Compromised

by Heidi Ayarbe

  “We’re just looking for a park,” I say.

  “We’re in Boise. The whole fuckin’ town is a park. Out! Now!”

  We leave the store. Somebody left a half-drunk cup of coffee on the corner. We share, slurping down the liquid, cupping the Styrofoam in our hands. Its aromatic vapors disappear, and we’re left with brown sludge at the bottom of the cup.

  Nicole nudges me. “Ask the worry dolls for something.”

  I hold one in my hand. “Please,” I whisper. “Help.”

  “That it?” Nicole slurps her coffee. “I think they need you to be a little more specific than that.”

  I’m so tired. It’s like in those dreams when you’re running away but you can’t move. All I can think of is getting to Klon, but my whole body feels like it’s shutting down. I rub my eyes.

  And it’s supposed to be his birthday. But I don’t even know the date.

  Some birthday.

  Flakes of snow spit down on us from the gray sky. I don’t feel the cold anymore at all.

  “We have to go.” I try to stand. “Just one more minute,” I say. I don’t even realize I’m trembling until I look at my hands, blue nail beds, shaking to hold the worry dolls still. “Breathe,” I say. “In and out. In and out.” It feels like someone has wrapped his hand around my throat and constricted, making me work for every last breath.

  “Christ, you’re not in labor.” Nicole scratches her arms. “Jesus, how could we have blown this? He’s counting on us.”

  I stand up and throw the cup into a dented trashcan. “Let’s go. It’s dark, and we have to get to him. I don’t know how many blocks it’ll take to get to him. I don’t know—” I cough and hold my throat.

  We pull ourselves up and half jog down Irene Street until we see some familiar buildings. We’re getting closer, I can feel it. I recognize things. Then we see the Hollywood Market. We run into a group of teenagers standing on a corner just outside. The streetlight is almost totally burned out, a yellow glow hugging them. I can see the glow of a cigarette being passed around. The sun is gone and the moon rises.

  We approach them. I clear my throat. “We’re, um, looking for a park. Near here. Can you help us?”

  One girl looks up—honey-colored eyes with long, long lashes. She turns back to the group she’s with. Nobody says anything.

  “Please,” I say. “We’re looking for someone. We, um, lost someone. And need help. Please.”

  “Depends on who you are and who you’re looking for,” the girl says. She takes a long drag and holds in the smoke, then releases it, billowing, into the air. I almost choke on it.

  “Jesus, Bambi,” one guys complains. “You’re sucking like a vacuum. It’s supposed to be for all of us. Take it easy.”

  They turn away from us. Bambi smiles over the haze of pot.

  “C’mon. They don’t know shit.” Nicole tugs on my arm and tries to pull me away.

  I watch as the last of their marijuana gets smoked. Light comes from the trickle of cars that drive down the street—yellow headlights reflect off newly sided homes. When we turn to go, Bambi says, “Word is there’s a corpsicle on the streets.”

  “Corpsicle?” I ask.

  Bambi rolls her eyes. “Yeah. A frozen kid. Out in the ball park.”

  “He’s not anywhere near a baseball field,” Nicole says. I feel a wave of relief.

  Bambi flicks a cigarette on the street. “Fucking morons. Ball park is where everybody goes to get laid. Behind some old historic buildings nobody’s bothered to repair yet.” She points. “Follow this road ten or twelve blocks, then turn left. You can’t miss it.”

  “No,” I whisper. The acid from my stomach burns my esophagus, nose, and mouth.

  Nicole grabs my arm. “Get it together. We need to go.”

  The moon rises higher, and the night is a little brighter. We stumble down the street—a street that looks like every other street. We turn and see the spare park—the swing set looks like some kind of rusty relic—the cement tube a black shadow in the moonlight. “That’s it,” I whisper. “Klondike!” I try to shout, my voice nothing but a raspy whisper.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Klondike!” Nicole hollers. We run to the park and look in the cement tube, but he isn’t there.

  Please, I think. Please have been picked up by police. Or somebody. Please.

  We rush into the trees following Klondike’s path in the bright snow.

  Klondike sits, leaning against a tree, gripping my box in his cold hands, green eyes staring straight ahead.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “Klon?” Nicole bends down beside him. “Klon. Wake up.” My throat tightens. “Klondike?”

  Moonlight filters through bare branches lighting Klondike’s face—the smooth side. The creek bubbles downstream, a thin layer of ice on the top. I rub my chapped hands together.

  “He’s not moving.” Nicole shakes Klondike’s shoulders. “Klon. Please wake up.”

  I lean in and put my ear to his lips. Nothing. “Klon?” My stomach knots. “Klon, are you okay?” I ask.

  Nicole shakes him harder. “Please, please wake up. Please,” she says.

  I move my hand to his wrist. Icy. No pulse. I try to lay him down, but his body is stiff and I can’t put him down straight. I finally get him into a position where I can do CPR. I pull off his coat and push hard on his chest. But when I do compressions, I feel the snap of his brittle ribs under my palms. “Oh God,” I say. “Oh God.”

  I breathe into his mouth, but nothing happens. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. His heart doesn’t beat. I can smell feces and urine and gag on the smell of death.

  Nicole rocks on her heels. “Oh fuck.”

  I turn to her. “We could’ve gotten help. Hours ago. He would’ve been alive, but—Oh God,” I whisper. I hold his hand in mine. “Please, Klon.”

  We sit huddled next to him, not talking, just listening to the night. I close my eyes and wonder what death feels like. Maybe there won’t be any more cold. Maybe Klon’s scars will go away. Maybe Nicole is right. Death is better. But then I remember the million-star hotel and the Devil gettin’ married.

  Nicole throws Klon’s coat over my shoulders and I shrug it off.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “He’s dead. He doesn’t need—” She chokes on her words. I slip the coat back on and am assaulted by his smell. I throw up—the burn coating my stomach and esophagus. I dry heave until my head feels like it will float away.

  This is our fault—my fault. I could’ve gotten help but didn’t. And now Klon is dead. We shiver, sitting next to him, waiting for night to go away, hoping to wake up from this. Morning light creeps across the purple sky in streaks of oranges and yellows until splinters of light shine through the trees. I stare at Klon’s face. He looks so peaceful. No tics. No twitches.

  Bambi and her friends walk by. “Tough break,” says Bambi. “That’s two stiffs this week with Limp—’scuse the pun.”

  Nobody laughs.

  She has an annoying thing about flicking her nails—her pinky nail especially long. “This one was just plain dumb, though. Somebody told him to come take cover before nightfall, and he refused to move. Just repeated, ‘Stay here. Don’t move. Stay here,’ over and again.” Bambi shrugs. “Fucking weirdo if you ask me.”

  Nicole wipes tears from her eyes. Her hands tremble. I hold on to Klon’s hand even tighter.

  Bambi tilts her head to the side. “Boo-hoo. So he’s expired.” Her black eyes are ice cold. “We’re all gonna fuckin’ die sooner or later. And with that face, it’s probably better he did sooner.”

  Nicole turns to her. “Fuck off,” she says. “Who asked you?”

  My stomach clenches. “Go away,” I say. “This isn’t a show. This isn’t okay. It’s not okay that this happened.”

  Bambi shrugs. “Fucking saps. Oughta start a greeting card company or something. Shit.” The group laughs. But it isn’t real laughter. It’s just this dead sound that hangs in the mornin
g air.

  Nicole turns to me and I look away. I want to blame her for everything, but I can’t. I didn’t go get help. I knew better. I never had Nicole’s life. I have no excuse. But the anger I feel. I can’t even look at her because—because Nicole needed me to be strong and I wasn’t. I hold my breath, hoping to hear a croak, cough…anything. But he doesn’t move. I sit next to him and hold his hand in mine. I try to remember a prayer. Any prayer.

  Nicole sits on his other side and says, “I don’t know if I believe in you. I don’t think so. But if you’re there like everybody says you are, you better take care of Klon. He didn’t deserve this.” She swallows. “He’s just a kid.” She looks up at me expectantly.

  “Happy birthday” is all I can think to say. “Yesterday was your birthday.”

  Nicole takes out the marshmallows and places them on his lap.

  “We’ll stay with him. Until—” I can’t speak through my own tears.

  Nicole nods. She understands that he didn’t want to be left alone.

  We lay Klondike’s body in piles of damp leaves. “So he’ll be comfortable,” Nicole says.

  I push his eyelids down, and we crouch behind some trees. Then we wait. Nicole holds Klon’s hand. Tears brim in her eyes and spill down her cheeks. “You were all I had left,” she says. She cries softly, leaning her head against the tree, its bark biting into her cheek.

  What about me? I want to ask. I pull my legs to my chest and lean my head on my knees, trying to keep from breathing his smell.

  I’m wearing a dead person’s coat.

  I want to shout. I want to stomp and pound and stop things. I want everything to be different. I want time travel to be true.

  And I want to hate Nicole.

  But I can’t do any of that. Because all of this is my fault. All of it.

  My burning eyes droop shut. I drift in and out of sleep. Nicole and I stay with him all day. We don’t talk. No more Mafia stories or science facts.

  Klon is dead.

  The second night falls and we huddle together. In my dreams, I stare down at Mom’s coffin, listening to the frozen earth pound the wood. I shiver and curl into a ball, waiting for the earth to swallow me up.

  Sometime late morning, a scream jerks me awake from my fevered dreams. A boy chased a runaway basketball to Klondike.

  “They found him,” I manage to say through the pain in my throat. “He won’t be alone now.” I turn to Nicole, but she’s gone. Her plastic bag of postcards lies next to Klon’s body. I pick it up and hold it to my chest.

  She’s gone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I wait, hugging the bag tighter, afraid to go through it.

  No heat comes from the sun. A bitter chill settles in.

  I wait.

  An ambulance arrives. The EMT wears thick gloves and a hat. He takes his hat off for a second and whispers something under his breath, making the sign of the cross, then gently cradles Klon in his arms, laying him on the gurney.

  The other EMT, a woman, touches Klon’s forehead and sighs, shaking her head.

  I feel better knowing they care. Klon isn’t just another statistic to them. He’s a kid. I want to go to them. Maybe they can help me, give me something for this throat. Maybe they’ll help me find Nicole.

  But I know they can’t. I’ll be swept away to some shelter, pumped with medication, and given a bed to sleep in. And I’ll sleep. For days. They’ll tell me they’re looking for Nicole, but they won’t find her. Because she’s a runaway. She’s invisible. And she wants to die. All she’s got is me.

  They drive away, siren and blinking lights off. No hurry now.

  I stare at the pile of leaves where we laid Klon, shaped around where his small body lay. Klon’s gone. Nicole’s gone.

  I finally open Nicole’s bag and flip through her notebook. On the last page it says: “Chicago—Yerington; San Francisco—Yer; New York—Yer; Honolulu—Yer; Detroit—Yer. No famly. Lies.”

  The eyeglasses I stole for her are shattered next to the notebook. Everything in her life has been a lie. And I’m no different from anybody else, because I didn’t have the guts to tell her the truth. I didn’t have the guts to stand up to her and get help for Klon. I took the easy way out, the path of least resistance.

  And now…

  I hold the postcards and notebook in my trembling hands.

  I dump everything on the ground and search through it.

  They’re gone.

  She took Plan B with her—the pills.

  No, I shake my head. She wouldn’t. She’ll be back. She probably went to sell them, get money. We should’ve sold them long ago. Maybe that’s her Plan B, because she has to come back. Rule number three: We stick together. Nicole doesn’t break her own rules.

  But then mobsters don’t lie to one another.

  I lied.

  I huddle up, clutching Nicole’s worry dolls. She took the money. But I have my box. My stupid box of dumb photos and letters of people who are dead—of people who don’t matter. I take off the locket and stare at the picture in the gray light. Another whole day has passed.

  “There’s no place like home,” I whisper. But I don’t even know what home is.

  Tears burn my eyes. Night returns.

  Nicole doesn’t.

  She’s gone.

  I go through the postcards and notebook again. Something else is missing.

  Her stupid Mafia, glory death, ace of spades garbage.

  I can’t believe I’m irritated. But I am.

  And I am alone.

  I walk the streets until I find a group of teens. I recognize Bambi. Her eyes are glazed over; she’s too high to hold her head up. “I need to find Rhodes,” I say.

  One points down the street. “Twenty blocks or so.”

  “How will I know when I get there?” I ask.

  “Are you stupid?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “Then you’ll know.” He ties a dirty rag around his arm, his vein pulsing with pressure. He pulls out a filthy needle and shoves it in the blue, the yellow liquid pumping out. His body jerks, then he smiles. He’s gone, too.

  I walk the streets—eerily empty. The warm glow of yellow light spills from behind people’s curtains. I stop in front of a small brick home with neatly painted green trim, the curtains open. A family sits around a beautifully set table saying grace. A fat turkey lies in the middle of the table—its skin crispy brown.

  Happy Thanksgiving.

  I stare at them sitting in their fall sweaters, the lovely glow of candles on their faces. A chubby lady wears an apron and passes a big knife to the middle-aged man. The family claps. A rosy-cheeked little girl looks out the window and locks eyes with me. She taps the man sitting next to her, and I leave.

  Normal.

  That’s what normal people do. They sit together around a table on Thanksgiving Day. They eat together. They pray together. They don’t spend the holiday in a cheap diner ordering hot turkey sandwiches hoping the latest scam will get them through the holidays. And they definitely don’t spend Thanksgiving looking for a friend who’s possibly already dead.

  Normal people don’t let their friends die.

  I wonder if Aunt Sarah is normal. Part of me wants to figure out a way to find her. And never turn back.

  But I’m done running. I’m done not caring. I’m done with procedures and hypotheses and science. That’s what I’ve done my entire life. I have to make things right. Somehow.

  I get to Rhodes before midnight. The scene in front of me is surreal. Small groups of homeless people huddle together under an overpass. No trees. No grass. Just concrete, asphalt, and chain-link fences. Skateboard paths and jumps. No life.

  Boise. Middle America. Benign. Bourgeois. A place where most people would say, “Hey, that’s a great place to raise a family.” While the normal population sleeps off their turkey overdose, we gather at Rhodes afraid, cold, hungry—alone.

  I hate being alone.

  I walk through
the area, looking for Nicole in the haunted faces, but she isn’t there.

  “Jeopardy!” I turn and see Charity skipping toward me in a lime-green spandex body suit and platform heels to match. “Jeopardy! We heard.”

  “Heard what?” I ask. My voice feels so small.

  Charity grips my upper arm and pulls me toward him. “Honey, you shouldn’t be out here alone. Come with me.”

  Charity takes me to another abandoned building. But this one seems a lot more organized. He opens the door to an apartment. Hanging blankets divide everything into small compartments. People sleep on soiled mattresses. No matter. People sleep. And I sleep.

  I wake up at the first light of day. Cockroaches scurry across the floor into cracks in the wall, holes in the mattresses, and piles of clothes. One wriggles its way up some guy’s shirt. But the guy doesn’t move. Nobody does.

  Charity snores. His breath smells like a nasty cadaver-putrescence combo. I try to jiggle him awake, but he doesn’t even move for another couple of hours. When he finally does, he opens one eye, his false eyelashes sticking to his cheek, and says, “Breakfast?”

  I follow him to the kitchen. Filthy dishes are piled in the sink. An old refrigerator hums in the corner—sitting crooked on broken feet. Charity opens it up. I cover my nose and concentrate on holding down anything my stomach might have in it. Charity pulls out a couple slices of cheese. He hands them to me. They’re covered with green mold and white fuzz. Then he guides me through the living area until we get to his corner.

  Everything smells musty and fishy.

  He yawns, wiping the mold off his pieces of cheese before putting them in his mouth. That would explain the halitosis. He looks at me, “Ah, honey. You get used to it.” He eyes my cheese.

  I hand it over to him and tap my throat. “Too sore,” I manage to say.

  “Long night. Goddamn religious fanatics. Always wanting to do freak things.” He shrugs. “I’m all for whatever, but they gotta pay, right?”

  I nod.

  “We heard about the little one,” he says. “Sorry. Cool kid—obscene little shit—but okay.” He shakes his head. “You looking for your friend?”