“Stay two more minutes. I want to tell you something—”
“Sorry.” I flash him a pained smile. “I have to go.”
“Tonight?” his eyes are pleading. “Can you sneak out? Come see me?”
I hold his gaze for a beat. I’ve never tried sneaking out before, at least not while my parents were at home. But it can’t be that hard. I’ve lived in Fleet Tower my whole life, and by now, I’m sort of an expert at being invisible. Finally I nod, my heart somersaulting in my chest.
I dart out of the alley and head for our cream-colored Seraph, idling at the curb. “Hi, Serge. Some storm, huh?” I say as I slide into the backseat.
“Indeed. Perhaps you should have stayed indoors after practice,” Serge says evenly.
I catch sight of Serge’s coal-black eyes in the rearview, the whites bright against his skin. I flick my eyes away, guilt and paranoia washing over me. Serge has been with our family since before I was born. On her good days, my mother jokingly calls him her backup husband. He has never done anything but protect me and take care of me, and I’ve been lying to him for the past week and a half.
“I thought I dropped something, so after practice I went to go look for it . . .” I trail off, unable to finish the lame excuse.
“I cannot help but notice your attire, Anthem,” Serge says, as he pulls the Seraph away from the curb and begins to pick up speed. He grew up a child soldier in an African republic, and he’s worked as security for dictators, government officials, and CEOs all over the world. He’s seen it all, and he’s always prepared for the worst—I’m pretty sure the gun he keeps in the glove compartment of the Seraph is loaded and that it’s not his only one. He is not someone who is easily fooled, and he doesn’t deserve to be lied to.
I look down at my soaked jeans and belted trench, my rain boots. “I changed upstairs,” I say quickly.
Serge nods, but I can tell by the silence hanging in the car that he doesn’t believe me.
As we roll through the streets toward home, I open my mouth to try to make conversation, but I don’t quite know what to say. Instead, I reach into my ballet bag, where I’ve kept Gavin’s gray bandanna in a small zippered pocket for the past week. I touch the soft material with my fingertips, my gaze locked out the window, excitement overtaking my guilt as I think about what I’m going to do tonight.
CHAPTER 8
South Bedlam after midnight is different than the run-down but charming place I’ve gotten to know over the past week. Though the reflected moon bounces off the rain-slicked streets, the main thing I notice once we cross the Bridge of Unity is the darkness. Only one out of every twenty streetlights seems to work over here. We pass by a bar with a wide, cracked bay window displaying two girls no older than I am, dancing listlessly in tassels and top hats and not much else. Mournful accordion music wafts out into the street, and a small crowd of people gather on the sidewalk to watch them through the window.
The motorcycle roars down one side street, then another, until we turn right on a street marked Oleander Way. “This is my block,” Gavin shouts back at me over the revving engine.
He slows the bike, and I notice a group of droopie dealers in the doorway of a burnt-out brick building. Several shiny black cars idle at the curb, snaking slowly toward the corner. Two pale boys, dressed too lightly for the chilly night, scurry to the first car’s window. One boy drops something the size of a matchbook through the two inches at the top where the window is cracked, then the other takes what must be the payment and stuffs it in his pocket.
I pull my arms tighter around Gavin’s midsection, my hands finding the pockets of his leather jacket. I can feel his stomach muscles tighten through the silky lining, and my fear melts into desire.
We pull up to a building in the exact center of the long, treeless block. Gavin parks the bike in front of a squat concrete loft that must have once been a fish processing plant, the words MACKEREL TUNA ANCHOVIES stenciled in faded yellow lettering on the front wall above a large metal grate.
“Here we are,” he mumbles as I dismount the bike. He flashes me a pained half-smile, his eyes darting up and down the block, deserted on all but the one busy corner.
“Don’t look so worried,” I say, not quite sure if I’m reassuring him or myself.
He pulls me toward him, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. He leans down until his forehead rests against mine, until our eyelashes brush up against each other. I lift up onto my toes and press my lips against his cheek, his jaw, his mouth, until I don’t care what neighborhood we’re in—this is the only place I want to be.
Gavin unfastens the metal grate and pulls it up with two hands, then unlocks a series of bolts on a sliding metal door. When at last he pushes open the heavy industrial door, I follow him inside. His apartment is a cavernous room with cement floors and a corrugated tin ceiling crisscrossed with metal beams. Canvases are stacked against each wall, six deep; but other than the vibrant swirls of color in his paintings, the place is colorless, sparse. There is almost no furniture, nothing to keep our footsteps from echoing.
A threadbare dark-purple couch takes up the center of the room, a coffee table covered in partially melted candles just in front of it. Off to one side, sheer white fabric hangs down from the ceiling, forming a sort of partition, the vague outlines of a low-slung bed visible behind it.
I follow Gavin to the couch in the center of the room, my forearms tingling with goose bumps, and pull the sleeves of my hoodie down over my wrists. It’s colder in here than outside.
Gavin pulls a tartan camp blanket off the back of the couch, revealing a long rip in the upholstery. He shakes the blanket loose from its folded rectangle and wraps it carefully around my shoulders.
“It’s not much, but it’s home,” he says, fussing with the blanket until it’s around me like a cloak.
“I love it.” I gather up the edges of the blanket so they don’t drag on the cement floor and walk over to the kitchen, just a hot plate with two burners and a dented pale-green refrigerator that looks a hundred years old. On the fridge is a lone magnet—flat, blue, car-shaped—that reads HARRY’S AUTO PARTS—FOR THE CAR AND MOTORCYCLE CONNOISSEUR. Underneath is a photograph of a three-year-old boy with sandy-blond hair sitting on his mother’s lap, snapped during what looks like a camping trip. She’s leaning back and laughing, her face strikingly beautiful.
“Is this you?” I turn around to find Gavin running his metal lighter against his jeans. When it sparks to life, he bends down and begins lighting the candles.
“Me and my mom.” He looks up. “Before she got sick. It’s the only picture I still have. I should probably get a frame for it.”
I nod and swallow hard, a mist of tears springing into my eyes when I think about everything he’s had to go through.
“I’ll get you a frame,” I murmur as I walk toward the flickering candlelight. I think back to all the complaining I’ve done about my own mother, and a hot wave of disgust washes over me. “It must have been so hard, growing up without . . .” I trail off, not knowing how to finish.
“A lot of people have it worse.” Gavin shrugs as he lights the last candle and looks up at me, his eyes twinkling. “I got you something. Hang on.”
He jogs over to the curtained-off bedroom, and I hear the scrape of a drawer opening. The naked bulb on the floor throws his shadow onto the opposite wall of the room, elongated, a scarecrow on stilts. I sit down on the couch and lean my head against the worn purple velvet as Gavin moves back toward me.
I shut my eyes, willing myself to remember every detail of tonight. A moment later, I feel Gavin’s weight as he sits next to me on the couch.
“For you,” he says, placing a small square box just above my knee. It’s an ancient candy tin, imprinted with a woman in silhouette, her hair curled around a flowered hat. Above her, written in deco script, is the word PASTILLES, the last two letters blotted out by a patch of rust blooming on the greenish metal.
“You didn’t have to get m
e anything,” I say, my chest hot.
“Open it.” Gavin scoots closer to me until our legs are touching. I can feel the heat of him through my jeans. I wiggle the lid back and forth until it slides off the box. Inside a twist of yellowed tissue paper, I find a heart-shaped gold pendant on a delicate gold chain.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe, holding the chain up in front of me and letting the heart dangle and flip from side to side. The pendant is thinner than a dime and made of hammered gold, the heart shape artfully lopsided, long and thin, with a perfectly round hole the size of a grain of rice punched into its right side. When it stops twisting on its chain, a faint ray of light bleeds through the hole.
“Fourteen karat. One of a kind, the guy said.” He looks up at me through his lashes, his expression serious.
I shake my head, realizing how expensive this must have been. There’s no way I can keep it.
“I love it, but it’s too extrava—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupts sharply. “Painting pays pretty well in the summertime. I’m not as poor as you might think.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean . . .” I trail off, fearful I’ve offended him.
He waves his hand as if to say Forget it, then turns on the couch so he’s facing me squarely. His gruffness has softened now, gone as quickly as it came. The candlelight flickers in his eyes as he stares intensely into mine. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Anthem.”
Gavin takes the necklace from me. He unclasps it, lays it gently on my throat, and moves to fasten it behind me. It fits perfectly between the ridged bones of my clavicles. I close my eyes and let myself feel his breath on my hair, his hands fastening the chain at the nape of my neck. “Me too,” I murmur.
I slowly pull away from him and stand up. The candles flicker on the table behind me, and the naked bulb in the corner of the room forms a sort of spotlight. It feels like the most natural thing in the world when I pull my hoodie off over my head, my gaze locked with his.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” He searches my face for fears or doubts. “We don’t have to—”
“I’m sure,” I say firmly. I can almost see myself from above, as if I’m dreaming this. But it’s real.
My stomach full of butterflies, my skin tingling, my head reeling with the force of the moment, I take Gavin’s hand and pull him up from the couch. We walk slowly toward the gauzy curtains. Toward whatever comes next.
CHAPTER 9
My eyelids fly open when I hear the crash. The glowing red numbers on Gavin’s clock read 4:08. I can’t see anything else in the pitch-black corner of the loft, but what I hear makes my heart start to race: metal scraping against metal, a brief silence, and then voices. Some male, but at least one gravelly, high-pitched female, joined together in a teasing sing-song like a church hymn gone terribly wrong.
La-la-la-LOVERS. It’s oh-oh-oh-OVER. Da dum da dum dum.
I pull my arm out from under the heavy wool blankets and grope beside me, feeling Gavin’s arm curled around his pillow. I shake his shoulder until he turns over, reaching to pull me against him again, to cradle my body in his. This was how we drifted to sleep together, just two hours ago. I shake him harder.
“Whas wrong?” he mutters, his voice still cottony with sleep.
“Wake up,” I whisper, my body tensed with fear. “Someone’s here.”
Just then, the metal security gate screeches open in front of the old factory doors. I kick the covers off and scramble around the sides of the bed. I search frantically until I find my jeans on the floor. I pull them on, but my stomach sinks when I remember my hoodie is in the living room by the couch.
The banging on the inner doors gets louder. Gavin switches on a bedside lamp, the dim bulb casting a low, sinister light under its tasseled red silk shade. His eyes look panicked.
He pulls his own jeans on, and the deep red light glows along his bare chest. Just three hours ago, I ran my hands along that stomach, tracing the outlines of each muscle. “Grab your shirt and hide.” He shoots a nervous glance toward the door, then yanks a bunch of canvases out from under his bed. “Under here,” he motions.
I run to grab my hoodie off the living room floor. My bare feet race across the ice-cold cement as the ominous metal-on-metal sounds keep coming from the door. When I reach the couch, I pull my sweatshirt on so violently I hear a seam rip along the armpit.
Pepper spray, I think as I begin searching through my pockets. But except for a lint-covered Relaxamint in the right pocket of my jeans, there’s nothing. My heart sinks. I was so eager to see Gavin tonight that I forgot the one thing I never travel without. And now that I actually need it, the canister is in my coat pocket in the hall closet at home.
Gavin’s rummaging in a kitchen drawer. He grabs a paring knife, then runs toward me, tucking the blade into his back pocket. “Get under the bed,” he whispers, pulling me toward it. “Don’t say a word.”
I crawl under the low-slung bed, my heart racing. La-la-la-LOVERS. It’s oh-oh-oh-OVER. My stomach drops when I hear the dead bolt turn in its tumbler.
I hear the crash of the metal door flying open, and suddenly the loft is filled with radiant moonlight. My body goes rigid with fear as I crane my neck to see the doorway, where they appear, five figures in silhouette. They come in slowly, casually, as if they’re here for a party.
They’re all wearing gas masks, and two of them are carrying guns. In these terrible masks, remnants from some old war, the intruders look like giant cockroaches. Black rubber tubes dangle where their mouths should be; their eyes are bizarrely wide-set, blue-green lenses the size of saucers, and frayed leather straps wrap around their hair. The two men aim their guns squarely at Gavin and fan out on either side of him.
My eyes are drawn to the woman, who comes into view in my six-inch window between the mattress and the floor. The leather straps of her mask wrap around a white-blond bob with blunt bangs. She wears army-green coveralls, spotless but for a finger-size smear of white paint beneath her left knee. She’s around my height, but carrying an extra thirty pounds of muscle and curves. The green glass of the gas mask hides her eyes, so my gaze fixes on her blue surgical gloves. They’re too big on her, bagging at the wrists and fingertips. All five of them wear them, like a team of demented, roachlike surgeons.
It dawns on me in a sickening rush. The gloves, the gas masks. Gas-and-dash. It’s been happening in the Bedlam subway system for years now—entire cars in the Bedlam Tube poisoned with giggle gas, people either killed or so drugged that they can’t fight off the teams of criminals who methodically search them for wallets, belts, shoes, purses, jewelry. Anything they can sell on the black market. Gas-and-dash has become so common that now only the poorest citizens venture underground to use the Bedlam Tube.
“Get out of my house,” I hear Gavin say.
The cockroaches respond to this with uproarious laughter. One of them has a high-pitched giggle that could break glass. I hear the sounds of cabinets opening and closing. Then someone is in Gavin’s tiny bathroom, where I hear the rustle of the vinyl shower curtain. I pray that they will find something they want to steal and leave peacefully. But the shoes emerge from the bathroom and then turn, pointing in my direction. Slowly, steadily, they approach the bed. Please turn around. Please take what you want and leave. The steps halt right in front of me. I feel myself trembling as the thick legs bend lower, and when his horrible roach eyes meet mine, I scream.
“Found a dust bunny under the bed.” A hand closes around my ankle and drags me, thrashing and kicking, across the rough cement floor.
“Get away from her!” Gavin yells, and then someone else yells out in pain.
I begin to scream, clawing at the masked thug like a wild animal, until I feel the cold steel of a gun muzzle against my side.
“Let’s sit down on the bed, sweet pea.” The girl’s raspy voice is muffled slightly by the hideous rubber tubing.
I freeze, the spot where the gun touches my ribs now the only
part of my body I can feel.
“Well, come on.” She yanks the shoulder of my hoodie up from the ground, and I quickly stumble to the bed. As soon as I’m seated on the edge of it, she sits next to me, just an inch away, her gun cocked and pointed casually at me from her lap, her finger on the trigger. I look toward Gavin and see the bald roach has a gash on his forearm. Blood streams out of it and drips all over the floor. He has wrested Gavin’s paring knife away from him, and his good arm holds it against Gavin’s neck. One flick of the wrist, and the knife will pierce Gavin’s throat.
“No,” I whisper. “Please.”
“Don’t hurt her.” Gavin’s eyes burn into mine. “Get the gun away from her, now.”
Tears leak down my cheeks, onto my hoodie, falling fast. I don’t dare move to wipe them away. I don’t dare breathe.
“Please,” I moan, not breaking eye contact with Gavin. “I have money. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just let us go.”
“Money!” the girl exclaims, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well, why didn’t you say so, sweet pea? Boys, let’s make it happen. He’s not gonna gag himself.” She snaps her fingers, and the rubber surgical glove rustles.
“Don’t touch her!” Gavin screams, kicking wildly as two of the roaches move toward him. “Anthem, don’t give these assholes anythi—” But then the skinny guy stuffs something in Gavin’s mouth and seals it with a long strip of silver duct tape. They bind his wrists, securing them behind his back. Satisfied, they finally lower the paring knife away from his neck.
“That’s better. Now I can hear myself think,” the girl says, the rubber tube on her buglike mask bouncing as she talks. In my head, I name her Miss Roach. She turns to Gavin. “We’re not going to touch her, Romeo. We plan to let your walking bank account run home to Daddy.”
He tries to break away, but they push him to the cement floor, where he lands face-first with a sickening thud. One of the masked men wedges a black boot into Gavin’s back, and another puts a gun against the back of his head, cocking the trigger. Gavin’s face contorts in a pained wince.
The Brokenhearted Page 5
