Out of Reach

by Carrie Arcos

  “You getting tired?” I asked him.

  “I could use a Coke.”

  “I think I saw a convenience store a couple blocks back. Remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tyler turned the car around and found the market. He parked in the lot and asked if I wanted anything. I asked for something to drink and insisted that I pay this time. Tyler didn’t argue as he took the cash from me.

  I waited in the car with Dillon. There was a pay phone out front. Remembering the number in my pocket, I pulled it out. Now or never, I thought. I found some change in Dillon’s car.

  Before I could chicken out, I dialed the number. It rang five times before I heard the click of someone answering.

  “Hello,” said a male voice.

  “Hello?” I said, but no one responded. I heard breathing on the other end. “Hello? Can you hear me?” It sounded like someone was riding in a car. “Micah?” I whispered.

  The phone clicked. The person had hung up.

  My heart tightened. I dialed the number again. Maybe whoever was on the other end couldn’t hear me. My calls always got dropped in a certain section of town. It rang a couple of times again before heading to voice mail. “The person you are trying to reach is not available now.” Click. I didn’t even get to leave a message.

  Tyler exited the store just as I hung up the phone.

  “Calling someone?” He looked at me, puzzled.

  I shrugged. “Just testing it out. Never used one before.”

  “A pay phone? Huh. Neither have I.”

  I shoved the piece of paper back into my pocket.

  He handed me my drink. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, but avoided his eyes.

  “I got directions back to Dillon’s.”

  “Wow. A guy who asks for directions.”

  Tyler ignored me. “We’re about twenty minutes away. We could crash there for the night.”

  “Whatever.” I thought about the voice and the breathing on the other end of the line. It probably wasn’t Micah anyway. It wasn’t like he had a signature breath.

  My chest hurt. I held my hand over it, as if saying the pledge of allegiance, as if I could hold my heart together, or that applying some pressure would stop it from aching. It worked for nosebleeds, not heart trouble.

  When I was younger, I was diagnosed with a heart murmur. It meant that I had an extra whooshing sound between beats. The doctor said it was harmless and nothing to worry about. The only time it seemed to matter was when I went to the dentist or filled out paperwork for sports.

  But Micah had been pretty upset about it. He’d thought it meant that my heart might stop. There was a time when he wanted to make sure it was working right, especially after we had been running around in the backyard. He called it a “heart check.” He would lean his head against my chest, close his eyes, and count. When he’d listened to ten beats, he’d lift his head and tell me that I sounded good, so we could still play. He said he could hear the murmur, but I knew that was impossible without a stethoscope. Micah insisted, though, saying that he heard my heart whisper.

  “You sure you’re good?” Tyler asked, pulling into the street.

  “Yeah.” I held my breath and released it slowly. Maybe I was having a heart attack. My pulse was racing. No, I was too young. I thought I could hear the whooshing sound of the murmur, as my pulse pounded in my ears. Maybe this was a panic attack. I counted to ten.

  “Tell me if you want me to pull—”

  “Watch out!” A small cat ran into the road in front of the car.

  Tyler swerved and hit the curb, as well as a trash can, before slamming on the brakes.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Where’s the cat?” I scrambled out of the car.

  “A cat?”

  “Or a kitten or something.” I looked up and down the street and sidewalk. I held my heart again, anticipating fresh roadkill.

  “Rach, you can’t do that.” Tyler assessed the damage to the car. No dents, only two small scratches where we’d hit the trash can. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Where is it?” I felt tears forming.

  Tyler took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “What?”

  “The cat.” I got down on my hands and knees and looked underneath the car. It wasn’t there. I stood back up and hugged my arms to my chest.

  “We didn’t kill it,” Tyler said softly.

  “Maybe.” I sniffed. I couldn’t see the cat anywhere. I eyed the scratches on the bumper. “He’ll never notice.”

  “Hey,” Dillon called from the backseat. He sipped on my drink, which I had left in the car.

  “Look who’s back from the dead,” Tyler said.

  Dillon grinned. “Where are we?” He stretched and yawned really big.

  “Nowhere, man. Just heading back to your place.”

  Tyler and I returned to the car. Dillon leaned forward and placed his arms on the back of the front seat.

  “Still no Micah, I take it.”

  “Nope.”

  Dillon sat back and pulled out his phone. I watched the street through the passenger window. Tyler kept glancing at me, but I pretended not to notice.

  “All right. We’re set.”

  “What?” Tyler asked.

  “One a.m. A department store’s parking lot.”

  I looked at Tyler and he nodded as if to say, one more time.

  “Not making any promises.”

  Promises. I turned from Tyler and faced the front. Promises were made to be broken. I pulled the piece of paper out of my pocket. The voice on the other line hadn’t been Micah’s. I had been foolish to think it could have been that easy. And even if it had . . . He had hung up on me. Why did I even bother?

  Rolling down the window, I stuck my hand outside and released the number. It flew away. My free hand floated up and down, riding the wind, before I pulled it back inside.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  You told me you wouldn’t,” I said.

  Micah sat on his bed and strummed his guitar. It wasn’t plugged in, so the notes were thin and tinny.

  “Your words. They’re supposed to mean something.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” He started humming and closed his eyes.

  “You have a problem.” Understatement of the year.

  “Rach! Quit riding me. Go study, or whatever you do.”

  I didn’t budge from the frame of his bedroom door. He continued to play.

  “Look,” he said, probably knowing I was being stubborn and could stand there all night, “I partied too hard. I know. But I’ve got it handled. The worry act is unnecessary.”

  “But—”

  He rolled his eyes and put on his headphones. I hesitated. If he lied to me once, how many times had he lied before? I knew the answer—every time. For some reason I had refused to see it before; maybe I didn’t want to see it. I needed to tell Mom and Dad. But how could I, without his seeing it as a huge betrayal? He would hate me.

  I turned to leave.

  “Hey, listen to this new one I’m working on. What do you think?”

  Micah took off his headphones and began singing. I reentered his room and sat on his bed next to him, like I always did when he played me a new song. His voice asked me to forget about the night before, to trust him, as he sang something about being pissed about a girl who’d left him for another guy. He sounded so normal, so good.

  “Well?” he asked when he stopped playing. “It’s not done, but what do you think so far?”

  “Funny,” I said.

  “Yeah, I was going for kind of a humoristic take on the whole being-dumped thing.”

  My phone buzzed. It was a text from Keith.

  “It’s good. Gotta go.”

  “Say hi to Keith for me,” Micah said, all high-voiced.

  “Shut up,” I said, and got up from the bed.

  “We’re cool, right?” he asked when I reached the door.

 
“Yeah,” I said, because the truth was becoming much more painful. “We’re cool.”

  “Promise?” Micah smiled and put his headphones back on before I could answer.

  “Promise,” I said softly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  We cruised into an empty lot and parked behind a group of bushes as far away from the store’s entrance as possible. Supposedly, a dealer who knew Micah liked to do business here in the early hours of the morning. A sense of desperation came over me, probably because it was our last-ditch effort to find Micah.

  Tyler shut off the engine. We rolled down the front windows so it wouldn’t get all foggy inside.

  The huge warehouse seemed to stare down at me. I hated this particular store. Everything felt loud and cheap when you entered. The lighting instantly gave me a headache. Every tag said Made in China or wherever. Kids always cried and ran down the aisles. I wished someone would ban or annihilate the business.

  “So now what?” I asked, kind of in a grumpy mood.

  “We wait,” Dillon said.

  “It’s already a little after one. Maybe you should text him to make sure.”

  “Already on it. Now we sit tight.”

  “Rach,” Tyler said, as if he were warning me to back off.

  “All right. We wait.”

  I hadn’t had much experience waiting for dealers, so I didn’t know if they were punctual or not. Dillon and Tyler didn’t seem to think they were. In my opinion, it didn’t make the best business sense to keep your customers waiting.

  Sitting in the dark made me nervous. By 1:25 I was edgy.

  “Say something,” I said to Tyler.

  “Like what?”

  “Anything.”

  “I wonder how many cars it’d take to fill this lot.”

  I looked at him with my Seriously? expression.

  “Four hundred,” Dillon said from the back.

  “I was thinking more.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Your turn,” Tyler said to me.

  “What do you mean, my turn?”

  “Say something.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Not so easy, huh?” Tyler said.

  I looked out the window at the empty parking lot. The guy wasn’t going to show.

  “So, you having a good summer so far?” Tyler asked me.

  I laughed at Tyler’s attempt at small talk. “Yeah, you?” I put both feet on the dashboard.

  “Pretty good. Work. Sleeping in.”

  “You still work at the music store?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You get a discount?” Dillon asked.

  “Twenty percent.”

  “That’s decent.”

  The car became silent again. I knew I would have to ask a question to keep the conversation going, but I didn’t want to have to carry it.

  “My first job was at a gas station,” Dillon offered. “I didn’t get free gas, though.”

  “I babysit. Not tons of money, but it’s easy,” I added.

  Silence again. Tyler and I hadn’t had any awkward conversations all day. Dillon must’ve changed the equation.

  “This might be him,” Dillon said as a small dark car entered the parking lot. It parked on the opposite side of the lot. Not close, but not that far away. Thankfully, the bushes hid us.

  “What do we do?” I whispered.

  “I’ll go talk to him. Give me that picture you’ve been showing around.” Dillon held out his hand for the photo.

  Dillon was about to open the car door, when another dark car entered the lot and slowly drove up to the first car. It parked right next to the black car, and three guys got out.

  “Get down,” Dillon said.

  I sank into the seat. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but this time I sensed it was best to keep my mouth shut. We couldn’t see anything, but with the windows rolled down we could make out male voices. At first they sounded normal, pleasant, like a group of guys talking. I couldn’t understand what they were saying exactly. And then I heard the first hit.

  “Shit,” Dillon whispered. I saw him trying to peek out the back window.

  I heard another hit. It wasn’t like the sound effects in the movies. Flesh on flesh didn’t sound like slaps. It was like listening to my mom tenderize a slab of meat before cooking it. I wondered if that’s how it had sounded when Micah beat up Keith. How many times had he hit Keith? Had Keith gotten a few punches in?

  I had never been in a fight; well, only the verbal kind. In the seventh grade, this girl Marisol said something ugly about Micah on the bus. I told her to take it back, but she wouldn’t. So I called her a bitch under my breath. Unfortunately, she heard me, and in the heat of the moment, I’d forgotten that she got off at the same stop as Micah and me.

  As soon as the bus pulled away, she pushed me from behind. I wasn’t prepared for it, so I went sprawling onto the sidewalk. My knee still has a faint scar from where I scraped it across the pavement. By the time I stood up, Marisol dropped her bag on the ground and was ready to pounce on me. But before she could, Micah grabbed her from behind and pinned her arms to the side. That gave me enough time to run, which I did, all the way home.

  I opened the door and was about to shut it when I saw Micah wasn’t far behind me. After giving me a head start, he had dropped Marisol and taken off. Marisol was big for her age, so Micah had probably been scared of her too. We laughed about it over a bag of chips, but I think I would have passed out if she had actually punched me.

  How many hits could someone take before passing out? I wondered. The sound of punches and grunts and heavy breathing kept coming in a steady staccato. There were kicks now, thudding between the hits. I wanted Tyler to roll up the window. I held my hands over my ears and looked at Tyler. He was frightened, which made me even more scared.

  “We should get out of here,” Tyler whispered.

  “What if they follow?” Dillon asked.

  “They could see us now,” Tyler said. “You want to take that chance?”

  “No. We’re okay. We’re too hidden.”

  “Dillon—”

  “They could see my plates and then what? I’m dead.”

  Dillon had a point. Tyler and I would be in the clear, but they could track him and show up at his house.

  The beating finally stopped. But that was followed by the opening of a door, more voices. The slam of a trunk. Footsteps.

  I slowed my breathing, but my pulse raced. I strained to hear. Were the steps coming closer? Maybe. My hand gripped the door handle, ready to fling it open, so I could run if I had to. An ignition started. A car peeled out of the lot. None of us said anything. We remained still, listening. My breathing was shallow. I could hear Tyler’s. Dillon crept up to peer out the window. He opened the door.

  Wait, I said in my mind, terrified at what might happen.

  He stepped outside, crouching low to the ground. Tyler and I sat up a little to watch him. Dillon crawled away from the car, and then stood up behind the bushes and looked around. My heart pulsed in an irregular, rapid rhythm.

  “We’re good,” he said.

  Tyler and I both got out of the car and joined Dillon. The first car was still in the lot. A dark mound lay on the ground next to it. Dillon started walking toward the car. I didn’t want to follow, but Tyler held out his hand for mine. I grabbed it and he pulled me toward him protectively.

  I walked, looking all around me, afraid someone would jump out of hiding. But there was only Tyler, Dillon, me, and the crumpled body of a young man I could now make out on the ground.

  “Hey,” Dillon said as he approached the body.

  No sound. But there was that rusty, sweet smell again. Blood.

  Dillon reached out with his foot and gently nudged the man. The body didn’t move. Dillon bent over the body and motioned Tyler to him. Tyler let go of my hand and helped Dillon roll the man onto his back.

  I gasped. Blood covered his face, what was left of it, and pooled on the
ground. Swelling had already sealed shut both of his eyes. His nose was squashed and cut up. His mouth curved into a jagged scar. Gashes covered his hands from where he’d probably tried to protect himself. Tyler reached out and held the man’s wrist.

  “He’s alive.”

  As if to let us know for certain, the man moaned.

  “Barely,” Dillon said. “Help me push him onto his side.”

  As they did, I saw a wound bleeding on the back of his head. The man tried to say something, but I couldn’t understand him. He coughed and blood spilled from his mouth.

  I bent down and put my hand to his chest. “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dillon.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said to the man. “We’ll help you.” I took his bloodied hand in mine. “We’ve got to get him help.”

  Tyler and Dillon didn’t say anything; they just stood looking down at the wounded man.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Check his pockets for a phone,” Dillon said.

  Trying not to hurt him, I gently looked and found one in his back pocket.

  “Here.”

  Dillon dialed 911.

  “Head wounds bleed a lot,” I told them. I blocked Keith’s face from my mind.

  “All right. They’re on their way.” Dillon removed the Sim card and pocketed the phone. “Can’t have them tracing my texts with this.”

  “We can’t just leave him,” I said.

  “We have to,” Tyler said.

  I stood up and glared at both of them, even though I knew they were right. The police would ask us all kinds of questions, why we were here, what we saw, etc. . . . Who knew what kind of trouble we’d be in?

  Dillon peeked inside the car. “They didn’t even take all the weed. What a waste.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Tyler said.

  We jogged to our car.

  “She can’t get in like that.” Dillon opened the trunk and took out a shirt. “Here, wipe off the blood.” He grabbed a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket and lit it.

  My hands were smeared with the man’s blood. I tried to wipe them, but I was shaking. Tyler took the shirt and gently rubbed my hands clean. He threw the dirtied shirt into the trunk and maneuvered me into the front seat. This time Dillon drove and Tyler sat between us.