Wanted

by Heidi Ayarbe

“So,” he says, “I’m your big hero?” He attempts flexing again, then just shakes out his arms. “Forget it.”

  “Didn’t even faze him, did it?”

  “Didn’t budge. Unbelievable. Valiant or not?”

  “Valiantly stupid.”

  Josh winces. “Why stupid?”

  “You’re pretty new.”

  Josh nods. “I’ve been here for almost a month already.”

  “That long?” Of course I know it’s been that long. Who wouldn’t?

  “Nice to know I slipped under your radar, there.”

  “Don’t be snarky. I’m serious.”

  “Serious. As a heart attack?”

  “As a colonoscopy.”

  “Ouch. Not pleasant.”

  I stop to tie my shoe. “Go on ahead of me.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  I shake my head. “These are the last few months of high school—months you don’t want to spend—”

  Josh laughs, interrupting my monologue on being a school untouchable—she with only one photo in the yearbook. “Spend with the only chick who laughs for real, not doing some lame tee-hee-hee thing. Spend with a bookie. A bookie? A high school bookie. That blows my mind. No way. You’re a keeper.”

  “I’m not a novelty.” I hate that my voice is quavering, so I inhale and fumble with the zipper on my backpack. “What do you want?” I ask.

  “I could use a friend.”

  I shrug. “You have friends—an entire entourage now.”

  “I thought you hadn’t noticed me before.”

  That stings. We’re silent.

  “Wow.” Josh kicks at an empty Coke can. It skips across the gravel lot and bangs into the curb. He pulls the Kleenex away. “So that’s it?”

  I rub my throat, trying to push back the ache. “Thanks again,” I say. “You go ahead. I’ll be right in. I’ll text you with Sanctuary to let you know when to meet up for the winnings.”

  Josh faces me, his backpack slung over his shoulder. He bends over to scrape blood spatters off his jeans, his lanky frame looking a lot like a question mark. “Know the last time I gave a shit about what anybody said or thought about me?” His jaw is tense. His eyes look like they’re ready to shoot sparks.

  I shake my head.

  “Neither do I.” He cocks his head and turns toward the building, crushing the Coke can under his shoes. He pauses and turns. “See you around.”

  I swallow. “See you.”

  Chapter 5

  AFTER I FINISH LUNCH, I PACK

  up my antiecological, plastified cheese-and-crackers packs. I’m not sure what’s more plasticky: the cheese or the container. Nim and his friends walk by; he’s talking about how he can get away with anything in this school, this town. He holds up a ticket, flashing it. “Number twenty-seven. I can park wherever I goddamn please in this shithole town.” He crumples the ticket and tosses it my way, smirking, then sneering at me like I’m a cockroach.

  I pick crumbs off my sweatshirt, stacking the empty cheese-and-crackers containers one on top of the other, shoving the crumpled paper in my romance novel, trying to keep the cover out of sight. Cory at Grassroots Books says that I need to learn to “own the cheese.”

  Personally, I don’t need Nim to know I crush on scantily clad, muscular figments of Nora Roberts’s imagination.

  A couple of girls I don’t know—maybe new—are in the hallway, and Nim stares past me at them.

  He turns to his friends. “Did these little border bunnies lose their way? Maybe we should make a few calls, huh? Help them find their way back under the barbed-wire fence where they belong.” He holds out his hands out, saying, “Green card? Green card?”

  Everybody giggles like in some sit-com laugh track. I can just see the Tweets and texts now . . . LOL, LMAO, ROFLMAO, LOL LOL LOL.

  God.

  He looks behind him, though, knowing that if he ever said that in front of Moch or la Cordillera, he’d probably be jumped before the day was through. Both girls stare down at the ground. I can practically feel the heat coming from their bodies and wish I had some of Lillian in me at the moment. She’d come unhinged and probably sue him for something.

  Lillian’s big on lawsuits. She’s good at indignation.

  And I place bets. Sometimes I feel so shallow.

  Nim and his friends walk away. I turn to the girls and say, “I’m sorry—sorry he says that stuff.” More sorry, though, that I don’t say anything back.

  One of the girls looks up and shrugs. “What can you do?” she asks.

  “Maybe some kind of pendejo intervention. Do you think it’s possible that people are born with a DNA glitch that makes them incurable pendejos? Like the thirteenth chromosome is the terminal butthead one, so with a little genetic modification . . . Who knows?”

  The girls smile.

  “Do you want a Coke or something? My treat.” Coke could do a whole new ad campaign: Wash hate away with a swig. Carbonated love in a can. Cheers!

  Six words.

  The girls are staring at me, big-eyed. Sometimes I wonder if I’m talking out loud or if looking at me the way they do is just the way I’ll always be looked at. Nim and his crowd are walking down the hall. He turns back and winks at me, making my stomach feel all queasy.

  “Is okay,” one girl says, squeezing my arm. “What you can do ’bout him?”

  I stare at the crumpled parking ticket. I have the title to his truck, which he’ll need if he ever gets pulled over or some police officer asks him about those tickets.

  The queasiness turns to anger. “A lot,” I say. “A lot.” I buy them Cokes. We sit down in the courtyard. I’m surprised they join me.

  “You from here?” one asks.

  I nod. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m Mike. You?”

  “Sofia. This is Laura. We in nine grade. New.”

  I whistle. “Tough place to be new.”

  I feel bad for them. New here, for lack of a better word, sucks. I remember after living with the One Body, One Mind religious group for eight years, the real world was a pretty cruel awakening. “Kumbaya” was replaced by “I see Paris, I see France.” Meditation was replaced by masochistic games like dodgeball or red rover, where it’s perfectly okay to hurl rubber balls at or clothesline your classmates.

  And under no circumstances should I have brought my Bible Battles Trading Card collection for show-and-tell.

  I spent eight years in a New Testament world—love everyone, turn the other cheek. The real world tends to work according to the eye-for-an-eye teachings. Just make sure you gouge first.

  “So what you gonna do?” Sofia asks.

  I smile. “A little smiting.”

  She looks at me weird. Her friend, Laura, who hasn’t said a word, mutters something to her in Spanish.

  “It has to do with the paper?” Sofia asks.

  “A piece of paper can mean everything to somebody,” I explain.

  Sofia nods. “You don’ have to tell me.”

  Chapter 6

  I WIPE OFF A SMUDGE FROM

  my one good lens. My head hurts having spent an entire day bleary-eyed. I’ll get my glasses replaced this afternoon—another hundred bucks down the drain.

  I look up to see Nimrod and his friends head from the field to the locker room. Medusa and her gang follow close behind. “Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Here goes. Wish me luck.”

  I look around. Who am I talking to?

  I make the call from the school’s only pay phone, hoping to sound desperate and worried and pissed about some dumb teenager recklessly driving in the high school parking lot—taillight busted, skid marks and all. I keep the call under a minute, then hang up.

  I run to Nimrod’s truck: a shiny, green, double-cabbed machine of masculinity. It’s impeccable.

  Now or never. Never is starting to feel like a better option, but I’m tired of the safe way out. Sure, I have U-Dub, University of Washington tomorrow. But why does today and every day until then have to totally suck? And if it sucks for
me, it’ll suck for all the kids like Laura and Sofia.

  Plus, I have to send a message out to my clients.

  I circle the truck and break the right taillight, picking up the little pieces of plastic and putting them in my pocket, pulling out the key I lifted from him in government class. Growing up in a tough neighborhood had its advantages. I reserve pickpocketing and other skills for emergency situations.

  I climb into Nim’s truck, turn on the engine, then take a big breath because if I blow the fenders off this thing, I can kiss solids good-bye until the Second Coming. I pull the break, slip the truck into neutral, and floor the pedal, holding the brake with all my weight and stop just as soon as the acrid smell of burned rubber fills the air. The truck shudders to a stop when I turn it off, and I lean my head against the steering wheel, trying to catch my breath, then slip out of the truck.

  I plunk myself on the bench facing the parking lot, feeling like this is a pretty bad idea right about now.

  “Whatcha doing?” Josh plops next to me on the bench. I jump about ten feet in the air. “Can I sit here?”

  “Sit where you want.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  I nod.

  “Why do you make it so hard to be your friend?” Josh asks. “Like it’s some kind of privilege granted after crawling through the nine circles of hell.”

  I organize the word search of thoughts in my head and pick the wrong ones. “Why do you care?” I ask. “It’s not like people are rushing to buy BFF necklaces with me.”

  “Maybe because you make it so goddamned difficult. You’re about as approachable as the antichrist.”

  “Hey. He can strike up some pretty good deals. Haven’t you heard of Charlie Daniels?”

  There’s a strained silence, then Josh says, “‘The Devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal . . .’”

  I try to muffle my laugh but end up snorting anyway.

  “Mike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sitting where I want to be.”

  I look over at him. “Freezing your butt off on a bench outside Carson High School staring at a parking lot—”

  “Next to you,” he finishes my sentence. “So whatcha doing?” he asks.

  “Waiting,” I say.

  “Waiting for what?”

  Blue-red lights flash on top of the police car that turns into the school parking lot, cruising up and down the lanes until it stops behind Nimrod’s truck. An officer comes out, walks around the back of the truck, staring at the broken taillight. He crouches down and brushes his hands across the fresh skid marks, smelling like burned rubber. Exhaust lingers in the air. The officer talks into his radio.

  Nim and Medusa walk out of the school ahead of the others, her fingers laced in his: blemish-free, wearing school colors, walking hand in hand, their best friends frolicking behind them, tossing a Frisbee back and forth. They’re probably singing the school fight song.

  They look like a freaking brochure for high school happiness.

  Josh looks from Nim to his truck to the police officer to me. He smiles. “Kinda wish we had popcorn.” His arm brushes mine, and I try to pretend that Josh’s arm rubbing mine doesn’t send my stomach into some kind of delirious butterfly-wing revolt. I hope my face isn’t turning that unattractive, blotchy crimson color.

  I clear my throat. “I don’t think they serve snacks at experimental theater.”

  “Looks more like reality TV. Want to tell me what we’re watching?” he asks.

  “Vengeance,” I say.

  “Oooh. Like eternal damnation and that kind of stuff.”

  I laugh. “Small-scale vengeance—just making a point today. I’ll save eternal damnation and the heavens raining locusts for another day.”

  Principal Holohan joins the scene. His hair looks like the flames of a campfire—tufts of red and white gravity-defying wisps tangle in the wind. He’s followed by Dean Randolph.

  We hear the policeman say, “Unpaid parking tickets. Kid, you’re gonna have to make a call, because we’ve got to bring you in.” A tow truck arrives and gets to work booting Nim’s truck.

  Nimrod rushes the poor tow-truck worker, whose face loses all color. The police officer grabs Nim and throws him against the truck, clicking cuffs around his wrists. Beast immobilized.

  “Well,” I say. “That turned out a lot better than I thought.”

  “You want to tell me how you pulled that off?” He looks at me like I just parted the Red Sea.

  I feel a frisson of fear and excitement. My stomach does flip-flops. “Nim did it all, you know. I just made a call, put the wheels in motion.”

  This doesn’t erase the fear. But it gives me the power back. It keeps my business safe. It sends a message. Leonard would be proud. Sofia and Laura won’t know about this, but that’s okay, too. Silent justice.

  Maybe that’s what Lillian feels she does—like she makes a difference. If this is it, I get that. It’s nice to step outside myself—do something for somebody.

  Nimrod’s face is smooshed against the passenger door of his truck. Medusa and the others wear shocked, just-been-Tasered expressions on their faces. I’d like to see that in the yearbook.

  “So what does a bookie do after exacting revenge on a client?”

  I look at the time and shrug my backpack over my shoulder. “Go home.”

  “You want to do something later?”

  “No thanks.”

  “How about this? When you do want to do something, call me.” He clasps his hands behind his head and stretches out his legs.

  I watch his expression, waiting for the change—the slight nuance that reveals the truth behind the words. The mockery. His eyes are hidden under the brim of his baseball hat, though, so I can’t read his expression.

  “Thanks for the company,” I say.

  Josh tips his hat. “Thanks for the show. See you tomorrow, Michal Garcia.”

  I pause. Nobody calls me Michal. It sounds nice: Mee-kal. He even pronounces it right. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t Mike. Michal. It makes me feel different, like I matter.

  Stupid. It’s just a name.

  Josh holds his pinky and forefinger to his ear and mouth. “Call me, Michal.”

  Michal.

  On the sidelines. Sure. Doormat. No.

  Chapter 7

  Sanctuary Wednesday 7am courtyard.

  THERE’S A BIGGER CROWD

  for divisional playoffs. I look at the faces and inhale, breathing in the scent of anticipation. Three guys are huddled around a paper. I glare at them. They should be paying attention. It’s my show now.

  “Sorry, Mike,” Javier mutters and hands me Seth’s PB & J—his one-page headlines edition. Seth hands them out between big issues to drum up interest and cash for printing the paper. Javier points to the third headline down. I skim down the first two about gang violence and a food drive, my eyes focusing on the one Javier pointed out.

  Bringing Down Goliath: No Stones. Just Parking Tickets

  I clear my throat and say, “So?”

  “Nothing.” Javier smirks. “Just thought you might have the inside scoop to that story.” The group laughs.

  “You guys here to bet or chitchat?”

  They settle down. I can feel the heat creep up my cheeks and try to keep my cool. This is my show. I scan their faces. Ready to win. Most will lose.

  Josh isn’t here. Such a tool, feeding my story to Seth. No wonder he wanted to hang out with me after school.

  We open The Gambler. Nobody has to sit on lookout because the courtyard is teeming with teachers. I sometimes wonder if they think I’m selling Do-Si-Dos or something. Whatever.

  I read from the book, picking a passage to mirror Seth’s headlines.

  Is it not a beautiful spectacle—the spectacle of a century or two of inherited labour, patience, intellect, rectitude, character, perseverance, and calculation, with a stork sitting on the roof above it all? What is more; they think there ca
n never be anything better than this; wherefore, from their point of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to censure all who are at fault—that is to say, who are not exactly like themselves.

  Most of them look up at me, brows furrowed, confused. They’re hopeless. They don’t move, though, and wait expectantly for me to say more. It’s fun to be in the place everybody wants to be. I’m still buzzing from Monday’s vengeance, and reading about it makes it all the more real. I can hear Leonard’s nasal voice in my head, though: Take the bets. Get a good spread. Come out ahead. Basic bookie law.

  It’s kind of the point of it all.

  No wonder everybody’s been talking about Nim’s truck being impounded. Everybody knows it was me. Message sent. Meaning received. But there’s a fine line between glory and stupidity. I need this job. I need the cash. I need to keep my clients in line. I didn’t need some stupid headline to advertise it. I’m all about invisibility. How can I expect some trust-fund pretty boy to get that? What a tool.

  I close the book and give them my daily special. “Between the Chargers and Falcons I’m offering a no-juice line. One-time deal—almost unheard of in playoffs. Any takers?”

  Silence.

  “Do you guys even know what that means?”

  Javier speaks up. “Not really.”

  I sigh. “Never mind. Who’s betting what?”

  The guys place their bets. They like when we meet in the courtyard. It makes it more dangerous—alive. There’s a rush when we pass money under the noses of the esteemed faculty—some of whom place bets with me, too. Well, just Mr. Myers, the Driver’s Ed teacher.

  Nim shows up with all the other bettors. “You have something of mine,” he says when the crowd clears.

  “You have something of mine.”

  He hands me the cash and I count it. “It’s all there,” he says.

  “That it is.”

  “So?” he says. Nim snatches for the paper I hold in my hand. His knuckles are bruised and chafed.

  I pull the paper away, staring at his hands. “What happened to your hand? Those bruises look pretty fresh.”