Welcome to Bordertown

by Holly Black

  Let’s say this one began here, with me and Analise—two Soho newbies whose clothes dripped water, gasping and laughing from the crazy moment when the dry desert washes we’d followed from home flash flooded with rusty Mad River water.

  We weren’t stupid. We’d known enough to keep our heads above the surface, to make sure we didn’t swallow a single drop as we half ran, half swam for shore. Like all newbies—like you—we arrived here with a dream and what we thought was a plan.

  We were stupid. That first border crossing nearly killed my parents and me.

  Why did I expect this one to be any different?

  * * *

  Analise was the brave one. You need to understand that. We’d barely caught our breath when she walked up to an elf with hair dyed the chalky green of a paloverde tree and asked her, straight out, “Where do we find the vampires?”

  The elf girl laughed, but she didn’t walk away, so I whispered to Analise, “And the werewolves. Don’t forget the werewolves.”

  The elf heard, and she looked down at me with the sort of perfect disdain the World reserves for cheerleaders in bad teen movies. “What wolf would don your crude human form, given a choice?” My face grew hot, though it was freezing here compared to home, especially with our clothes still wet. The elf went on, “Yet vampires—I have heard talk of such, and not only in the deranged babble of wharf rats. Vampires are the ones with the unnatural interest in human blood, yes? You come here seeking such?”

  “We do.” Analise really was a cheerleader, not that you could tell from her black T-shirt and leggings and the smudged black eye shadow that made her skin seem elfin pale.

  “Truly?” The green vines tattooed around the elf’s wrists swayed in the breeze. “I thought only Hill-bred humans took an interest in Lankin and his bloodletting.”

  “You thought wrong,” Analise informed her, though she had no more idea who Lankin was than I did. She didn’t tell the elf that the bloodletting was entirely secondary, that it was true love we were after, because that was nobody’s business but our own.

  “Well, if you choose to tangle with our latest visitor from Aldon House, I’m sure that’s no concern of mine. What is your human phrase? Ah, yes: It is your funeral.” The elf’s scornful silver eyes made me feel small and grubby in my wet jeans and fleece and faded University of Arizona T-shirt, my dripping school backpack slung over my shoulders. “Ye Olde Unicorn Trolley will take you there if you desire it dearly enough,” she said. “Likely let you ride for free.”

  I didn’t know what she meant by that, and she turned away before I could ask—no. I need to tell this story true. I simply lacked the courage to ask. Unlike Analise I wasn’t brave, not even a little bit.

  Analise didn’t mind my being a coward. She didn’t mind any of the ways we were different, like how she liked vampires and I liked werewolves, or how she thought dark chocolate was the best thing in the whole world but I thought no chocolate could compete with a raze-your-taste-buds chili-pepper burn. We were best friends anyway, and had been since the fourth grade, back when we realized we loved the exact same horse book. If you’re from the World, you know the one, about that wild stallion no one thinks can be tamed except for the one girl who believes in him. In fifth grade Analise and I loved the same dog book, the one where the dog doesn’t die for once. Sixth grade was our unicorn year; we loved the book where everyone’s sure there’s only one unicorn left in the world, except of course they’re all wrong.

  Seventh grade was different. Analise fell in love with vampire books, especially the one where the vampire turns the girl into a vampire, too, because he loves her that much. I fell in love with werewolf books, most of all the one where the werewolf turns human and leaves his pack for the girl he loves. But even those stories aren’t all that different—they’re both about falling into true love and staying there, forever and ever.

  True love sounded pretty good in the seventh grade, with both our parents fighting so much that year. Analise’s parents got divorced in the end—it was months before she believed me when I said it wasn’t her fault—but my parents were mostly fighting about money, not about whether they were in love. It was getting harder for Papá and Mamá to find work without la migra asking questions about whether we belonged in Arizona. Later, when the fighting eased and I talked to them, I understood what it really meant to have been born in Mexico before crossing the desert, and not in Tucson like my little brothers.

  But before then, Analise and I came up with our plan: one day she would marry a vampire, and I would marry a werewolf, and we would live happily ever after, no matter what happened to our parents or anyone else. I’m guessing you know as well as I do how hard happy endings are to come by in the World, but we figured with magic, everything would be different. Not perfect—I mean, probably the vampire and the werewolf would hate each other at first, because they always did, but eventually they’d come to a grudging mutual respect. They’d have no choice, because Analise and I had also made a promise: that we would always be friends, and the vampire and the werewolf would just have to accept that.

  Of course, not everyone believed in magic by then, with the Way to the Borderlands gone for so many years, but Analise and I believed: Bordertown was real, and so were all those undocumented elves and halfies you heard about stranded out in the World, their magic and their home so far out of reach they might as well have crossed a desert of their own. Analise and I read books about elves and faeries sometimes, though none of those ever became our favorites. If elves were real, the rest of it could be real, too. There were many kinds of magic, and one day, Analise and I decided, we would find ours.

  * * *

  When the green-haired elf wouldn’t answer any more of Analise’s vampire questions, we made our way through Soho, looking for someone who would. The streets around us echoed with people shouting, motorcycles revving, singers belting out their songs. On one corner, a pale-skinned boy with feathered Luke Skywalker hair sang a long, slow ballad about a human stolen away by the queen of the Realm. The boy was decked out in so much leather it looked like the eighties had stolen him away. Across the street, a girl with brown skin and flyaway elf-white hair rapped about a woman who stood up to that same elfin queen, winning her boyfriend back and telling the queen off quite thoroughly in the process.

  The rapper wore bright scarves in clashing colors, Day-Glo pink and forest green and bloodred and more shades of purple than I knew existed. Tiny silver acorns sewn along her fringes jangled as she sang. She and Leather Boy glared at each other between verses, raising their voices louder and louder, while passersby dropped trinkets into the boy’s blue baseball cap and the girl’s purple felted cowboy hat.

  Smells wafted through the air around us: roasting meat, spicy curries, melted cheese—I followed that last to a boarded-up storefront that looked more like a car dealership than a restaurant. The scent of chilies and melted queso wafting out was real enough, though, and it reminded me how far we’d walked and how little we’d eaten along the way. “Lunch,” I announced as I saw the restaurant’s name: Taco Hell. I knew that place—it was right out of The Tough Guide to Bordertown.

  Analise set her hands on her hips and tried to look severe. “Miranda, how can you even think about food at a time like this?” As she spoke her stomach grumbled, and we both burst into giggles. “All right,” she said. We headed inside arm in arm, not caring if we looked like total dorks. We found a free table in a corner and stashed our damp backpacks beneath it. My drying jeans felt clammy against the wooden chair; things dried faster back home. From what must have been the kitchen I heard shouting and clanking. I picked out a little bit of Spanish, a little bit of what might have been O’odham, and a lot of something I didn’t know.

  A kid barely old enough to be in middle school came to take our orders. His black hair was streaked blue and pulled back; his denim jacket seemed larger than he was. “Water, tea, or beer?” the kid asked.

  “Beer!” we agreed, and laughed
some more. The Tough Guide hadn’t told us there was no drinking age in Bordertown.

  “And to eat?” The boy sounded like he was trying hard to seem properly bored.

  “Two Meltdown Burritos,” I said, because that was the only thing I remembered from the Guide.

  The boy nodded and slouched away, returning to place two bottles on our table. Analise and I grinned as we raised them.

  “To true love,” she said.

  “To—” I hesitated. “To belonging somewhere.”

  Analise reached out and squeezed my hand. She knew my werewolf dreams weren’t the only reason I’d asked her to come here with me, after I found The Tough Guide to Bordertown in the library, nestled between her favorite book and mine the day after the hearing.

  “To Bordertown,” we said, and clinked our bottles together.

  * * *

  The beer was cold and about as good as beer ever was—that is, not very. I drank it anyway. I wasn’t about to miss my first drink in Bordertown just because I didn’t like the taste, and besides, my throat was parched. We’d run out of water long before the Mad River flooded the washes, even the small salty bottle of holy water I’d taken with me from church.

  A couple walked in and plopped down at the table next to us—the singers from outside. They didn’t look like they hated each other now, not with the way their fingers were entwined. True love, or just hooking up? It should have been easier to tell in Bordertown than in the World—no. I wanted it to be easier, that was all.

  “A pound of coffee beans and a copy of the Stick Figure steampunk special.” Scarf Girl set a drawstring bag triumphantly down on the table; she was wearing her hat now. “I owned this round.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Leather Boy put his half-full cap beside the bag. “I’m still ahead of you thanks to scoring that locket made by Lillet’s great-niece last summer.”

  “It was a fake! You know it was!”

  He pulled a comb from his back pocket and ran it through his hair, just like in the eighties. “A fake that bought us three months’ groceries.” The Guide had told me about this, how Bordertown worked by trading things, not just money.

  Our waiter slid two burritos onto our table, and Analise and I both turned to eating them. Melted cheese slid down my throat, along with the burn of—cayenne? Seriously? Might as well just sprinkle on some black pepper and be done with it if you’re going to ruin them anyway.

  At least the cheese was good. I reached into my wet pack and pulled out my sketchbook. Water had swollen the pages, blurring my colored-pencil sketches of wolves and vampires—okay, mostly of wolves, though I’d tried a few vampires for Analise’s sake. It didn’t matter; they were all ruined, and I’d have to start over. Maybe this time I’d figure out how to make werewolf fur look as soft as I hoped it would feel, when I held a real wolf in my arms at last. Analise helped smooth the pages as our waiter brought two more beers for Scarf Girl and Leather Boy.

  Analise caught Leather Boy’s eye. “So,” she asked, “know where we might find a guy named Lankin?”

  The boy choked on his drink. “You’re looking for Lankin?”

  The girl drew a fuchsia scarf closer around her, as if she were cold. “You’re new, aren’t you? You don’t want to mess with that shit. Trust me.”

  Analise kept her gaze on them both, looking as determined as the time she’d decided to fight the school when they wanted to ban black clothes, claiming it was a new gang color. She’d told me once that people always tried to warn you away from the vampire, not only in her favorite book but in others, too. That was just part of the story.

  The boy tilted his chair and took a deep swallow of beer. “Not like it’s hard to find old Corwyn’s nephew. Just follow Ho Street east to the old city wall, where all those old mansions used to be.”

  The girl slammed her bottle down. “You asshole.”

  The boy’s chair thumped back to the floor. “What? If I didn’t tell her, someone else would. It’s not as if Lankin’s location is some deep, dark secret, whatever the Silver Suits say.”

  The girl grabbed her bag and her beer and got to her feet. “You”—she pointed at her companion—“can sleep outside tonight.” She stormed to the door, stopped, and looked back—at me, not Analise. “If you made it to Bordertown at all, you’re smarter than this. Find a job, get a squat, get a life. It’s not as hard as it seems at first. My name’s Janet. I run with a gang called the Bards—if you need a friend, they’ll know where to find me.” Silver acorns jangled as she slammed the door shut behind her.

  “Hey, thanks,” Analise told the boy.

  “Don’t thank me, newbie. Not for this.” He turned back to his drink, more intently than before.

  I thought about what Janet had said. All my life I’d heard about how smart I was, but smart didn’t mean shit to Homeland Security. My 4.0 average and that art award I won last year were worth less than which side of the border I was born on. The other border. You’d think that invisible line through creosote and cholla—between the U.S. and Mexico—wouldn’t matter so much now, with Bordertown’s return reminding us that all our human countries are part of the same magicless World. But while the Worldside elves and halfies still had the amnesty the U.S. gave them when the Way back to their Border disappeared, there was no amnesty for me, never mind that I’d been living in the U.S. longer than most of them had, so long I couldn’t remember living anywhere else.

  At the hearing, after the judge refused to let us stay, Papá and Mamá had agreed to voluntary departure instead, though as far as I was concerned, there was nothing voluntary about it. My parents said at least he’d given us a little time, to get things in order and sell what we could. My little brothers, who were born in America and were U.S. citizens, could come back one day if they wanted. But though I’d grown up right beside them, I couldn’t return, not for at least a couple decades, and even then only if one of them filed for me.

  If I had to leave everything behind, without finishing high school or getting an art degree or doing anything else I’d planned on, I wanted at least to decide on the place. I wanted it to be somewhere with magic. I wanted to do the choosing this time, instead of always being dragged across borders that other people chose for me.

  The cayenne tasted stale at the back of my throat. I wondered whether Papá and Mamá and the boys were gone yet. I wondered whether I’d see them again, and whether they’d ever forgive me.

  * * *

  “How’re the burritos?” The kid waiter was back at our table.

  I shrugged, trying to be polite. “They’re okay. Could use stronger peppers, though.”

  The boy’s eyebrows rose toward his blue-streaked hair. “I do believe you’re the first person to say that. I’ll tell Mingus—oughta scare him good, knowing someone asked for more melt in her Meltdown. He’ll think he’s slipping.” The boy flashed us a smile. “You two new?”

  “No,” Analise said.

  “Yes,” I said at the same time.

  “First drink’s free if you’re new,” the boy told us. “Make me an offer on the food.”

  Analise reached into her backpack and pulled out a twenty. The boy rolled his eyes. “New,” he declared. “The green stuff might be worth something in the World, but it won’t pay Mingus’s bills.”

  I’d told Analise that Soho didn’t run on money, but neither of us had really believed it. Still, I’d come prepared. I pulled a ziplock bag full of brownies from my pack—the water hadn’t gotten through the plastic—and offered a couple to the kid.

  The boy frowned. “Those made with real chocolate? Or that fake carob crap?” He pinched a small corner from one of the brownies and tasted it. His eyes went wide.

  Analise laughed. She loved the effect my habanero brownies had on people. I’d started making them after we became friends, because they had a little of something each of us liked: hot habanero peppers for me, bitter dark chocolate for her.

  Our waiter not only accepted the brownies as payment; he told u
s our next meal was on the house. Back outside, Analise and I exchanged high fives.

  “Your brownies rock,” Analise said.

  “They do, don’t they?” I scanned the street for the trolley, but I saw no sign of unicorns, only of something halfway between an old-fashioned stagecoach and a squashed Sun Tran bus. Bells made of silver and bone and who-knew-what-else clanked from black posts as the thing lurched along, heading in the wrong direction. Looked like we were going to have to walk.

  I didn’t really mind. Walking had gotten us this far, after all, at least once I’d figured out the washes were the closest thing Tucson has to a yellow brick road—especially that one wash with “Bordertown LIVES” spray-painted under a bridge. I was here now, my clothes were mostly dry, my backpack was filled with brownies, and I was with my best friend. It was enough to make me feel just a little bit invincible, you know?

  In Analise’s and my books, no one’s invincible, not even the immortal vampires, but before I could remember that, my best friend jabbed me in the ribs, hard, and I saw a werewolf heading down the street, straight toward us.

  He wasn’t in full wolf form—he walked on two legs, not four—but his fingers all ended in claws, and his arms and face and especially his very wolflike ears were covered with reddish fur. He was real; that was the main thing. The first real magic I’d seen outside the river.

  In the stories, of course, not all werewolves were safe, any more than all vampires were. We’d come prepared for that, too. For the vampires we’d brought holy water (until we got so thirsty in the washes) and still wore silver crosses—Analise had the one I’d gotten for my confirmation, while I had the one I’d worn as a baby, during my first border crossing, though I’d put it on a longer chain. Werewolves were harder, because no one in Tucson actually sells silver bullets, at least not to sixteen-year-olds who aren’t willing to present proper ID. Analise had stolen her mom’s silver-plated letter opener instead. It was the best we could do.