“Damn it, Eric, are you listening?” Althea snapped, and I felt a sharp jab of an elbow against my side.
“Ouch! Yes, I am!” I turned to her, grateful for the interruption.
She frowned at me and then looked past my shoulder. “What were you checking out, anyway?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Just those two guys working at the gate. Their masks kind of distracted me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Quit making fun of them. It’s bad enough that they’re stuck in a crap job like this.”
“I’m not making fun of them!” I paused and stole another glance in their direction. They’d turned their attention back to their work. “I don’t know—there’s something—you know—oh, hell, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“It’s not worth it, then.”
“You have to admit that the carnival staff’s a bit strange. It could be their costumes, but still…”
Althea sighed and pulled away from the fence, giving my sleeve a tug as she walked off. “It’s a masked carnival, Eric. That’s their hype. Deal with it. I have to say, though, that I like it. It’s different from the other carnivals that come our way.”
We walked over to the shooting gallery, and along the way, I couldn’t resist sneaking another peek at the merry-go-round. The two masked workers stood at the gate, and they were once again watching me. Directly behind them, looming into the night sky and barely visible, were the hollow corpses of the old biotech labs, their small, black windows following my progress like sunken eyes as I wove my way through the crowd. Funny, I thought, but those buildings almost looked like giant white masks, with small eyeholes and no mouths.
We stayed at the carnival for a good two hours. Because we were both broke, we couldn’t really appreciate the offerings of games, toys, and junk food. The rides were always full, so we just watched from the perimeters, enjoying the tacky displays of color and lights. The smell of old paint, old wood, and machine grease mixed with the faint odor of coming rain. We stopped talking about the old biotech industry. Instead we chatted about school and our plans for college, which turned out to be a pretty unwelcome one in the end. Althea hoped to move out of state, but she wasn’t sure if she qualified for financial aid or a scholarship, and as for me, I’d been putting off any plans to look into potential schools.
The change from high school to college was the one I dreaded the most, I guess. The thought of losing my friends to the more independent world of university education freaked me out, and I’d been in major denial about it and didn’t see things changing any time soon.
Now I had Peter, the thought stung even more. He was bound for some Ivy League school hundreds of miles away, I was sure. He had the brains and the money. I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to study overseas. His dad was British, so I expected Peter would have some help choosing something suitable on the other side of the pond.
“I guess I’ll look into the colleges around here,” I said without much enthusiasm. I stared at my faded sneakers, vaguely noting they needed new shoelaces. “Liz is studying at the junior college in Barron, but she’ll be transferring to a state university once she gets her electives out of the way. I might be doing that, too, but I haven’t really decided.”
Althea patted my back. “Just get the hell out of this city, Eric,” she said. Then she laughed. “Damn, that was what Uncle Moses used to say to Mom when he was still alive! I should be more original than that.”
We left eventually, and Althea drove me back to school, where she waited while I retrieved my bike in the dark—kind of an unnerving moment for me, who’d never stayed past five p.m. in school. I stood in the dimly-lit parking lot at the other side of Renaissance High, hearing nothing but my breathing and the metallic sounds caused by my bike and my U-lock against the rusty bike rack. In the gloom, I couldn’t help but feel as though I were being watched. I kept looking over my shoulder or glancing at distant, black windows or shadowy corners.
Once reunited with Althea on the street, I had to laugh at myself. I’d never been a nervous sort, and all of a sudden, I’d begun to pick up on things that’d never bothered me before. To an extent, it was annoying.
I rode a couple of blocks with Althea driving her old VW bug next to me, and we parted ways when she had to turn into one of the side streets. For the rest of the way, I entertained myself with Vintage City’s nightlife, which, in some ways, made me think of Blade Runner with its wet, gray, oily, smoky landscape.
Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, if cyborgs existed alongside humanity? Then again, I’d also read Frankenstein, and I suppose it would be asking for too much to have humanity take responsibility for what it might reap.
* * * *
Mom appeared in the hallway, her hair set in curlers, her favorite lounging robe draped around her like a wrinkled curtain, her coffee mug filled to the brim with some steaming concoction.
“Where’ve you been?” she demanded. “Do you know what time it is?”
“It’s only eight o’clock, Mom.”
“I don’t give a flying fig if it’s only eight o’clock! Why didn’t you call? You could’ve left a message! We didn’t know where you were, who you were hanging out with—we wouldn’t have known where to start looking! We don’t even have that Barlow boy’s number!”
I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. The thick strap of my messenger bag, with all my books and notes as well as Peter’s denim jacket, was slicing right through my shoulder.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
“You’re sorry. Is that it?”
“Well—what else am I supposed to say?”
“Where’ve you been?”
“The carnival. Althea and I hung out there for a while.”
“A girl. You were with a girl. At the carnival. Where anything could’ve happened.”
I stared at her. There it was again—the melodrama. The only thing missing in our household was some person standing in the background, playing slow, depressing violin music. “Mom, we were in a crowd, and there were families at the fairgrounds. There was no reason for you to worry.”
“Oh, so you want some deadbeat mom, is that it?”
“No! You know what—see? You’re blowing everything out of proportion again!”
Mom shook her head. She’d been furious before, for the same reasons as this, but this time, she was practically frothing with rage. I didn’t get it. She took a moment to sip from her mug and calm herself down. Then she nodded at me.
“You’re grounded, Eric,” she said in a quieter, calmer voice.
“What?”
“You heard me. You’re coming straight home from school for the rest of the week. You’re not going anywhere during the weekend. You’ll be working on your homework and your chores, and I’ll see to it you get them all done. You got that? Now go clean up and eat your dinner—and don’t argue.”
“Wait a minute—”
“I said don’t argue.” She stepped aside and jerked her head in the direction of the stairs. From the living room, I could hear Dad and Liz talking over the TV.
“I can’t believe this! This is bullsh—”
She raised a finger in warning. “Are you cruising for a two-week sentence, kid?”
I stared at her, stunned, and then stalked off without another word. I gave the living room a quick, resentful glance when I passed the open door. Then my pace slowed and then stopped, my attention fixed by the rush of sounds that came out of the room. Liz and Dad sat on the couch. They were debating something, and neither of them was aware of my presence.
The news was also on. Amid the jumble of voices in the room and the monotonous reporting on the TV screen, I managed to catch something about a kid from the neighboring city of Barron. He’d been gay-bashed outside an arcade—a popular family hangout—and was being treated for his injuries at All Saints’ Hospital.
I guess nothing sank in until I was
halfway up the first flight of stairs. Then a cold numbness swept over me, and I paused and looked back. Mom was still in the hallway, but she wasn’t watching me. She’d turned her back to the stairs. Judging from the way her head was bowed and the way her shoulders shook in little spasms, I knew she was crying.
I swallowed, crept up the rest of the stairs, and washed up.
Chapter 12
“The couple that’s grounded together stays together.”
I shrugged, vaguely aware of Althea’s gaze on me as we walked to the parking lot. We’d just parted ways with Peter, and after a two-minute “date” in front of our Art classroom—a light conversation, a kiss, and once the coast was clear, an embrace. I was beginning to feel the sting of our punishment.
“It was my fault,” I said as I fumbled with my U-lock. It always took me several attempts before the damn thing cooperated. “I should’ve called home.”
“Want me to come with you? I can talk to your mom. I was the one who dragged you off after school in the first place.”
I was touched. “No, it’s cool, Althea. Really. If anything, she’ll probably take you in and stuff you with food while locking me away in the attic with my homework. Besides, she’s still at work.”
“What drama.”
“Girl, my bedroom’s the attic, remember?” I stuffed the U-lock in my bag and straddled my bike. Althea made no move to go—merely stood beside me and gave my front spokes a couple of light kicks. “Quit that. You’ll screw up my wheel.”
“Sorry. Well—when you and Peter are done serving time, maybe we should do something, like—I don’t know—go to a movie or pizza or something.”
“That would be great.”
She frowned at my bike’s front wheel. Something needed to be said still. She sighed eventually, breaking out of her momentary trance. “Hey, Eric. Don’t be pissed if it takes me a little while to get used to you and Peter together.”
“Oh—hey, I don’t expect anyone to be okay with it right away. It’s cool. I’m sure it came as a bit of a shock to you yesterday.” I winced. “Actually, I didn’t expect it to be known for a while.”
“Yeah, well, that was me. I tried to ask Peter out, and he told me why he couldn’t make it. I know, I know, he’s gay, but I didn’t give a damn because, well—” She broke off and shrugged, rubbing the back of her neck, not looking at me. “Man, this is all screwed up, you know?”
“Yeah—yeah, I know.”
“You guys have always been sort of like brothers to me, so I’m kind of freaking out over this, too. It’s almost incestuous, isn’t it? Ugh.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Whatever it is you take in the morning, I’d like to have some.”
“Bite me, Plath.” She adjusted her backpack and walked on, while I kept pace with her on my bike. Because she kept a snail’s pace, I’d ride circles around her to keep myself from falling over. I almost felt like a favorite pet dog, capering around his beloved mistress. “Gay or priests—I swear to God,” she muttered under her breath, which ended the subject.
One of the quirks of teenagehood had always been the kind of punishment that was doled out. I’d had my share of trips to the doghouse, of course, and I’d often question what I saw as the what-the-fuck-iness logic in the sentences that I was smacked with. That afternoon—or, rather, the first day of my grounding—I was ordered to go to Dad’s favorite Chinese take-out joint for dinner. Mom had left a note and some money on the dining room table for me.
And come straight home from Uncle Chung’s, she’d written.
“I thought I was grounded,” I grumbled, pocketing the money and tossing out the list of food I was expected to bring home. I never needed a list, considering my family’s preferences for pretty standard stuff, which never changed. Like, ever.
Chow mein, fried rice, beef with broccoli, and hot and sour soup. That was our usual Chinese menu, which I tried once to upgrade with an order of honey walnut prawns, but Dad didn’t take to the sauce very well and suffered a night-long love affair with the toilet afterward.
Uncle Chung’s take-out joint didn’t open until five. I was told it’d have to open earlier to accommodate lunch eaters—and because sales weren’t good with only an evening schedule. So I spent the afternoon doing chores and skimming through my homework. The house was pretty desolate, and I actually felt the sting of loneliness within doors. The only sounds were the refrigerator’s clanking and humming, as well as Grandma’s old clock in the hallway.
Every once in a while, I’d stand by the window and look out, but everything seemed too detached and beyond reach, the glass panes serving as reminders of my situation—you know, like prison bars and stuff.
Actually, that was just my way of dragging my feet because I had Geometry homework, and it involved proofs, and Althea wasn’t around to help me. God, I hated Geometry.
When five rolled around, I’d gone from whiny errand-boy to I’m-so-there escapee, and I hurried out of the house for a six-block trek. The tiny hole-in-the-wall was in a pretty dingy part of the city—dingier than most of it, anyway. One had to walk past run-down shops with faded signs, shady-looking types leaning against filthy-ass walls, and narrow side streets lined with people’s laundry hanging on wire or rope that crisscrossed back and forth above the street. From windows everywhere, I could hear voices—babies wailing, people shouting, TVs and radios blaring. Sometimes someone would be singing something operatic. About a year ago, there’d been a girl who’d tried to pull an Audrey Hepburn thing and sat on her window ledge, strumming a guitar and crooning Moon River.
Unfortunately, someone living in an apartment above her hadn’t cared for her style and had dumped a pail of water—most likely dirty—on her head. Watching the entire thing unfold was as close to a cinematic moment as I could possibly get, and I think I’d momentarily forgotten my errand as I stood across the way, gaping at the scene.
I knew quite a few people who lived there, though, and they waved at me when I passed. I guess that familiarity and sense of connection threw me off for a bit. I worked my way in and out of side streets without second thoughts. My steps were kind of guided more by the need to be friendly to those people I knew—probably because I hadn’t seen them in a long time, and I was swept up in some kind of nostalgic wave. The safest way to Uncle Chung’s was a straight line from point A to point B, and I was sure I went through the whole alphabet that time. I didn’t even stop to think. I reached the place eventually, though.
“Why only this?” Mrs. Zhang demanded. “You’re too skinny! I know your dad will eat most of the food!”
“It’s all for art. That and I’m going through a really clumsy period in my life,” I replied, and Mrs. Zhang shook her head, muttering something in Chinese as she moved from one end of the steam-filled counter to another, stuffing take-out containers with my order.
“Clumsy period, my ass,” she said, her round face pinched and sweaty under a ginormous hairnet. “The problem with teenagers today is that they’re so vain—designer clothes, fancy cars, and this!” She paused in her work to reach out and give my bangs a light tug. “Blue color in your hair—like Papa Smurf blood!”
“It’s all the rage, you know.”
She snorted and waved me off. “Now teenagers try to lose weight and live on rice cakes.”
“I actually hate rice cakes.”
“Here. You’re getting a potsticker on the house.” Sure enough, she swiped a particularly big, overstuffed dumpling from its greasy pan and tossed it in a small container.
“That’s worth a good ten pounds of body fat, Mrs. Zhang,” I said blandly.
“Make it fifteen! Here!” She threw a couple of fortune cookies in the bag.
“I’ve got you to blame if I get overweight.”
She flashed me a grim smile and nodded her head. “Good! You need more meat on those stick arms of yours.”
I paid for the food and retraced my steps with a pile of Styrofoam containers squished into one bulging plastic ba
g. Mrs. Zhang double-knotted the handles, which always irked me because it meant I had to hunt around for the only pair of scissors we had in the house to cut the bag open to access dinner. She called it security. I preferred to think of it as a form of Chinese torture.
Funny how life worked. Walking to Uncle Chung’s was almost like a lazy stroll through the countryside. A dark, dank, slimy countryside, sure, but a countryside all the same. Walking back home proved to be a different matter entirely. I’d turned a few corners and walked straight into a police scene—complete with haphazardly parked squad cars, their lights flashing, and people running back and forth, waving flashlights all over the place. All activity was centered on an alley, with the squad cars blocking the only entrance.
“Search over here!”
“Wilder! Birch! The next alley!”
“The trail’s gotten cold, sir.”
“Go, go, go!”
I hurried over to the other side of the street and tried to keep as far away from the action as I could. Here and there, a few people shuffled out of their shadowy hideaways to gawk. I hung around a bit even though I knew it was kinda sorta dangerous for me. That was teenage curiosity right there. Fugitives, I thought—maybe thugs who worked for The Trill were at it again.
They must have been busted doing something and were chased into one of these alleys. It was too surreal, the way the scene unfolded before me.
Walking and rubber-necking, I kept my gaze fixed on the squad cars and the murky figures of running officers until I felt my back bump against something solid. I turned around and found myself standing beside an old building—an abandoned one, it looked like, though there wasn’t much that distinguished it from the buildings flanking it. The rotting door was barred, and so were the windows—that is, save for one.
One of the windows at street level had a few wooden planks nailed across it, but they weren’t enough to cover the whole frame. Most of the planks barred the bottom half of the window, and the upper half remained untouched unless the planks that used to be there had rotted away or had been pulled out by someone. The glass, thick with dirt, was practically opaque in that gross way that dirt-caked windows were gross, but the top half was broken through. Only a few jagged pieces clung to the window frame. The lights in that street were few and dim, and they cast a dull, sickly hue over what little they could touch.
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