"Morning," Birdy said, between yawns. She leaned in and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek.
"Have to expect it's going to take me an extra half-hour to get to work in this weather," Lizzie said, as she spread butter on two slices of toast then handed them to her daughter.
Birdy could hear the resignation in her mother's voice. She worked so hard already, and this rain wasn't going to help by slowing everything down. Birdy knew from previous experience in this kind of weather that there was the possibility that the bus that took her mom the eight miles to where she worked the morning shift at McDonald's might not even show up.
"Thanks," Birdy said. She flashed her mom a sympathetic smile as she flopped down into a chair at the cheap wooden breakfast table near the window. The rain hadn't eased off at all overnight and a sheen of rain drops coated the glass of the kitchen window, blurring the image of the street. A constant drip-drip-drip of water fell from the top of the window frame down onto the sill with a syncopated rhythm.
Lizzie finished preparing her own toast, refilled her coffee mug then sat down in the chair across from her daughter.
"What are you planning on doing today?" Lizzie asked after she swallowed the first couple of bites from her breakfast. She sipped from her coffee mug while she waited for her daughter to answer.
"I'll probably just go to the YMCA," she said. Birdy's gaze drifted out through the window again, trying to judge how bad the rain really was.
Lizzie grimaced. "It's raining so bad out there. You think anyone is going to show up in this?"
Birdy looked outside again. "It's not that bad."
Lizzie made a tsk tsk sound with her tongue. "Take your coat and make sure you stay dry. I don't need you getting pneumonia."
Birdy understood the implied concern. There was no chance her mom could take time off work to look after her if she got sick. And forget about a visit to the doctor. There was no way they could afford that.
"Of course," she said as if the very idea had been ludicrous.
Lizzie stood up and began to gather the dishes.
"It's okay," Birdy said, placing a hand on top of her mother's, "I'll get these."
Lizzie smiled, pushed her chair back and walked out to the hallway. She took her raincoat from the hook, picked up the old umbrella that rested in the corner near the door.
"See you later, baby," she said and blew her kid a kiss.
"Bye, Momma," said Birdy as her mom closed the door.
Birdy headed back into the kitchen, quickly washed up the breakfast dishes, setting them to dry on a draining rack next to the sink. She headed into her room, grabbed her duffel bag with her workout clothes from under the bed. She'd already decided she would shower at the YMCA after training, as she swung the bag onto her shoulder. She took her own lightweight rain jacket from the hook in the corridor and put it on. It had a hood that unzipped from the collar but it didn't look very cool so she left it down.
Birdy opened the front door, stepped outside, closed it behind her and gave the handle a gentle twist and push to make sure it was locked.
She stopped for a second.
Something felt out of place, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. It took her several moments before she realized what it was: the building was usually filled with noise. The corridor echoing with the muffled sound of people talking, babies crying, music playing way too loudly. But today it was quiet, except for the sound of a TV from a couple of doors down and the distant indistinguishable notes of some rap song she couldn't place.
Probably just the rain freaking people out, she decided, and headed toward the elevator.
•••
As soon as Birdy stepped out into the rain she changed her mind about not wearing the hood.
Water cascaded from an awning over the apartment entrance as though someone had trained a hose on it. The air hissed with the sound of falling rain hitting concrete. It drilled the blacktop, thrummed as it hit the roofs of the few cars parked in the lot. Birdy waited beneath the awning while she weighed the possibility of being spotted by someone she knew wearing something so blazingly uncool as the hooded rain jacket against getting thoroughly soaked.
She decided the chances of seeing anyone at all were slim to none. The streets were completely empty. She unzipped the collar of her jacket and pulled out the hood, flipping it over her head.
Birdy looked at her phone, it was almost 9am but the other apartment buildings on the street were just ghostly shapes hidden behind the pall of rain. It was so dark out here. Clouds filled the sky above her head. Not the usual fluffy white Californian clouds she was used to, either; these were angry, dark, roiling swaths of gray and almost-black that blocked almost all of the sun, casting a twilight illumination across Birdy's world.
Ducking to avoid the waterfall running off the awning, Birdy stepped out onto the concrete path leading to the gate in the security fence around the apartment building. Instantly her ears were filled with the thud of rain hitting her neoprene jacket. It sounded like fingers manically tapping away at one of those old keyboards. She walked to the security gate, opened it and stepped out onto the street. The gate squeaked shut behind her.
Up and down the street, Birdy saw... nothing. Not a single person. A couple of lights still shone from windows in adjacent apartments, but the majority of buildings still had their yellowed blinds closed or their faded drapes pulled together.
Weird, she thought. It's like everyone's gone into hibernation.
The shushing sound of tires rolling through what was essentially a stream drew Birdy's attention to her right. A silver Suburban, its paint rusty and flaking, moved slowly up the center of the road, its driver straddling both lanes to avoid the deeper pools of water collecting near the curbs of the road, the drains already choking on the constant flood of water rushing into them. Birdy watched the car pass, the driver invisible behind the heavily tinted windows. The car's trunk was open, filled with the car owner's belongings. A poorly fastened blue tarpaulin had been tied over the furniture, but one corner of the tarp had come free, it flapped and waved as the car drove past. Rain and dirty water kicked up by the tires had already soaked the legs of a wooden chair that peeked out from beneath the tarp.
Someone was making a run for it, trying to outrun the coming storm. Birdy felt a faint desire to sprint alongside the car and jump in.
Instead, she began to walk in the direction of the YMCA.
•••
The doors to the YMCA were unlocked but the lady who usually sat behind the reception desk in the foyer wasn't in her seat. Birdy waited, thinking the receptionist might be in the bathroom, but after five minutes she had not returned. Birdy signed in on the clipboard sitting on the countertop and headed to the changing rooms.
Instead of the usual sounds of hairdryers, and showers, and people chatting, the changing room was silent. Birdy's footfalls echoed off the tiled walls as she walked across the dry floor, pulled her gear out of her bag and quickly changed. She stowed her clothes in the locker, took her cell phone with her, and secured the locker with her padlock.
She had to walk past the swimming pool on her way to the gymnasium. She exhaled a sigh of relief when she saw a couple of teenagers—boyfriend and girlfriend Birdy presumed by the way they touched each other—frolicking in the water. But the lifeguard's seat was empty and it looked as though the normal throng of early-morning wrinklies doing slow laps around the pool hadn't made it in today. A lone player thumped a ball back and forth in one of the squash courts, his sneakers squeaking loudly as he darted left and right, oblivious to Birdy as she walked past. The weight room was empty.
And that was it. There wasn't a sign of anyone else.
Birdy pushed open the big wooden doors to the gymnasium and stepped into an equally empty space. Not even Bryanna had shown up today. Probably the weather, Birdy supposed, but it hadn't stopped Bryanna before. And where was everyone else? The kids not showing up she could understand, but she had never seen the rest of the YMCA th
is deserted.
Birdy pulled her cell phone out, sat down on one of the wooden benches lining the wall of the gym, and hit the speed-dial for Bryanna's number. It rang once, twice. On the third ring Bryanna's bubbly voice filled Birdy's ear: "Can't get to the phone right now, so leave a message."
Birdy waited for the beep then spoke. "Bree, it's Birdy. I'm at the Y, but no one else is here. Call me back." She hung up. She'd wait a little while longer and see if anyone decided to put in an appearance.
Ten minutes passed and there was still no sign of any of the others and no call back from Bryanna, either. That meant something was going on, but Birdy had no idea what exactly.
"No sense in wasting a perfectly good gymnasium," she said aloud, then instantly regretted speaking. The sound of her voice in the hollow room only drove home just how creepy the place was when no one else was about.
Birdy moved to the rock climbing wall. Normally Bryanna would insist on Birdy getting strapped into the safety harness and belay rope, but with no one else here to hold the rope if she fell, it was pointless. She'd free climb instead.
There were multiple routes up the wall, each progressively harder, the urethane-resin handholds color-coded by difficulty. Today was a blue day, she decided; the most difficult route up the forty feet of fake-rock face.
Birdy took three large steps backward, wiped her hands against her t-shirt as she eyed her chosen route up the wall... and ran. When she was a few feet from the base of the climbing wall she jumped, her hands reaching for two widely spaced blue handholds, about seven feet up the face. The fingers of her left hand closed on the first, gripping it tightly as she used her momentum to swing her body counter-clockwise a few feet and reach her right hand up to the next highest blue handhold. She got a firm grip and pulled herself up, her feet moving automatically to the holds she knew were below her.
Birdy pulled her tummy in close to the rock wall, arched her back and head slightly so she could see clearly up the uneven fake-rock face and began to climb hand over hand, pulling herself toward the summit.
The difficult part came halfway up. A simulated four-foot overhang stuck out above her. There were no holds on the outward slanting face of it, they were on the upper lip of the overhang, invisible from where she hung so precariously. Birdy wasn't tall enough to reach them, instead she would have to launch herself off the face, outward and upward.
A youthful inability to consider her own vulnerability mixed with a justified confidence in her skill meant failure was the furthest thing from Birdy's mind. She positioned her feet on the tiny toe-holds for maximum leverage, fixed her eyes on the prize, bent her knees, and exploded outward. The fingers of both her hands found their targets, a minimal handhold that strained the muscles and joints of her fingers.
Birdy's entire body now hung thirty feet in the air, supported only by the tips of her fingers. Her grip was strong and true. Birdy waited for her body to stop swinging, then calmly pulled herself up and over the lip of the outcropping and began to climb the final ten feet of the obstacle.
Her forearms burning, Birdy reached for the final handhold, preparing to pull herself up and onto the flat surface of the wall's summit.
"Hey! What are you doing in here?" The sharp crack of a man's voice came from nowhere, amplified by the empty gymnasium.
Birdy instinctively reacted by turning her head toward the voice, her fingers scraped the handhold she was reaching for... and missed. She gasped as she felt her body drop unexpectedly, all her weight shifted onto her weaker left arm. Birdy's eyes flicked back and upward as one finger, damp with sweat from the exertion of the climb, slipped away.
"Crap, crap, crap," Birdy hissed, her feet scrambling for a toe-hold and finding nothing. She stretched toward the summit with her right hand but it was just out of reach. Birdy scanned the face of the rock to her left for any kind of leverage—panic beginning to flood her system with adrenaline—again finding nothing within reach. She turned her head to the right, her face smooshing against the cold fiberglass of the cliff-face.
There! A handhold just out of reach but if she... could... just... she used the little grip her toes found on the smooth surface of the wall to begin a gradual pendulum-like swing. Her fingers hurt now, the entire weight of her body suspended by just three digits. Her forearm was almost numb. She swung once, twice, and felt the fingers of her right hand graze the handhold. One more time and she managed to hook her pinky onto it, then another finger. Birdy gripped it hard and allowed her right arm to take the majority of her bodyweight as she swung herself a little farther to the right until she found another foothold.
The relief was immediate. She took a second to breathe in deeply then used her right arm to pull herself up onto the flat surface of the climbing wall. She rolled onto her back, her heart sounding a rapid succession of sonic booms in her chest. She took three deep breaths and waited for her thudding heart to slow.
Birdy flipped over onto her stomach to see who it was who had almost gotten her hurt. In the doorway to the gym a man dressed in a white shirt and black tie stood, both hands planted firmly on his hips as he looked up at her. Birdy thought she had seen him occasionally behind the desk of the YMCA's administrator's office when the door was left open.
"You're not supposed to be on that wall without a supervising adult and a safety partner," the man said, his voice carrying the same tone she had heard from teachers when they had caught her practicing her moves in the schoolyard.
"Sorry," Birdy offered, meekly.
The man stood there for a few moments as if considering climbing up to fetch her. Finally, he said, "Get your ass down here. The complex is closing early today."
Birdy stood up and stepped closer to the edge.
The man flinched and took a step toward her then stopped.
Unperturbed by the thirty-foot fall mere inches away, Birdy spoke, "Why are you closing so early?"
The man sighed. "Not enough staff. Now get yourself down here before I call the cops to come and get you."
•••
The YMCA manager waited outside the changing room door while Birdy switched into her street clothes then quickly ushered her out of the building. The boy and girl she had seen in the pool were already walking away, huddled together under the canopy of a big black umbrella.
Birdy turned and looked back toward the YMCA entrance in time to see the manager locking the doors, before giving them a sharp rattle to make sure they were secure. He walked up to where Birdy stood under the portico and stopped next to her, his face turned toward the sky.
"You'd best get home," he told her, his eyes never leaving the angry clouds spilling rain onto the city. "This storm's going to get a lot worse before it's over." He pulled a copy of the LA Times from under his jacket, then held it over his head and jogged out into the parking lot before climbing into an old Toyota Corolla. Seconds later the car had disappeared around a corner, leaving a trail of exhaust fumes behind it.
Birdy adjusted the position of her duffel bag on her shoulder; head down to avoid the driving rain, she pulled up her hood and began her walk home.
•••
Birdy's mom arrived home around four-thirty that afternoon, her raincoat still dripping water as she stepped into the apartment. She took the coat off and hung it on a hook near the door to dry.
"Hi Mom," Birdy chirped, poking her head around the door of her bedroom. "Jesus!" she exclaimed when she saw her mother's soaked hair sticking to her head and face. "Did you fall in the river?" she chortled.
"Annabelle! What have I told you about taking the Lord's name in vain?" Lizzie said, moving into the small bathroom at the end of the corridor, leaving a trail of water behind her.
Birdy followed her mom to the door, her eyes drawn to her mother's reflection in the mirror above the sink as she toweled her face and hair dry. She used a brush to wrangle her hair back into a close approximation of its normal style.
She looks tired, Birdy thought, the deep rings under her mother
's eyes more pronounced tonight against the brown skin of her face. The wrinkles and worry lines around her mouth and eyes were deeper. Birdy knew that a lot of those worry lines were there because of her; her mom worked two jobs, six days a week, to make sure there was enough food on the table and to put a little something away for Birdy's college fund.
"How was your day?" Lizzie asked, as she continued to towel herself dry.
"Wet. Boring," Birdy called back as she moved to the kitchen. Birdy filled a mug three-quarters full with water then nuked it in the microwave for two minutes. She added a dash of milk and a bag of English Breakfast tea—her mom's favorite—from the stash she kept in the back of the drawer next to the sink.
"Here you go, Momma," Birdy said, presenting the steaming cup of tea as her mom applied the finishing touches to a new layer of makeup.
Lizzie turned to her and smiled, the makeup doing an almost perfect job of hiding the flaws in her mother's face. "You're an angel, Annabelle," her mom said, taking the mug of tea from Birdy's outstretched hand and sipping it. "Mmmm! Perfect." She placed the mug on the sink counter and turned back to the mirror to finish her preparation.
"You're working tonight?" Birdy asked. This was supposed to be her mom's night off from the Gas 'N Go.
Lizzie paused, her upper lip painted with the lipstick she now held in her hand, her lower lip still bare. "Roberto didn't show up for his shift so they called me and asked me to come in."
Birdy's mom worked a second job four nights a week from six to midnight at a gas station on Figueroa, but tonight was supposed to be her night off. They were supposed to watch TV together on the couch. Birdy hated that her mom had to work two jobs, but this one especially worried her because she would be alone in the little convenience store adjacent to the gas station pumps for most of the night.
"Isn't there someone else who can cover the shift? Do you have to go back out there?" Birdy asked, leaning against the door frame. "It's so wet and the weather report says it's just going to get worse. Why do you have to go in?" Birdy hated the way her questions sounded like she was whining, but the truth was she didn't want her mom out there tonight. The weather was getting worse by the hour and it was dark so early.
The Darkening Page 9
