by Lynne Ewing
When I’d finished with the dogs, I kissed Pixie on the tip of her nose and breathed in her sweet puppy smell. As I set her in the box with Bonnie, pebbles clinked against the porch window. I froze.
In one graceful move, Omar ducked forward, pulled a Beretta, full-size pistol, from his waistband, and peered out.
“It’s Tara.” His dark eyes flicked to me. “Come check it out, Blaise. I think she’s looking for you.”
“Me?”
I glanced at Satch and Rico, who gave me encouraging smiles.
Tara stood in the backyard, near the gate, dressed in her school uniform, her hair in a ponytail that swayed back and forth when she waved for me to join her.
“Call me,” Rico yelled before I ran out to the alley where Tara waited for me next to a rusted-out yellow Buick with license plates from New Mexico.
“I thought we should talk alone,” Tara said, grinding out her cigarette on the car’s bumper. “I want your decision without any influence from your friends.”
My heart was thumping so hard, I was afraid she would hear it.
“You’re a natural-born fighter, Blaise,” Tara said as we started walking toward school. “That’s one reason I want you for Core 9. You fight to win. Civilians throw a punch like they’re playing tennis, strike and politely wait for a return. They call it fighting fair, but that’s the loser’s way. You hit fast and keep hitting. I’ve had my eye on you since you took down Gatita.”
“You saw me?”
She nodded. “I know how you got those scars on your arm.”
In eighth grade, Gatita had jumped me, trying to steal the cell phone that Rico had given me. Rather than hand it over, I had stuffed it in my bra. I hadn’t had time to get out my hammer before her fist came down with a switchblade aimed for my face. I’d swung my arm up to deflect the blow and the razor-sharp edge had sliced my skin. I had kept swinging and, after a dozen more cuts, I caught her wrist and slammed her hand back with such force that she’d stumbled. Stunned more than hurt, she’d run from me.
“You’ve lived in this neighborhood all your life,” Tara continued, “so you know what being a gangster is about. If you have the guts and the strength to be one, and I think you do, then you own the world and everyone in it. Gangsters have the real power, because we don’t have to follow the rules.”
I said nothing while I thought of my grandmother.
Tara stopped in front of me and placed her hands on my shoulders. “If you want to live your life in a bold and powerful way, do you get a ten-dollar-an-hour job or do you get a gun?”
Tara smiled.
I had made my decision.
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6
Later that day, on a field trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, while Kaylee stared at dinosaur fossils with the rest of our class, I told Melissa and Ariel that Tara had set the date for our jump-in.
“Saturday night,” I whispered excitedly. “I can’t wait.”
Ariel squeezed me against her. “Can you imagine how great we’re going to feel when we go back to school on Monday?”
“Everyone is going to step aside,” Melissa said softly. “We’ll be like celebrities. I wonder if Trek knows.”
While Melissa sent a message to Trek, Ariel pulled a mirror from her purse and checked her new lashes. I thought she was smiling at her reflection but, after a minute of watching her primp, I realized she was using the mirror to look behind her.
Curious, I glanced back. Danny leaned against the railing, his school slacks tight over his muscled legs, the cuffs rolled up to show off his hundred-dollar tennis shoes. Only fifteen, he already had a reputation as a hustler, out for the money, and his open-air drug market was stealing Trek’s customers. Like most of us, he and Gatita stayed in school so their mom could collect her welfare, but I figured he’d get busted and be expelled before the year was up.
An easy grin crossed his face when he caught Ariel watching him. She snapped her compact closed. “Let’s ditch this field trip,” she said. “We should be celebrating, not looking at bones.”
“I’m for that,” Melissa agreed, slowly stepping backward.
We lagged behind the other students and, when our class entered the next hall to view the bones of prehistoric mammals, we took off down the escalator to the exit. Outside, as we waited to cross Constitution Avenue, I looked back. Danny had followed us and stood among the tourists, his gaze fixed on Ariel. His unmasked interest in her scared me. He was attractive, with dark hair and green eyes, a straight nose and square jaw. His homegirls called him el rompecorazones, the heartbreaker. But were looks enough to make Ariel cross the line? She couldn’t go out with a Lobo without getting herself killed.
I tried to put Danny out of my mind, but by the time we were walking past the Justice Department, I couldn’t hold back. “How long has Danny been following you?”
Ariel looked genuinely surprised. “He’s in our class. Why do you think he’s following me?”
“Get real, Ariel,” Melissa said as we crossed Pennsylvania Avenue. “Gatita’s probably got you under 24/7 surveillance. Show Blaise what you did.”
“There’s no way Gatita can know it was me,” Ariel said as she took out her cell phone and pulled up a picture. “What was I supposed to do? She had plastered her name on the back of the community center. She was asking for it.”
I stared at the display. On the wall above Gatita’s name, in fat neon pink letters, Ariel had sprayed SCARDY CAT and, below that, she had drawn a caricature of Gatita, with catlike features, running from three girls with spiked wings and talons for hands, who had clawed CORE 9 across the wall.
“That is amazing.” I laughed, my tension unwinding. Maybe I had misjudged the whole thing.
“I want to show you something else.” Ariel slipped her phone away and took out a small velvet bag from which she removed a silver cross that had a loop at the top. “It’s called an ankh. It’s supposed to protect me.”
“Why do you need a charm when you’ve got Blaise and me to protect you?” Melissa teased.
“It’s just I’ve been thinking that if I could grow up, you know, make it through high school without getting killed, that maybe I could go to California. I saw this show on TV about graffiti artists in Venice Beach and—” She frowned, her gaze focusing behind me.
When I looked over my shoulder, Kaylee waved and, grinning, ran toward us.
“I’m not going to hang out with her,” Ariel said, stuffing the charm back in its bag. “I can’t trust what she’ll do.”
“Her life is hard,” I argued. “She has to take care of her sisters, and her mom can’t even get out of bed anymore without Kaylee’s help.”
“Don’t protect her, Blaise,” Melissa said. “I’m sorry her mom’s sick, but that’s no excuse. We all have problems.”
Melissa’s mom was an alcoholic who worked sporadically in bars. She was hardly ever home.
“I’m tired of making excuses for her,” Ariel said.
“Even Trek said we should dump her,” Melissa added, easing away from me.
“I’m not going to dump her,” I said.
In third grade, Kaylee and I had sworn to be best friends forever. We’d stolen into the church and used the holy water in the stoup to wash out our mouths so our vows would be sacred. Back then, everyone had wanted to be Kaylee’s friend. She’d had this energy that could make you feel happy just being around her.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Ariel said, interrupting my memory. She pivoted on one foot and hurried after Melissa.
Kaylee stopped, her shoulders hunching, when she saw Melissa and Ariel walking away. Before I could reach her, she spun around and ran, knocking against people who crowded the sidewalk.
“Kaylee!” I raced after her.
From the way everyone was turning and looking at her, I knew s
he was crying. When she saw me following her, she dodged into the crosswalk as a black Lexus whipped around a taxi. Kaylee froze as the woman driver slammed on her brakes. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to look before you step into the street?” the driver yelled.
“My light was green!” Kaylee slammed her fist on the car hood. “Do you think it’s my fault you almost killed me?”
The driver rolled up her window as Kaylee rounded the car and seized the driver’s door handle. Clack! All four doors locked.
“It’s easy to break into a car,” Kaylee threatened. “If I wanted your bucket, I’d just jack it.”
My heart skittered. People were watching. A few had lifted their phones to take pictures.
Kaylee blew out a breath and then, steeling herself, eased her sweater sleeves over her fists and continued across the street.
I didn’t chase after her this time. She was acting too erratic, and I was afraid she’d do something so completely reckless that we’d both end up in jail.
I missed my friend, the real Kaylee, and wondered if she was struggling, trying to find her way back to the person she had once been. I knew what had changed her, or at least, I thought I did. She had been with a guy, a secret she’d told only me. She’d believed she’d found that forever kind of love, but the guy had merely wanted a toy. She never told me who he was, only that she still wrote his name on the soles of her shoes so she could grind him into the dirt every day.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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7
Friday morning, after Omar frisked me, he sat back on the couch where he’d been cleaning guns. The door to the closet under the stairs was open, revealing a stockpile of weapons. He dropped the mag from his Beretta and slid a bore snake into the barrel while I continued to the back porch.
The moment I stepped into the kitchen, the smell of urine hit me. The puppies had toppled their box and escaped the back porch. Their puddles spotted the linoleum. I found them flat on the floor, their snouts jammed into the narrow opening behind a floorboard that they had pried loose from the wall.
“You’re too small to hunt rats,” I scolded, pulling them away.
They nipped at my fingers and dashed back to the hole without even wagging their tails to greet me. I righted their box, braced it in a corner with a chair, then caught the puppies and set them inside where they whined until I fed them.
After wiping up their puddles, I kneeled beside the dislodged floorboard. Nails, hammered into the backside, held tightly stretched strings that led over a trail of mouse droppings into the dark. Curious, I leaned down, the musky odor of mice breezing over me, and saw more strings leading to a gap between the floor and the outside wall. Maybe Dante had tied mousetraps to the ends.
Sitting up, I pinched the first string and reeled in whatever had been caught. A triple-wrapped plastic bag sealed with duct tape slid out of the crevice onto the floor in front of me, yellowish white rocks inside. Blood drained from my head, leaving me lightheaded with fear. I had found Trek’s stash. People were killed for knowing less.
My fingers shaking, I shoved the bag back into its hiding place, then pressed the floorboard against the wall. It curved out again, buckling as if water had warped the wood. I was certain it hadn’t stuck out so far before.
A sound broke through my panic. I thought I heard the wind chimes. My body tensed, cold sweat pricking my face, as I listened. Glass clinked against shells that jangled loudly. Someone was coming down the stairs.
Using all my strength, I tried to work the floorboard into place, my heart hammering so loudly I almost missed the tread of footsteps in the dining room. I sprang to my feet, the floorboard still bulging away from the wall, and turned as Satch and Rico entered the kitchen, their voices hushed.
Rico glanced up, his sudden alarm reflecting the anxiety he saw on my face. “What’s wrong?”
“You startled me,” I said with a forced laugh. Then to turn their attention away from my nervousness, I quickly added, “Did I tell you that my jump-in is Saturday?”
Satch surveyed the room, his eyes glancing at the counter, the cupboards and ceiling, looking for anything that might have upset me, before he said, “You told us.”
“Of course I did.” I laughed again, too loudly, praying they didn’t look down at the floor behind my feet. The drugs belonged to Trek, not to Core 9. Satch would understand the deadly consequences of stealing from Trek. But Rico wouldn’t care. He’d take the drugs and, if he did, Trek would never stop until he caught him.
“Don’t worry about the jump-in.” Rico touched my cheek, his hand warm against my clammy skin. “You’re going to make us proud.”
When he stepped back, his gaze swept over the floor behind me. I watched him closely, but his smile never faltered. Maybe he hadn’t seen the jutting floorboard.
“We got business to take care of,” Satch reminded Rico, who nodded and followed him outside.
When the door closed, I fell against the wall and slid down to the floor. Still shaking, I worked the floorboard into place. It was like a puzzle, with slots and niches into which the board had to slide.
Feeling better now that I had narrowly avoided a catastrophe, I raced outside and caught up to Satch and Rico, their strides outpacing my jog as we hurried on to school. Their silence worried me until I saw the twitch in Rico’s face. Trek had sent them on a mission.
Unexpectedly, they stopped in the dead-end street next to the school, where the drill team was practicing. Thirty-nine girls dressed in electric-blue jumpsuits and one boy lifted their arms in unison, the blue ribbons attached to their wands swirling over their heads as they kicked high, their smiles exaggerated in a show of teeth.
After a moment, I realized that Satch and Rico weren’t watching the practice as I had thought. They were studying the still-wet graffiti painted on the street that read like a newspaper. The green color told me Danny was slinging. The arrow pointed toward the Borderlands, where buyers could find him. The numbers, standing for letters in the alphabet, were a menu of the drugs he was offering. Today he had sprayed a 3, for crack, and a 16, for paco, cocaine paste.
At the end of the street, near the roadblock, Danny stepped out from behind a hedge of weeds that teemed with gnats. His audacity stunned me. He was openly selling to users who normally bought from Trek, while flirting with someone who remained hidden from my view.
Stealthily, Satch crept alongside the drill team, ducking under the ribbons that looped in front of him, Rico close behind him. When they broke into a run, the sudden noise made Danny look up. He saw Satch and Rico lunging toward him and smiled; then, flashing his gang sign, he whistled shrilly to alert his homeboys and launched himself into a run.
Danny smashed through a thicket of spindly trees, startling dozens of sparrows into flight. Satch and Rico charged into the flock of frightened birds and disappeared into the Borderlands after him.
I started to turn away when Ariel came out from behind the weeds, huge sunglasses covering her eyes. She eased around the students who had been waiting to buy from Danny, her hair shimmering in the sunlight.
The drill team started practicing again, their ribbons creating a tangle of shadows that flickered over me as I hurried toward Ariel.
“Why were you talking to Danny?” I asked when I met up with her.
“He wanted me to buy,” she said indifferently.
I knew she was lying. “Danny would never try to sell to you. Everyone knows you don’t do drugs.”
“He did.” She lifted her sunglasses and set them on her head, her eyes sad, despairing even. She’d been crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, her conversation with Danny suddenly unimportant.
“Someone broke into our garage last night and stole all the tools my dad needs for his work.”
“Will insurance cover it?” I asked. Her dad worked as a handyman and someti
mes got bigger jobs painting houses.
“Who’s got money for insurance?” she said, watching the drill team. “The theft just made me realize that even if I make it through high school without getting killed, I’m never going to California. I’m stuck here.”
“That’s not true.”
“Look at how hard my parents work, and they keep sliding backward. There’s no escape from this place.”
“You’re creative. You’ll do it.”
She snorted softly. “I’m tired of teachers talking us up with stories about the American dream. Every year, they show us the same faded photographs of people who’ve made it out of neighborhoods like ours. Do teachers do that in middle-class schools?”
I shrugged. “How would I know?”
“They don’t,” Ariel said with certainty. “They don’t have to, because those kids know the world is open to them. But for us, escape is a lie. It’s like we live behind the Berlin Wall. We can see the West, we can even visit, we just can’t live there.”
On a field trip to the Newseum, Ariel and I had stared up at the huge block of concrete, part of the original wall that the Soviets had built to stop the flow of East Germans into West Berlin. We had understood that the wall surrounding us, though invisible, was just as formidable.
“I’ll only get out of here if I’m sent to prison in another state,” Ariel said.
“Go home,” I ordered. “You shouldn’t be at school when you’re like this. You’ll get into a fight, or worse.”
