Emergency Contact

by Mary H. K. Choi

  Her phone chimed again.

  You do know that it counts right?

  What happened to you counts

  Tears sprang from the corners of Penny’s eyes as she lay on her back with her phone held aloft.

  God. Sam was perfect. This was good and this is what he had to offer her, and Penny knew that she had to find a way to be grateful. What choice did she have? And even if one day something happened between them, something wonderful and terrifying that tested their friendship, what would ultimately come of it? Romance was volatile, and if they came out of it with less than they had going in, she would be devastated. Penny couldn’t go back to not having Sam in her life. This way, she could make sure they’d always be there for each other. As friends. As emergency contacts. That was the deal. That’s the deal it had always been.

  Penny knew how lucky she was to have him at all. She trusted Sam and he trusted her. That was huge. They may as well have sliced their thumbs and pressed them together in a blood oath.

  I’m glad you’re home

  Are you still sleepy?

  *eyeball emoji*

  Penny was wired.

  I may never sleep again.

  CALL FROM SAM

  Penny’s heart skipped. She picked up.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s Sam.”

  She laughed.

  “I dunno, I think we’re moving way too fast, Sam.” She could hear him chuckle. Penny pictured him on his scrawny mattress in the room down the hall. She liked that she knew where to orient him in the world.

  “Right? We’re reckless,” he said.

  “Crazy,” she agreed.

  “Hey, let’s make a pact.”

  “Sure.”

  “Great, I’ll pick up your soul in a half hour. G’bye!”

  Penny laughed. “What’s the pact?”

  “Let’s be friends,” he said, suddenly serious. “Real ones.”

  Penny nodded as tears coursed down her cheeks. “We are friends,” she said lightly. She breathed quietly so he couldn’t hear her cry.

  “Yeah, I know that, but let’s be so good to each other.”

  “Deal.”

  “You know why I called?” asked Sam.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want you to punish me for knowing too much,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t, like, go away because you told me things,” he said. “Don’t decide things are weird.”

  “I’m not the who decided last time . . .”

  “I know,” he said. “Let’s both not is what I’m saying. Don’t drag the entire me folder into the desktop trash can so you hear the paper-rustling sound.”

  “You can’t ask me that. The paper-rustling sound is too satisfying.”

  “Just don’t be weird with me. And I promise not to be weird with you.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  They sat in silence.

  “Do you think I should have reported him to the cops?” Penny had many sleepless nights thinking about that.

  “I think you should do whatever is right by you.”

  “What if he did it again? After me?”

  “That’s on him, not you.”

  “Do you think I should have told my mom?”

  “Not if you didn’t want to,” he said. “I’m pretty sure whatever you want is okay.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You know sometimes they make you pay for your own rape kit?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, you have to go through the swabs when all you want to do is go home and then certain hospitals bill you for tests. And all over the country there are warehouses filled with rape kits that the cops don’t even process. Like hundreds of thousands.”

  Sam didn’t say anything for a while.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you,” he said.

  “I’m glad I told you.”

  “Me too,” he said. “I want us to talk about everything,” he continued. “I don’t want to ever not talk again. That was horrible.”

  “Well, I don’t love talking about my stuff,” she said.

  “Yeah, nobody does,” he said. “But it’s pretty big stuff, so sometimes you have to exorcise it.”

  “God,” she said. “You’d think it would be cathartic, but it’s more like barfing after you thought you got it all.”

  “I think once you’re puking so hard you’ll burst a blood vessel in your eye is when the real work happens.”

  “So when it’s just thin stomach juices coursing out of you?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Sans chunks?”

  “Sans, yeah.”

  Penny could feel him smiling on the other side. It made her miserable.

  “This sucks,” she said. “Why so much work?”

  “The homework doesn’t end,” he said. “It’s piles and piles of emotional homework forever if you ever want to qualify as a grown-up.”

  “How come nobody tells you?”

  “Nobody tells you shit ever,” he said. “The trick is having a buddy.”

  “An emergency contact.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “That’s the pact.”

  It was a good pact. It wasn’t exactly the pact she wanted, the one where they ran away together to Tahiti, but it was solid.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  “Cool,” he said. “Good night, Penelope Lee.”

  “Bye,” she said.

  Not ten seconds later he texted again.

  Have a willie nice night!

  God, he was such a jerk.

  SAM.

  The next morning Sam woke up feeling good. Not sensational or anything foolish but supremely okay. Penny had already texted and all was right in the world. He fortified himself with coffee and headed out to pick up Bastian.

  East Side Nectars, where Bastian’s mom worked, was a small operation in a strip mall on the North Side. From the highway, the neon signs in order read: CHINESE FOOD, DONUTS, JUICE, then GUNS. Juice was the only hipster outlier. Everything else was as common as corn bread.

  There were only three stools in the front by the window and a kitchen area with a row of juicers in back. When Sam and Bastian walked in, the store was empty. Luz Trejo, a short, slight woman whose watchful eyes and delicate features had been inherited by her son, grilled Sam. As Brandi Rose would have put it, there was no slack in her rope. Bastian leaned up against the wall by the counter, scowling, holding his skateboard at the ready in case he had to scram.

  “Hi,” he said. He nodded at Bastian, who engaged him in a complicated handshake that Sam didn’t attempt to keep up with.

  He let Luz appraise him—his dark clothes and his tattoos. It didn’t help that he stank of cigarette smoke.

  Luz asked Bastian something in Spanish and he rolled his eyes.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sam Becker.”

  “How old are you, Sam Becker?” she asked, wiping her hands on her pale blue apron. Her hands were at least twenty years older than her face.

  “Twenty-one,” he said, suddenly nervous.

  “German?” she asked.

  “Half,” he answered. “Half Polish.”

  “A mutt.”

  He nodded.

  “How is it that you’re associates with my fourteen-year-old Mexican son?” she asked.

  “Mom!” protested Bastian, very much seeming exactly fourteen.

  “He skates near where I live,” said Sam.

  “During school hours?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said. No way he was going to get caught in a lie with Mrs. Trejo. Luz leaned over the counter and rapped her son on the head with her knuckles. Bastian glared at him.

  “Snitches get stiches,” he hissed. Luz shushed him.

  Sam kept his eyes on Luz and tried to look responsible.

  “I’m a student,” he said. “I’m directing a documentary about Bastian, and I wanted to ask for your permission and to know if I could interview you
as well.”

  A customer walked in. An older white gentleman with a mustache.

  “Hey, Anthony,” she said.

  “Whew,” said Anthony. “It’s hotter than a pot of neck bones out there.” It was a 100-degree fall day.

  She crowded Sam and Bastian to the side, out of her customer’s way. “Pineapple mint?” she asked. He nodded. While she made his juice, she called from the back over the buzzing machine.

  “It’s a little late to ask for permission if you’ve already started, don’t you think?”

  Sam had no idea how to answer that.

  She handed Anthony his juice. Anthony took a long swallow and studied Sam up and down. “If you riled up this one, best of luck to you.” He nodded, fished two fives out from a long wallet pulled out from the back of his jeans and left.

  “What’s it about?” Luz asked.

  “Being a kid in Austin,” he said.

  “So Oscar-winning stuff,” she said.

  Sam felt Bastian watching them closely to see who had the upper hand.

  “Look, I’m a college student,” said Sam. “I’m not some rich trust-fund kid, either. I’m putting myself through film school.”

  “Film school?” said Luz. “Sound like a rich-kid plan to me. Why not go into computer programming or something that makes money? Do you know the odds of being a director?”

  “I knew you were going to say that!” complained Bastian. “Ask her about art school if you want to have your dreams punched in the face.”

  Luz knocked Bastian on the skull again. Bastian scowled and rubbed his head.

  “Look, I don’t want to be interviewed or anything,” she said. “That isn’t for me. But don’t shoot during school hours and I want to see this movie before you show it anywhere. I don’t want anything inappropriate.”

  Sam nodded.

  “And if you get rich and famous, you’re paying for this kid’s college,” she said.

  “Can it be RISD?” asked Bastian. Luz responded in Spanish for a while. Bastian said something back and laughed.

  Sam knew they were talking about him.

  “Do you want a juice?” she asked.

  “Sure. I’m sure I could use one,” Sam said.

  “You need milk shakes more than you need juice, flaco,” she said. She made him something with beets. It was thick and the color of rubies. As he drank he imagined his withered cells revitalizing.

  “Not bad,” he said, taking another slug. It was disjointing. A juice that tasted of beets.

  “Yeah, your people love it.”

  “My people?”

  “She means the whites,” said Bastian.

  “What do I owe you?” said Sam. He hoped he had cash.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, and waved them out of the store.

  They got back into the car.

  Bastian pulled on his seat belt. “She likes you,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. She charges everyone.”

  “What were you guys saying about me?” he asked. “That made you laugh. Something about college.”

  “Oh,” said Bastian, laughing. “She said I could maybe go to art school as long as I don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “Say, get a bunch of tattoos so I can’t ever get a real job like you.”

  Sam laughed.

  “I told you she was cold.”

  Sam wondered if Bastian knew how lucky he was to have Luz. To have a mother who actually seemed to like you. Sam hung a right from the Taco Cabana and across the train tracks to a section of town so dicey it didn’t even have a bar.

  “Park here,” said Bastian. They were on a nondescript street near a chain-link fence. Bastian hopped out, leaving his skateboard in the car and slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

  He crawled through a clipped hole in the fence. Sam followed. Bastian scanned his surroundings quickly, pulled out a key, and unlocked a thick padlock on the metal door of a brown building that had graffiti on the front in white. NSB was scrawled in menacingly giant letters, and Sam wondered if they were going to get killed execution style for trespassing. “Don’t worry,” said Bastian about the North Side Bloods tag. “I put that there so the bums don’t jack my shit.” To Sam it sounded like exactly the kind of genius plan that got you killed.

  The kid had made a huge deal out of whatever it was that he was going to show him. Sam wondered if it was a skate ramp or a meth lab. Sam followed him into the cool hallway, which smelled of wet concrete.

  “Come on, man,” griped Bastian. “Get your camera out. You need to be getting all of this.”

  The cavernous room was flooded with natural light. You couldn’t tell from the street, but there were panes of glass high on the wall and the vaulted ceilings that served as skylights. It was a miracle that some hipster developer hadn’t already bought the place out to turn into a design studio or a vegan co-working space.

  “This is incredible,” Sam said, panning the room.

  “Roof leaks,” complained Bastian. As if he were making mortgage payments on the place.

  In the middle of the space there was a lone folding chair and paintings of varying size.

  The still air hung thick with chemicals. Nail polish. Or primer.

  “So, this is what I’m working on,” said Bastian, gesturing at the canvases standing sentry. “Other than becoming the Mexican Nyjah Huston and getting that Nike SB money.”

  The kid painted the same way he skated. The brushwork was confident, clear. The streaks and dabs made sense where they were and held your attention. There was a series of heads, misshapen, with haphazard rows of teeth. Another with angry marker cross-hatchings over brown faces. One said FOR MOM on it with the words crossed out, a mountain of angrily drawn tiny stick figures piled high with a series of interlocking rainbow hearts repeated over the image. What Bastian brought into the world commanded the space they occupied.

  “Where do you get this stuff?” Some paintings were the size of shoe boxes, others taller than Bastian at six feet.

  “I make the canvases,” Bastian said, shrugging. He stared square into Sam’s camera. “They’re such a rip-off at the art stores. Plus, those snobby assholes hate when I come through. They follow you around like you’re brown or something.” He laughed.

  “I rack most of my shit from hardware stores anyway,” he said. “And you can steal wood from any of those big dumpsters when they’re building new subdivisions but you gotta go early.”

  “This is my prized possession, though,” he said. Sam followed him to the far wall. It was a silver and yellow circular saw.

  “It’s a miter saw,” he said, pronouncing it “meter” saw. Sam didn’t correct him. “For the frames.” He pulled out a box of acrylic paints and showed it to the camera.

  “Shout out to Ms. Mascari at Burnet Middle School!” he said. “She gives me these because she’s in love with me.” He smiled devilishly into Sam’s phone.

  “Why painting?” asked Sam, zooming in.

  “The god Basquiat obviously,” said Bastian. “He’s legendary. Devin Troy Strother is the truth too. And Warhol. Man, that creepy old dude was the G.O.A.T. He wasn’t even making his own work anymore and still got paid.”

  Then Bastian got serious for a second. “I hate Richard Prince though,” he said. “He’s a thief. And Jeff Koons is washed.”

  “Do you learn about this at school?” Sam asked.

  “Nah,” said Bastian. “Instagram.”

  Art was something Sam wished he knew more about. He felt too self-conscious to visit museums on his own and didn’t know anyone who would want to go with him.

  Sam walked backward into the middle of the room so he could capture as much of Bastian’s paintings in the frame. This moment felt important. A story he’d be telling someone someday in the future when Bastian was known by everyone and no longer remembered him.

  They walked outside and split a smoke.

  Sam shot Bastian picking a fleck of tobacco off his tongue.


  “What makes you think you of all people get to be an artist?” Sam asked, focusing in on Bastian’s face.

  Bastian exhaled a perfect circle of smoke. The kid was so famous already it was ridiculous.

  He tilted his head.

  “What kind of question is that? It’s fucking art, man,” he said, scowling. “You don’t choose it. It chooses you. If you waste that chance, your talent dies. That’s when you start dying along with it.”

  • • •

  “So he lets you hang out here?” Sam brought Bastian to House, where he promptly made himself very much at home. He was sprawled out on a sofa, with his feet up on the coffee table. “You bring girls back here and party with them and shit?”

  “Nah.” Sam kicked Bastian’s filthy sneakers off the table. “I work here, man. You don’t shit where you eat.”

  Bastian surveyed the premises. Sam had promised to make Bastian pancakes since that’s what the movie’s “talent” wanted.

  “But you have keys so you can be here whenever you want?”

  Sam nodded.

  “It’s cool that your boss trusts you.” Bastian nodded toward the fireplace. “That thing work?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We crank it up around the holidays. It gets pretty toasty.”

  Bastian walked over to inspect it. “Yo, that’s cool,” he said, peering into the flue. “You could make s’mores and shit.”

  For his big talk about girls and his budding career as the next Basquiat, Bastian was unmistakably still a kid.

  Sam pulled out a folder and handed it to him. “I need your mom to sign this,” he said.

  Bastian stared at it. “Yeah, whatever it is, she’s not going to do it.”

  “It’s not anything crazy,” he said. “It’s a release ’cause you’re a minor.”

  Bastian took it and put it down on the coffee table.

  “Luz doesn’t sign stuff,” Bastian said again. “She’s an illegal. I mean, a DREAMer or whatever.”

  “But she runs the juice stand,” Sam said.

  He knew about undocumented workers, only he never pictured Luz, someone who was the mommest-seeming mom ever, being one. “And her English . . .”