Mean Streaks

by Kimberly G. Giarratano

  That Wednesday afternoon, Maxine returned home from school and dropped her backpack onto the kitchen counter. Susan Goldfarb sat at the dinette table, reading her phone.

  “How was school, honey?” she asked, without glancing up.

  Maxine grabbed a can of soda from the fridge and pulled back the tab. She chugged the acidic liquid until a belch forced its way up her esophagus. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Surprisingly uneventful.”

  Maxine’s mother raised a brow and laughed. “Okay.” She set down her phone and twisted her graying hair into a bun. “I went to Savemart. Bought you frozen pizza for dinner. Oh, and I ran into Seth Mayer. He works there now, apparently.”

  “How’d he look?” The last time Maxine saw Seth was when he was receiving his eighth-grade diploma. Maxine’s mother, however, treated him last year in the ICU after a near fatal heroin overdose.

  “Better, not great.” Susan sighed. “At least, he’s breathing. His friend wasn’t as lucky.”

  “What happened?” Maxine asked.

  “Got ahold of tainted heroin. The paramedics said Narcan was useless.” She shook her head. “And Chief Hammer wants to lock them up instead of treating them. Anyway, I told Seth to check out those GED prep classes you volunteer for.”

  “Maybe he will,” Maxine said, trying to sound hopeful.

  Her mother smiled thinly. “If you see him, try to make a case. He’s a sweet kid who just needs a little support. You know?” She rose from the table and stretched her arms high into the air. Then she kissed the top of Maxine’s head. “Anyway, I gotta shower before my shift.”

  “I’m working at the library tonight, remember?”

  Her mother shrugged. She’d be toiling in the hospital all night anyway. Maxine’s relationship with her mother was based on a small snippet of time between when Maxine returned home from school and her mother left for work. Maxine could be managing an illegal gambling ring in the Goldfarbs’ basement and her mother would never know.

  Susan stood at the bottom of the stairs, her hand firmly on the bannister. “It’s a shame you don’t hang out with Serena Dunn anymore. You guys were such good friends.”

  “That was a long time ago, Mom. I can’t imagine what we’d even have in common now. Why are you bringing it up?”

  “I ran into her mother at the hospital. She was visiting a relative. She mentioned it to me actually.” She bit her lip. “I don’t think Serena is doing too well.”

  Maxine scoffed. “Popular Serena Dunn. I’m sure she’s just fine.”

  Susan nodded thoughtfully before hustling upstairs to get ready for work.

  Maxine pushed the cart with its squeaky front wheel through the stacks, stopping frequently to shelve a book.

  The library wasn’t just a job; it was her refuge. Maxine proved herself to be an exemplary student employee and so she was entrusted to man the circulation desk during particularly busy reference hours, or fetch materials from special collections. And in July, when the library was humming with children for the summer reading program, Maxine might be tasked with scooping ice cream or handing out prizes. She often felt like she got paid to have fun. And the other thing that made her job at the library so sweet was that Brent Hammer never came there.

  Yes, Maxine often felt safe in the shelves. Especially on nights like tonight. Quiet. Calm. With only Maxine and Mr. Depew, the head reference librarian, to hold down the fort.

  The weather had turned from foggy to outright wet with sheets of rain sliding down the library’s ancient glass panes. And that kept everyone at home.

  Everyone except Serena Dunn who sat alone at a table near the mystery collection, a book of literary criticisms splayed open in front of her, probably making up the essay that was due two days ago. Her shoulders were hunched inside a sunny cardigan the same color as her hair. Serena shuddered even though the library had cranked up the heating system to compensate for the drafty windows.

  Maxine watched Serena from the safety of the shadows, wondering what it must be like to be the most popular girl in school. Wondering why Serena coated her smooth complexion in layers of make-up or why she ignored Maxine when once they had been good friends. She wondered if Serena ever thought about her at all.

  Maxine tucked the last book into its place on the shelf and pushed the cart toward Circulation. Mr. Depew dangled a small key attached to a wooden rectangle and smiled apologetically. “I hate to ask, Maxine, especially in this weather, but can you unlock the bookdrop?”

  “Sure.”

  The rain pummeled the roof, as if the clouds were firing bullets. Maxine grabbed her rain jacket from the back of the desk chair, and slipped her arms through the sleeves. Mr. Depew dropped the keychain into her waiting palm. “If only everyone was like you, Maxine.”

  She paused by the library’s front door for a brief second, willing the downpour to stop, but trudging ahead when it didn’t. She ran down the sidewalk to the edge of the driveway where patrons could pull their cars up to the bookdrop after hours, plunk their materials inside, and speed away.

  She squinted to see where to insert the key in the darkness, gave up, and groped for the metal lock with wet fingers. Finding it, Maxine plunged the key in and twisted. The bin instantly flopped open, and she pushed it back. As she hunched over the bookdrop, fussing with the latch, she felt a tapping on her shoulder. Someone was trying to get her attention.

  Maxine lifted her head, the hood of her jacket slicing her peripheral vision. She turned around and was met with a fist as it careened with her face.

  She cried out and fell backwards, the force throwing her to the sidewalk. Her palms scraped the wet concrete first before she raised them to cup her stinging cheek.

  She’d never been hit in the face before and the pain was so excruciating, she thought she might vomit right there in front of the bookdrop.

  A shadow moved. Brent Hammer loomed over her, the rain pinging off his hair and jacket. “You so much as look at me funny again, and next time I’ll kill you,” he growled. Then he scrunched his shoulders against the rain, as if feeling it for the first time, and plodded back to his car.

  Maxine stumbled to her feet. She dropped her hood so the freezing rain would soothe her searing skin.

  Somehow, she managed to get inside the library, and fled to the ladies room. Inside a bathroom stall, she shrugged off her jacket, and hung it up on the hook. She didn’t sit down. She just pressed her cheek to the cool metal door and tried to catch her breath.

  Her mother had spanked her once when she was little. It was after Maxine had carelessly left the screen door open and their old border collie, Penny, got loose, prompting Maxine’s exhausted mother to drive around the neighborhood for an hour screaming the dog’s name before she was found. Her mother had grabbed Maxine by the arm and swatted her butt with a heavy hand. She ran up to her bedroom and sobbed into the blankets. Her mother had never apologized, but she’d never hit her again.

  That punishment didn’t leave Maxine with any reminder of consequences. It didn’t leave her with a resolve of being more careful when she opened the door the next time. It just left Maxine with a river of rage. At that moment, when she was being hit, she hated her mother.

  And right now, Maxine hated Brent Hammer more than she ever hated another person in her whole life. And that hate surged through her veins.

  She opened the bathroom stall door to find Serena standing by the sink, preening in front of the mirror. Under the florescent lights, Maxine could see a bruise swelling beneath her eye.

  “You’ll need a few days to let that heal,” Serena said, adjusting her sweater around her shoulders. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and then spoke to Maxine’s reflection. “You know where to find me if you need some tips on covering that with concealer. I’m always happy to help another girl feel her best.” Maxine wasn’t sure what to make of the exchange but she didn’t have an opportunity to ask. Serena handed Maxine a cold paper towel and left the bathroom.

/>   Serena was correct—it would take two days before her bruised cheek was able to bear applying make-up. In the meantime, Maxine was forced to cut school. She had never played hooky before, but she couldn’t imagine walking into the senior hallway with a welt on her face.

  It was easy enough avoiding her mother. Susan didn’t wake up until well after two. Maxine had plenty of time in the morning to scope out Brent’s house, check for his Jeep or his father’s cruiser, and wait for them to depart. Then she stuffed her backpack with soda and snacks and jumped on her bike. She pedaled to the library in the next town where no one knew her, and hid in the shelves, reading and eating. When she got tired of that, she rode over to the Savemart and browsed the electronics department. She pedaled home when she knew her mother had left for work.

  Maxine dug out her father’s old Louisville Slugger, one of the few things he left behind, and kept it by her side. She wished her old border collie was still alive. When the dog wasn’t gunning for the open screen door, she used to bark viciously at men.

  Maxine went through with this routine until Saturday morning when she rummaged through her mother’s make-up drawer hunting for foundation and a concealer stick. There was no way Maxine could lie to her mother once she saw her bruised and bare skin. Her mother would narrow her gaze, press her thumb to Maxine’s chin, tilting her face in the light, until she surmised how Maxine had been hurt. And then her mother would storm over to the Hammers’ house, railing against the police chief and his bully son. Maxine saw the whole thing end in handcuffs, and it wouldn’t be Brent sitting in the back of the police car.

  Maxine knew if she was going to get through this, she’d have to take care of the problem herself. And so she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, slathered on a layer of beige foundation, and prayed her mother would think her interest in cosmetics was just Maxine trying impress a boy.

  And as Maxine dabbed at her tender cheek with a brown-stained sponge, that rage she felt toward Brent no longer rolled underneath her skin, but simmered slowly, allowing her a stretch of calm to think clearly. Perhaps she could use Serena’s cosmetic advice after all.

  Monday morning, after Maxine had found Brent’s body and the 9-1-1 dispatcher had been notified, she sat on a boulder, and waited for the police to arrive. For he would arrive. Someone would surely tell him that his son had been found.

  Finally a broad-shouldered officer approached Maxine, flashing his badge, reciting his name—Officer Bragin. His boxy physique and light hair reminded Maxine of Brent and she squirmed from under his hand which he had planted on her shoulder as he ushered her away from the rock and away from Brent’s body. It was almost like he was trying to shield her from the horror, as if she hadn’t been sitting next to a dead boy for eight minutes.

  Bragin escorted her down the deer path to where it fed into the cul-de-sac, nodding at a passing officer holding an expensive camera. Bragin removed a small notepad and a stubby pencil, the kind one used to mark a scorecard at the local putt-putt, from the pocket of his uniform. He leaned against his patrol car and peppered her with questions: What time did she find Brent? Did she always take that trail in the mornings? Did Brent usually drive his Jeep to school? Did he ever walk? Some questions she could answer, others she could not.

  It didn’t seem that long before the county coroners staff, wearing blue jumpsuits, carried Brent’s body on a stretcher to a white van parked in the middle of the street. A body wrapped in black plastic, like trash.

  Bragin tried to ask more questions, but his efforts were thwarted by the arrival of Chief Hammer who jerked his thick chin at his underling and said, “I’ll take over.”

  Bragin furrowed his brow, and opened his mouth to protest, until one look from the bleary-eyed police chief silenced him. He nodded his acquiescence and jumped in the driver side of his car where he waited.

  Brent’s father, the same man who watched six-year-old Maxine skid her bicycle in the gravel and scrape up her kneecaps, the same man who said, “See, Brent? Maxine doesn’t cry when she falls. She gets back up,” this same man was now squeezing her shoulder and murmuring, “You tell no one at school what you saw on the path.”

  Maxine assumed he meant the heroin kit.

  “The kids will find out soon enough,” she said. It wasn’t meant as a threat, just a fact. “You can’t hide his death.”

  “They’ll know what I want them to know,” he said, his voice so low, Maxine strained to hear him. But the message was clear. The police chief’s son couldn’t possibly have died of a drug overdose when his father’s life mission was locking up addicts.

  Maxine spotted her mother stepping on their front stoop, clad in a worn bathrobe and thick eyeglasses, glancing nervously around the cul-de-sac. She blanched when she spied her daughter in the street amidst the flashing police car lights. “Maxine! Everything okay?”

  There was so much to explain, or really there wasn’t. All she had to tell her mother was that she found Brent Hammer dead on the trail. The local newspaper would pick up the rest of the story. Maxine gave her mother a warm smile, a reminder that she was strong. She’d been knocked down, but she got right back up.

  “Everything’s fine,” Maxine called to her mother. Then louder, “I’m okay.”

  Maxine fell into her homeroom seat after the second bell. She caught a few sidelong glances from her classmates, but nothing that set her on edge. Nothing to suggest she was anything but a few minutes late.

  The rumblings started shortly before lunch. Whispers and buzzing winding their way through the hallway. Not about the prom. Not this time.

  When the bell rang, Maxine skipped the cafeteria. Instead, she grabbed her jacket and her lunch bag from her locker. She pushed open the double doors by the gymnasium and emerged into bright light before making her way down the sidewalk to the bleachers that encircled the track and field.

  A sophomore class was running laps, but they paid her no attention. After a long winter, even the most inactive seemed energized by the lifting fog and sunny skies.

  Maxine found Serena Dunn underneath the bleachers. A cigarette dangled from her lips. Last week Maxine would’ve found this surprising. But, not today. Nothing would ever surprise her again.

  “Those’ll kill you,” Maxine pointed out.

  “So will heroin,” Serena said, without missing a beat. She dropped the cigarette and ground it into the dirt with the toe of her sneaker. A swath of sunshine clipped the bleachers, alighting upon the purple remnants of an old bruise, barely visible under her make-up. There was also one near her clavicle and one on her upper thigh. Maxine might not have known they were there if Serena hadn’t shown her the other day.

  Maxine fished her cell phone out of her back pocket, unlocked the screen, and held it out for Serena’s inspection.

  Serena let out a deep breath, then patted the tender tissue above her cheek bone. She slumped against a metal joist. “Now, delete it.”

  Maxine took one last look at Brent’s photo before sending it to the trash and slipping the phone back inside her pocket. That would be the last time she’d ever lay eyes on the real Brent Hammer. But if she was being truthful, the real Brent Hammer, the abused little kid who couldn’t ride a two-wheeler, disappeared a long time ago.

  “Your boy, Seth, came through,” Serena said, rubbing at her sleeves.

  “He’s not my boy,” Maxine said, softly. “Just a guy I knew once.”

  “A guy who knew where to buy tainted heroin.”

  Poor Seth only thought Maxine was being friendly. She saw him bagging groceries at the Savemart, and then chatted him up during his break. They got around to talking about his overdose, his stint in rehab, and his friend who couldn’t be saved by Narcan. She appeared like she was offering sympathy when really she was hunting for information. She felt horribly guilty about it, exploiting Seth like that, exploiting an epidemic like that, but then she argued it was for a good cause.

  Maxine considered the hollow tree trunk along the deer path where
Brent hid his stash. He’d shown Serena once and she remembered.

  “You wore gloves, right?” Maxine asked.

  Serena rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot.”

  Maxine dug into her jacket pocket for the piece of yellow fabric she found near Brent’s body. She slapped it into Serena’s palm.

  Serena gasped.

  “I found it before the cops did. You better burn that sweater.”

  Serena bit her bottom lip. “You sure this won’t come back to bite us?”

  Maxine wasn’t sure of anything anymore, but she shook her head. She couldn’t see how the cops could tie her and Serena together. They didn’t hang out in the same cliques. They never talked. They were only linked by Brent’s violence. The brutalized girlfriend and the terrorized neighbor who both were driven to secrecy by fear and shame. Well, not anymore.

  Maxine said, “Chief Hammer practically threatened me to say nothing.”

  “Like father, like son.”

  The girls were silent for a second. Perhaps, making peace with what they’d done.

  Hushed tones wafted toward them. Then the voices grew louder, more urgent. The football team chanted, “Brent! Brent! Brent!”

  “It’s starting,” Serena said.

  Maxine reached out for her friend—were they friends again? Or merely accomplices?—but then withdrew her hand. “You’re going to need to look the part. Can you handle that?”

  A scoff escaped Serena’s lips. “I think I can pull this off.” She inhaled a deep breath, then hefted the messenger bag at her feet onto her shoulder. Maxine didn’t turn to leave. She needed a few minutes to compose herself. No one was expecting her to cry, but she did feel sad.

  “We did the right thing,” Serena assured her.

  “Maybe.”

  “He would’ve killed one of us. And if not us, someone else. Eventually.” Serena slid a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes. “It’s going to be a beautiful day. Try to enjoy it.” Then she sauntered off, ascending the grassy hill and disappearing from sight, leaving Maxine alone in the shadows.