had to be blaming himself, and even though I knew Amir at least well enough to believe that the tunnel run was in fact his idea, I knew the real culprit. I knew the identity of this immeasurable hurt inside my brother and me. The only thing we were guilty of was not calling it by its proper name before it had metastasized. Cullen Hickson. That cancer.

  He offered to drive us home. I didn’t respond.

  “Take the car then,” he insisted. “I’ll take the PATH to Hoboken and get on a train.”

  Again, I didn’t say anything. What I wanted most of all was to leave him alone at the castle to soak in its viciousness. I wanted to walk away from him for good. But it all seemed too much. And I don’t just mean the actual process of figuring out how to get home—navigating to the PATH and then finding the right train in Hoboken. Those things were intimidating, sure, but even more so I was paralyzed by a fear of detaching from Cullen. Because if I walked away, I was on my own. And on my own, I’d be adrift. Unmoored. But if I stuck with Cullen—if we climbed into that Buick again and let him steer us home—I could continue to glide along in this same manner. To define myself by way of this boy. To keep the blame for what had happened, and would happen yet, aimed squarely at him.

  Ray

  FATHER JOE WANTED ME TO TALK. It was a freezing January day outside, and his office was too cold—he didn’t control the thermostat, he explained, and there was no way to make any more heat come from the radiator behind his desk. Music played from the stereo on his bookshelf. Something ’90s and grungy. Pearl Jam maybe? I didn’t know, and plus the volume was so low I could hardly hear it. Maybe Father Joe didn’t even like the music. Maybe that’s why the volume was so low. He put it on, I thought, so kids would come in and sit on his couch—kids like Nick O’Dwyer—and hear the music and think, Wow, a priest who listens to music! What a cool guy! For the first time, I thought I could see through Father Joe. I was starting to see through everyone lately. Everything everyone did was meant to make you believe they were someone they weren’t. All for the sake of vanity.

  And that’s why I hadn’t said a word to anybody in five days. Father Joe insisted on calling it my “vow of silence,” but it wasn’t a vow. I wasn’t about to make a promise to him or God or anyone else. I just didn’t feel like talking.

  I kept a piece of paper in the inside pocket of my school blazer, crinkled and torn now from too much folding and unfolding. Father Joe was telling me about the memorial assembly coming up for Amir. On Friday the whole school would gather in the auditorium for a mass in Amir’s memory. He wanted some of Amir’s friends to come up during the time normally reserved for the homily and “say a few words” about him. Would I do that, Father Joe wanted to know. If not for him, and if not for myself, then at least for Amir?

  My hand went for the note in my pocket, and Father Joe was rolling his eyes and shaking his head before I even pulled it out. He knew what was coming. I unfolded the note, flattened it out on his desk, and pointed to the word scribbled across the paper: vanity.

  “Honoring your friend’s memory is not vanity, Ray.”

  I pointed to the paper.

  Father Joe looked past me and didn’t say anything. He looked sad. Like he felt sorry for me, but not for the reason you might think. Not because my friend had died. For some other reason that I couldn’t understand.

  I retrieved my paper, folded it, and secured it inside my blazer. I liked having it there in the pocket next to my heart. Sometimes walking the halls or sitting in class or riding the bus home from school, I’d tap my hand against the outside of the blazer, right over the St. John of the Cross crest, and feel the note press against my chest, listening to its soft crinkle. It reminded me of why Amir had died. That even if it had been his idea to chase me through the subway tunnel, and even if Cullen had led me to the platform and pointed the way, the only reason we were down there was for my own vanity. Because I thought I was worthy of something more than what I’d been given.

  I hadn’t stopped talking right away. In fact, at first, I did a lot of talking. Two days after the funeral, I went to the Rosewood cops and told them that I’d been in the subway tunnel with Amir when he died and that I’d pushed him in front of the train. There were two reasons I did this: One was for Amir, and the other was for me. I did it for Amir because there were so many questions about why he’d been in the subway tunnel and why he’d been carrying a gun, which, by the way, was not loaded. The newspaper articles suggested that he jumped in front of the train on purpose and that he maybe even had bigger plans for being down there. They never stated this exactly, of course. But the writers always made a point to mention that his parents were Saudi Arabian and, of course, Muslim. And they always referenced how smart Amir was, as if that were a bad thing. Like maybe he was too smart. And of course he was quiet. Always some dumb quote from a guy at school or a neighbor or a soccer coach from five years ago who pointed out that Amir was a quiet kid. That he kept to himself. Which wasn’t true at all. They only thought he was quiet because they never bothered to listen. By the time you finished reading about the accident you were supposed to put the newspaper down and think, Well, gee, what was that smart, quiet Muslim kid doing in a New York City subway tunnel? And then you were supposed to start thinking, Who else might be down there? And what are they planni
ng?

  So I hiked to the police station and demanded to speak to a detective, and after waiting for two hours I was escorted to a dreary, fluorescent-lit office toward the back of the building. I planned to leave out Bri, Cullen, and Malik. I didn’t want them to get punished for any of this—not even Cullen. I made my own choices. I understood that now. So the second reason I was there: myself. I had come to receive whatever penance I deserved. Because just like those readers, I had been afraid of Amir too. And I should have known better.

  So I told this guy—Detective Clift—that I’d been in the tunnel with Amir Shadid on December 26, that Amir wasn’t doing anything wrong, that he was only in there because of me, and that I’d pushed him into that F train.

  And what he said was “You too?”

  I blinked at him.

  He tossed a pen across the desk and then a pad of lined yellow paper. “Write it out,” he sighed. “I’ll add it to the others.”

  “What do you mean?” I said again. “What others?”

  He wheeled around in his chair and grabbed a folder stuffed with pieces of that same lined yellow paper. He plopped the folder on the desk. I stared at it, not understanding.

  “Look,” he said.

  Inside were dozens of confessions to the murder of Amir Shadid. All hand-written. All signed by kids I knew or had at least heard of: David Garfield. Alice Cochran. Jennifer Chang. Tim Mason. And there were faxed pages signed by kids from St. John’s. Cesar Navarro. Michael Russo. Troy Jardin.

  “Other precincts started sending them in to us. They couldn’t be bothered anymore. They figure since Rosewood is where it started, this shit is my problem.”

  “It started . . . ?” I began, but then stopped, digging to the bottom of the pile.